Matthew McConaughey said on Sunday that he will not run for governor of Texas in 2022, depriving headline writers everywhere of the opportunity to employ the phrase “alright, alright, alright” applied to his political hopes constantly for the next year.
McConaughey made the announcement in a video posted to his Twitter account on Sunday:
“Over the past two years, I’ve been working on the answer to the question of how I could be most useful in this life going forward,” McConaughey (who refers to himself as “McConaughey”) begins before explaining that he has been studying Texas and American politics intently and had learned “a lot.” McConaughey then drops a number of bland axioms like “Freedom comes through responsibility” and “Service is the investment we make in ourselves” and speaks of his small-town upbringing — all of which would seem to preview an announcement that he was planning on running. Instead, McConaughey says that politics is a path he is choosing “not to take at this moment” and that instead he will “continue to work and invest the bounty I have by supporting entrepreneurs, businesses, and foundations that I believe are leaders.” He signs off with “Just keep livin’.”
The Oscar-winning actor had never made any kind of firm commitment to entering the political arena, but he had dangled the possibility many times. (Perhaps not coincidentally, McConaughey has also been promoting his best-selling memoir, Greenlights, which came out last fall.) It was unclear which party, if any, he would have associated himself with to challenge incumbent Republican Greg Abbott.
McConaughey’s decision would seem to clear the decks for Abbott’s other long-shot, brand-name challenger: Beto O’Rourke.
