This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

If George HW was the first President Bush and George W Bush was “Shrub”, as the Texas columnist Molly Ivins famously and witheringly called him, Pierce Bush must be … Twig?

On Monday, the grandson of one president and nephew of another announced his candidacy for a congressional seat in Texas.

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He joined one of the most crowded 2020 contests, the race to replace Pete Olson, a Republican retiring from Texas’s 22nd district, a suburban seat Democrats nearly flipped in 2018 and are targeting aggressively again.

Pierce Bush’s announcement video, released on the deadline to get on the ballot, included an image of him speaking next to a picture of his late grandfather, the 41st president who died last year aged 94.

“We face a very challenging time in our nation,” the younger Bush said, claiming the US is “on the brink of losing a generation to an idea that socialism and free stuff are the answers to their future. But we all know that socialism has failed everywhere and everyone.”

His candidacy opens a new if for now minor front in a long and mostly losing battle with the Trump wing of the Republican party.

In 2016, after a Republican presidential primary in which the former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Pierce’s uncle, was mercilessly mocked and politically eviscerated by the Trump machine, George HW Bush voted for Hillary Clinton while George W Bush didn’t vote at all.

The only Bush currently in public office is the Texas land commissioner George P Bush, son of Jeb. In 2016, he supported Trump. In Texas earlier this year, Trump introduced George P as “the only Bush that likes me”.

Pierce Bush’s father is Neil Bush, George HW’s fourth child who is now a businessman and investor. In the 2016 Republican primary, after his brother’s fall, he supported the Texas senator Ted Cruz.

Pierce Bush, who has spent the past three years as Texas chief executive of the national not-for-profit Big Brothers Big Sisters, made no mention of Trump in his announcement video and launched his campaign website with a short biography and no policy positions.

Olson is one of six of House Republicans in Texas who will retire next year, among a raft of such departures as Trump remains unpopular nationally but very popular with the Republican base.

Once a seat of GOP power, held by the former Republican House majority leader Tom DeLay, Texas’s 22nd district is shifting amid demographic changes and Democrats peeling off suburban women voters. In 2018, Olson won by fewer than 5%.

Other Republicans running for Olson’s seat have expressed unwavering support for Trump.