“[Trump] has gotten boring, and he’s got way more baggage.… And most people who love Donald Trump understand that Donald Trump loses, and will lose, against Joe Biden,” Hurd said. (Arguably, most of the people who love Donald Trump don’t believe Donald Trump lost against Joe Biden in the first place—which illustrates part of the uphill climb Hurd faces.) In 2016, Hurd continued, Trump was saying things people had never heard before, but in 2023, “he’s saying the same shit that he’s been saying back then.”
He believes there’s a majority of the country that just needs to be spoken to, and to be heard—by Hurd. Once a candidate is “talking about things that the majority of the country is focused on,” that’s when voters turn out. Of course, I reminded him, there’s the matter of getting those voters to come to the polls in the primary election, not just the general. Hurd laughed. “Bingo!” he said.
He believes his path to victory runs through the support of New Hampshire’s live-free-or-die iconoclasts, voters he believes may be more willing to support a non-Trump candidate several steps away from the party fringe. The Granite State, he said, “gives dark horse candidates an option.” Hurd continued: “Their bullcrap meter is pretty high.”