Retiring Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) is considering launching his own 2020 presidential bid, Politico reported Wednesday.
The day after the 63-year-old liberal congressman announced he would not seek re-election to his House seat, Politico spoke with him about his future political ambitions.
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“I will be reaching out to people across the country,” Gutiérrez said. “This is what I can tell you … I’m not retiring, I’m not retiring. I’m going to sit down with [my wife], and we’re going to figure it out. I want to build something, I want to build something national.”
Gutiérrez said he believes that he could “bring a new set of eyes” to immigration issues if he chose to run for president, claiming that the Democratic Party didn’t reach out to immigrants in key states enough in 2016.
Although the congressman said he couldn’t confirm a presidential bid at this time, he indicated that he and his wife will travel across the country over the next six months to gauge his potential.
Gutiérrez, who has made a point of positioning himself as a staunch advocate for illegal immigrants and open borders, joined some of his Democratic congressional colleagues in supporting the filing of articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.
“It is clear to us that he is unfit to be president of the United States of America,” Gutiérrez said earlier in November, The Hill reported.
As a vocal opponent of Trump’s strict immigration enforcement and border security policies, Gutiérrez expressed his outrage in August by attending a protest outside the White House on the fifth anniversary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. He was arrested during the course of the protest.
Back in March, Gutiérrez also was arrested outside of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Chicago. The congressman refused to leave the premises after his meeting with the ICE regional director had concluded.
Gutiérrez told The Washington Post in early October that he believes Trump’s immigration policies seeking to stomp out illegal immigration and secure the borders represent “an extension of the white supremacist agenda” that seeks to “criminalize and delegitimize Latinos,” regardless of their legal status.
The Democratic congressman also made headlines in September when he blasted White House Chief of Staff John Kelly for his willingness to serve in the Trump administration and support the president’s immigration policies. Gutiérrez called Kelly, a retired four-star Marine Corps general, a “disgrace to his uniform.”
“General Kelly is a hypocrite who is a disgrace to the uniform he used to wear,” Gutiérrez said in a statement. “He has no honor and should be drummed out of the White House along with the white supremacists and those enabling the president’s actions by ‘just following orders.'”
In response to Gutiérrez’s insults, Hispanic 100 spokesman and Fox News contributor Steve Cortes told “The Laura Ingraham Show” that the congressman “is a race-baiter, he’s a huckster, he’s a political opportunist who’s done nothing for his community, done quite a lot for himself.”
Should Gutiérrez choose to run for the Democratic nomination in 2020, he would face a crowded field of hopefuls that range from older moderates to younger progressives as the Democratic Party works to regroup from its catastrophic 2016 losses across the board.
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