Thread by @camanpour

THREAD: Just two weeks ago, I spoke with @HurdOnTheHill.

cnn.it/31bBaRG

On Thursday, he announced he wouldn't run for re-election.

On July 15, he told me: "I go into communities that most Republicans don't show up in order to take a conservative message."

@HurdOnTheHill 2/ I read Hurd a quote from Joe Straus, the Republican former speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

Straus said: “I think he is Exhibit A in Texas for what the future of the Republican Party needs to be.”

@HurdOnTheHill 3/ "What I like to say, I'm the face of the future Republican Party," Hurd told me just two weeks ago.

@HurdOnTheHill 4/ "When you look at independents and conservative Democrats in the United States, they are concerned with the direction of the Democratic Party is going," Hurd said. "And our opportunity is to appeal to those folks."

@HurdOnTheHill 5/ "My district, Hillary Clinton won by four points in 2016," Hurd told me.

"Yet I continue to survive and win partly because, you know, I try to have a message that is reflective of where the majority of the country is."

@HurdOnTheHill 6/ "I'm the only black in the Republican in the House of Representatives," Hurd said two weeks ago.

"If the Republican Party in Texas doesn't start looking like Texas, there won't be a Republican Party in Texas.

"And I think that goes for the rest of the country."

END