See Matthew McConaughey Announce His Decision On Whether He’ll Run For Texas Governor

Matthew McConaughey has made a decision about whether or not he will seek political office and run for the Governor of Texas. This has been bandied about for some time now.

By Doug Norrie | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

Matthew McConaughey

It is such a modern-day thing to have someone announce they aren’t running for political office even though they’ve never held any kind of political office before. Such is the way of the world these days in which the speculation around something is sometimes bigger news than the thing itself. And that seems to be the case with Matthew McConaughey who took the time to make an official announcement that he would not seek the seat of Governor in his home state of Texas. Has he ever held an office before, run for something, or really been involved in this kind of thing in any official (or non-official) capacity? No, but we got the word nonetheless that the thing that was never and had never happened still wouldn’t be happening. 

Matthew McConaughey took to his Instagram feed to announce that he wouldn’t be running for the Governor of Texas. With a very patriotically-themed background, flanked by the United States and Texas flags, along with some random legal-looking books stacked up, Wooderson made the announcement that he wouldn’t seek the office. He gave some reasoning behind the non-decision, saying he’d spent the last couple of years on something of a fact-finding mission around what a political run would mean. Check out what McConaughey had to say about the move and what he sees as the goal of service going forward. 

Instead of running for Governor of Texas, Matthew McConaughey has said that he is going to work on investing his “bounty” into different businesses and organizations that have a “mission to serve”. And he also makes a distinction about what politicians can (or can’t) do for those out there in the world. Matthew McConaughey makes the correct assessment that politicians really aren’t useful unless folks choose to do things for themselves first. In this way, staying out of the political arena might make sense for him if he’s truly looking to bring about change in the world. And if he is looking to contribute to different people and entities unfettered, then running for political office, or even winning, wouldn’t really help with that at all. 

Look, the simple truth could be that Matthew McConaughey spent the last couple of years assessing the political climate in Texas and found that he just wouldn’t be able to win a race for Governor. Sometimes decisions like this are easy to couch along these pretty simple lines. There is some chance he got in the room for folks in the know around these kinds of races and the numbers just didn’t come out in his favor. If this was the case then not running also would have been a pretty cut and dry decision. It can be framed in a way to make it appear the choice was about the power to really enact change. But there might have been a sense that winning wasn’t possible and sometimes losing can look a lot worse than just not trying at all. 

In the end, it was likely a confluence of factors that are going to keep Matthew McConaughey out of a run for the Governor of Texas. Seeing as how his popularity in the state, and in Hollywood is pretty high, there is some chance this could have only but some dents in that. And if his goal is to keep investing and supporting different causes, then there is of course virtue in that decision. He currently runs the Just Keep Livin foundation which works with high school students in the state.