Why the also-rans are running

Former Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) announced last week that he is running for president. You can be forgiven if that didn’t hit your radar. In fact, if you are having trouble keeping up with how many Republicans are running for the White House, you aren’t alone. I had to look it up online myself, and I pay fairly close attention to what is happening in Washington.

The answer, by the way, is 11, at least as I type this.

Let’s be honest: Barring some bizarre and lethal botulism outbreak in the green room prior to a future GOP debate, Will Hurd is not going to be the next president of the United States. Neither is Larry Elder or Francis Suarez or Asa Hutchinson or Doug Burgum or Vivek Ramaswamy.

A few political commentators have criticized those folks for throwing their hats into the ring when they have no chance of winning. Anti-Trump Republicans, for example, might accuse them of diluting the opposition to the former president. The theory goes that while Trump’s rock-solid lock on 35 percent of the GOP base might not carry him to victory in a one-on-one race, the quasi-winner-take-all delegate allocation system in the primaries virtually assures him of the majority of delegates necessary to win the nomination if there are a dozen candidates on the ballot.

I see it a little differently. I think having these unexpected names and faces enter the debate might actually be good for the party.

Will Hurd is the sort of person you want in your political camp. He is a former CIA agent and speaks fluent Urdu. He is also one of the new wave of young, Black Republicans who can take the party’s message into communities that many in that party cannot. Yes, he is a moderate, but my recollection of serving with him in the House was that he was genuine and reasonable and easy to work with, even on the sorts of issues that can divide Republicans.

Again, none of that means he has a snowball’s chance in hell of becoming president. But it does speak to why his participation in the race could be a good thing.

People who have no chance to become president nevertheless run for the office all the time for a variety of reasons. They might be looking to position themselves for a place on the ticket (Ramaswamy?), to sell books or land a television deal (Elder?) or to highlight a particular single issue. (Remember the “Rent-Is-Too-Damn-High” guy from the New York City mayor’s race a few years back?)

But some might do it for another reason: because they think they have something to lend to the debate, and to the party. And if the parties were smart, they might look to some of the “also-rans” as a potential source for talent that might have otherwise gone overlooked.

The Democrats apparently feel that way about Pete Buttigieg. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was likely never going to win the presidency in 2020. But he also might never have won any higher elected office in a red-leaning state like Indiana. By virtue of his better-than-expected performance in the Iowa caucuses, he forced the national party to pay attention to him. When they did, the Democrats apparently saw someone suitable for a Cabinet position. That likely never would have happened if Buttigieg had not run for president.

Francis Suarez, one of the current slate of Republican candidates few people outside South Florida have ever heard of, may be the Republican version of Buttigieg. The comparison isn’t as misaligned as you might think. While Suarez is, in fact, the Mayor of Miami, that isn’t the same as Miami-Dade. He won his nonpartisan race in 2021 with about 21,000 votes. That’s more than Buttigieg’s tally of 10,000 or so in South Bend, for sure, but he’s still a small-town mayor.

Suarez may show Republicans something during the early stages of the 2024 campaign that suggests he has a future in the party. Just as Hurd or Ramaswammy or any of the others might.

And it is safe to assume that, but for them offering their names for the White House, it is highly unlikely that any of them would have landed on the party’s radar. 

Yes, some Republicans whose priority it is to make sure Trump isn’t the nominee might have a valid complaint about the dilution of the anti-Trump vote within the party primaries. But ultimately, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu got it right when he said that the issue wasn’t how many people got into the race, it’s how quickly the also-rans get out. 

Finding new talent is always something both parties would be smart to prioritize. A good way of doing that might be to have a bunch of people get into the race whom you and party leaders have never heard of.

Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman from South Carolina, is a contributor to NewsNation. He served as director of the Office of Management and Budget, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and acting White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump.