AUSTIN, TEXAS (NYTIMES) – American actor and writer Matthew McConaughey introduced on Sunday (Nov 28) that he wouldn’t run for governor of Texas for now, after months of weighing whether or not he would search the workplace.
In a video posted on Twitter and Instagram, McConaughey, 52, mentioned operating for governor is a “humbling and galvanizing path to ponder”.
“It’s also a path that I am selecting to not take at this second,” he mentioned.
McConaughey’s announcement took place two weeks earlier than the candidate submitting deadline for the Texas main, and about two weeks after Mr Beto O’Rourke, a former El Paso congressman and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, introduced his run for the workplace towards Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican.
McConaughey’s announcement additionally got here weeks after he drew widespread consideration for saying that he wouldn’t mandate vaccines for younger kids as a result of he would love extra data, including that in his family, “we go sluggish on vaccinations, even earlier than Covid”.
As a substitute of operating for governor, McConaughey mentioned, he would proceed to assist entrepreneurs, companies and foundations which are “leaders”, institutions which are “creating pathways for folks to reach life”, and “organisations which have a mission to serve and construct belief, whereas additionally producing prosperity”.
“That is the American dream,” he mentioned. “And politicians? The great ones may also help us get to the place we have to go. Yeah, however let’s be clear: They can not do something for us until we select to do for ourselves.”
Requested about whether or not he would run for governor in an interview in October on The New York Occasions podcast Sway, McConaughey mentioned he was studying extra about politics and measuring whether or not politics is “an embassy for me to be of probably the most use to myself, to my household, to probably the most quantity of individuals in my life transferring ahead”.
“I prefer to measure issues earlier than I partake,” he mentioned on the podcast. “And you have to partake earlier than you have partook.”
McConaughey is thought for roles in motion pictures that embody Interstellar (2014), The Wolf Of Wall Avenue (2013) and Dallas Consumers Membership (2013), for which he received the Academy Award for Greatest Actor in 2014.
Final 12 months, he revealed a memoir, Greenlights.
McConaughey had not beforehand indicated whether or not he would run for governor as a Republican or a Democrat.
Mr Abbott, who has been governor since 2014, is searching for a 3rd time period in a state the place no Democrat has received a statewide election since 1994.
In a ballot launched final week by The Dallas Morning Information and the College of Texas at Tyler, voters mentioned they’d be extra prone to assist McConaughey than Mr O’Rourke by nearly two-to-one.
In a hypothetical three-way basic election contest, Mr Abbott was the favorite, with 37 per cent of the vote, adopted by McConaughey (27 per cent) and Mr O’Rourke (26 per cent). 10 per cent of voters within the ballot wished another person.
