Olivia Borgula, Texas Tribune

WASHINGTON — In the race to replace Rep. Michael McCaul in Congress, Republicans in Texas and Washington are consolidating behind prominent GOP attorney Chris Gober, who served as chief lawyer of Elon Musk’s super PAC and has raised more than $1 million for his campaign.

McCaul, an Austin Republican who has represented Central Texas’ 10th Congressional District for more than two decades, announced in September he wouldn’t seek reelection. Gober is one of 10 Republicans competing to succeed him in the red-leaning district, which covers all or parts of 13 counties spanning from Austin to East Texas.

While the district added more residents of liberal Travis County under Republicans’ redrawn congressional map, it also now stretches farther into bright-red East Texas. Nearly one-third of the seat’s population remains situated in Brazos County, home to Texas A&M University and College Station. The district would have given Donald Trump about 60% of the vote had it existed during the 2024 presidential election.

Gober, an Austin-based lawyer, currently runs a law firm called Lex Politica, which he told The New York Times last year that he wants to be “synonymous with the conservative movement.” Gober founded the firm after serving as director and chief lawyer of Musk’s America PAC in 2024 and defending a legal challenge against Musk’s $1 million payouts to swing state voters.

Gober did not respond to a request for comment. At a Feb. 1 candidate forum in Livingston, he said what differentiates him from the other candidates is his ability to achieve results and his experience in politics.

“When I go to Washington, D.C., we’re going to take on the institution,” Gober said during the forum. “We’re going to secure the borders, we are going to fight fraud, waste and abuse and this reckless spending that is bankrupting our country.”

Also seeking the District 10 nomination is Ben Bius, the owner of a real estate investment and development company; lobbyist Jessica Karlsruher, who was endorsed by Maggie’s List, a conservative PAC that supports female candidates; and Army veteran Scott MacLeod.

Another candidate, former turnaround specialist Robert Brown, attacked all his opponents present at the Livingston forum, calling Gober the “$300 million man.” He also criticized Gober for his testimony on Musk’s $1 million giveaways, in which he disclosed that the money was not awarded via a random lottery, as Musk previously said, but rather was given to predetermined recipients based on who the super PAC’s leaders thought would be effective political spokespeople.

In December, shortly after the primary field was solidified, Gober notched endorsements from Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz, who Gober represented in a campaign finance case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022. He’s also endorsed by a new super PAC backed by AI companies, which funded an ad that said Gober would focus on “promoting American technology investment.”

Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said a Trump endorsement is especially valuable in congressional primary races because voters tend to know less about the candidates.

“A Trump endorsement in these types of races is worth its weight in gold,” he said. “The most beneficial signal you can send in these races to a Republican primary voter is that you are endorsed by Donald Trump.”

Gober’s deep ties in conservative circles, and his lineup of high-profile backers, has helped him raise more than four times as much campaign cash as anyone else in the race. Still, Jones said the race is likely to go to a runoff because of the breadth of candidates.

Jon Taylor, political science and geography department chair at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said if Gober were to win the seat, it would mean a more Trump-aligned member of Congress compared to McCaul. McCaul, who chaired the Foreign Affairs Committee, was outspoken about concerns he had with Trump’s foreign policy and clashed with Republicans on providing aid to Ukraine.

“[McCaul] is one of those old guard Texas Republicans … kind of a national defense Republican who believes in low taxes, and I think he's one of those who was maybe viewed as a little bit suspect by the Trump crowd,” Taylor said. “Gober would be much more of a doctrinaire MAGA Republican, and in particular, someone who will be heavily involved in pushing for AI tech.”

Kara King, the mayor of Bee Cave in west Travis County, had raised $230,000 for her campaign — the closest to Gober’s $1.05 million haul — before she suspended her campaign in January and endorsed Gober.

"Unfortunately, outside forces are supporting a different candidate, which pushes the district toward a costly and divisive intraparty fight," King wrote in explaining her decision. "I've always been a consensus builder, and I won't participate in a civil war that hurts our community."

Bius, the real estate executive, ran for a Texas House seat in 2022 and 2024 that overlaps with parts of the central and eastern share of District 10. He was defeated in primary runoffs both times. Bius also operates a direct air carrier company, which was hit with a complaint from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas in April 2025 for allegedly violating Federal Aviation Administration regulations.

Some of Bius’ priorities include cutting red tape for small businesses, eliminating the federal Department of Education, cutting government spending and strengthening border security.

During the Livingston forum, Bius said the fact that his central location in the district, just west of Huntsville and 10 miles south of the geographic center of the area, means he can serve voters and better hear their concerns.

“This is a rural district and this rural life that we love and we share is worth fighting for,” he said during the forum.

Other candidates in the race include Army veteran Rob Altman; Jenny Garcia Sharon, who ran for Congress unopposed in the 2024 District 37 Republican primary before losing to Rep. Lloyd Doggett in the left-leaning district; software engineer Brandon Hawbaker; and Jeremy Story.

The winner of the Republican primary will face one of three Democrats. Caitlin Rourk, a former Army officer who most recently worked at Dell Technologies, has raised the most so far in the Democratic primary, bringing in $155,000. State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, campaigned for a month for the 10th Congressional District before dropping out and instead running for state comptroller.

Early voting begins Tuesday and runs until Feb. 27. Election Day is March 3.

Editor's note: This story has been updated to reflect that Kara King suspended her campaign for the 10th Congressional District in January.

Disclosure: New York Times, Rice University, Texas A&M University and University of Texas at San Antonio have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

Former MLB player Mark Teixeira is heavy favorite in GOP primary to succeed Chip Roy in Congress

by Olivia Borgula, The Texas Tribune
February 10, 2026

WASHINGTON — In his first-ever run for elected office, former Major League Baseball player Mark Teixeira is overpowering the field of a dozen Republicans competing to replace Rep. Chip Roy in Congress, pumping millions of his personal wealth into his campaign and locking up key endorsements, including a recent nod from President Donald Trump.

Roy, R-Austin, is running for Texas attorney general this year, leaving Texas’ 21st Congressional District up for grabs. The seat, which includes parts of San Antonio and several ruby red Hill Country counties, would have gone for Trump by nearly 22 points in 2024 under its new boundaries — meaning the Republican primary will likely decide the next representative.

Teixeira, a former Texas Rangers and New York Yankees first baseman, has raised more cash than any other candidate, loaning $2.5 million of his own money to his campaign and pulling in another $545,000 from donors. Aside from Trump, he is endorsed by Gov. Greg Abbott — whose push for private school vouchers Teixeira recently supported — and nine of the 25 Republicans from Texas’ congressional delegation. The sheer number of candidates increases the chances of the March 3 primary going to a runoff, which happens when no candidate receives a majority of the votes. But Jon Taylor, political science and geography department chair at the University of Texas at San Antonio, said Teixeira’s endorsements and ability to blanket the district in ads give him a major leg up.

“It seems like it's a slam dunk that he'll end up winning the Republican nomination,” Taylor said. “But with [11 other] primary candidates, getting 1 or 2% of the vote here, or 4 or 5% of the vote here, it's possible that … there's just enough people in the primary with enough votes to force a primary runoff.”

Among the other candidates are Daniel Betts, an Austin-based defense attorney endorsed by the San Antonio Express-News; former Bexar County Republican Party vice chair Kyle Sinclair; Trey Trainor, former chair of the Federal Election Commission and prominent GOP lawyer; and former Kendall County GOP chairman Mike Wheeler. Betts and Wheeler, along with Navy veteran Jason Cahill and engineer Paul Rojas, are the only candidates aside from Teixeira who have raised at least $100,000 for their campaigns.

Teixeira’s rivals have painted him as a carpetbagger and cast doubt on the authenticity of his vow to “fight for the conservative principles that make Texas and America great,” as Teixeira said in a TV ad recently aired in the district.

Drafted by the Rangers in 2001, Teixeira spent his first five seasons in Arlington. He retired after the 2016 season, finishing his career with an eight-year run on the Yankees, and moved back to Texas in 2021, according to his campaign website. He now lives in Bee Cave, a small town west of Austin.

At a January debate in San Antonio, volunteers opposing Teixeira passed out flyers highlighting comments he made a decade ago about athletes needing to be outspoken about climate change, according to the San Antonio Report. Teixeira made those comments as a board member on the Emerald Corridor Foundation, an Atlanta-based environmental nonprofit working to restore greenspace and waterways.

But in his congressional campaign, Teixeira has positioned himself as a staunch conservative candidate aligning with the Trump administration on border security, cuts to government spending and gun rights. After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good last month, Teixeira wrote on X, “I stand with ICE.”

While Teixeira is currently the frontrunner, there are several candidates who have a shot at competing against him if the race goes to a runoff, said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.

“It's going to be a race where we're going to see Teixeira finish well ahead of the pack, and then it'll be whichever of those other candidates is able to do well in the home stretch,” Jones said.

About a month after Teixeira launched his campaign, Trainor, the former FEC chair, announced his bid for the seat.

Trainor has served as general counsel to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office and the Republican Party of Texas and as a lawyer for former Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign. As a legislative aide, he worked on Texas’ 2003 congressional redistricting effort that drew several Democrats out of their seats.

Trump’s endorsement of Teixeira was a blow for Trainor, who, as general counsel for the platform committee at the 2016 Republican National Convention, helped quell an anti-Trump uprising on the floor. Trump later appointed him to serve on the FEC. Trainor has pledged to “stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Trump” in Washington if elected.

Wheeler, the former Kendall County GOP chairman, is another one of the handful of candidates with political experience. He currently serves on the State Republican Executive Committee — the Texas GOP’s governing board — and previously worked in global finance, which led to his Trump appointment as a senior advisor to the Small Business Administration in 2024.

Sinclair, the former Bexar County GOP vice chair, previously ran for Congress in the neighboring 20th Congressional District. He secured the Republican nomination in 2022 before losing to Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro in the solidly blue district.

Betts is running on what he describes as an evidence-based conservative platform. A former chemist, he says on his campaign website that combating fentanyl is one of his top priorities, including designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations and expanding access to addiction treatment. He unsuccessfully ran for Travis County district attorney in 2024, losing by a wide margin in the heavily Democratic county.

Cahill, a Navy veteran and oil and gas businessman, has put in $250,000 to his campaign. He’s never held elected office and is running on a platform similar to Teixeira’s, describing himself as a political outsider akin to Trump.

Other candidates in the race include Jacques Dubose, a Navy veteran and former Boerne Chamber of Commerce chair; Marine Corps veteran Zeke Enriquez; Weston Martinez, who has represented Jan. 6 clients as an arbitrator; Heather Tessmer, an attorney; and Peggy Wardlaw, a petroleum engineer.

Disclosure: Rice University and University of Texas at San Antonio have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.

WASHINGTON — As recently as last year, Rep. Julie Johnson bought and sold stocks from Palantir Technologies, a contractor with the federal government that has been key to the Trump administration’s efforts to track and deport undocumented immigrants.

Johnson, a Farmers Branch Democrat who was elected in 2024 to represent Texas’ 32rd Congressional District, bought Palantir stock days before President Donald Trump took office for his second term on Jan. 15, 2025, and again on Feb. 12, 2025, according to congressional financial disclosure reports. She sold her shares a few months later in April and June of 2025, the reports show, and for each sale she reported earning between $1,001 and $15,000.

In a statement to the Texas Tribune, Johnson said the stocks were managed through independent third parties and that she started divesting her holdings in March, and that all Palantir holdings were sold by June.

“I came to Congress after years as a small-business owner and attorney with complex, pre-existing financial holdings,” Johnson said. “The law did not require me to divest — but I chose to do so because earning the trust of my constituents matters more than personal convenience.”

Johnson is part of the House Homeland Security Committee, along with its subcommittees on Border Security and Enforcement and Emergency Management and Technology. In her role as vice ranking member, she urged Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to follow the Constitution in the department’s deportation efforts in May, demanding transparency about the Dallas Police Department’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in August and pressed Noem again in December about ICE’s conduct in Dallas.

After federal agents fatally shot a second American citizen in Minnesota this weekend, Johnson spoke in opposition to the House Department of Homeland Security funding bill.

“I cannot support funding for a department that has shown repeated disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law and the safety of the people it’s supposed to protect,” she said on the House floor on Thursday. “ICE is terrorizing the American people.”

Johnson is running in a Democratic primary race in District 33, against former Rep. Colin Allred, after Texas GOP lawmakers drew her out of her current district under the state’s new congressional map. She was previously a Texas state representative from 2019 to the start of her congressional term in 2025, when she succeeded Allred in District 32.

No other member of the current Texas congressional delegation has traded Palantir’s stock, according to investment research platform Quiver Quantitative. Palantir’s stock spiked in 2025 and has been traded by members of Congress in states outside Texas, though of the 213 Democrats currently serving in the House, Johnson is one of only six to have traded Palantir stock since 2021, according to Quiver Quantitative.

Palantir’s government contracts nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025, from $541 million to $970 million as the Trump administration directed ICE to ramp up its deportation efforts, according to government spending data. Around the same time, ICE received a huge funding boost from Trump’s major tax legislation bill, which was enacted in July.

A Dec. 3 Washington Post report showed that Palantir was assisting ICE with tracking undocumented immigrants and deporting them. The company also built the agency a custom desktop and mobile app in 2014, which ICE has since stopped using, and a platform that allowed ICE to access federally and privately owned databases containing individuals’ information, according to a September 2025 Guardian article.

Johnson, once one of Congress’ most prolific traders, started divesting from all or parts of her 59 stock holdings last summer, the financial disclosure reports show. Among Texas congressional lawmakers, she’s made the second-highest number of trades behind Rep. Michael McCaul, amassing $4.24 million, according to Capitol Trades, a database created by a German financial data company called 2iQ Research.

She’s since been outspoken against members of Congress trading stocks, including proposing an amendment on Jan. 14 that would have required members of Congress to divest themselves of all their holdings while they are serving in Congress.

Raihan Alam, a doctoral student at the University of California San Diego who co-authored a study on how congressional stock trading erodes public trust in members of Congress, said there are limited guardrails to prevent members of Congress from using their knowledge and unique position to financially benefit through the stock market.

“Even losing money from doing this still impacts your perception of trust,” he said. “It's not like people are jealous about or resenting members of Congress earning a lot of money. It's about what that process implies for a democracy.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has drawn scrutiny due to her and her husband’s stock portfolios, which have historically outperformed the S&P 500 by a significant margin. Her retirement drew bipartisan calls to introduce legislation with tighter regulations on stock trading, including requiring members of Congress to put their investment in blind trusts so they have no knowledge of what stocks are being traded on their behalf while in office.

House Republicans advanced a bill last week that would bar lawmakers from buying individual stocks, but would allow members of Congress to keep their stock and continue selling it with seven to 14 days notice. It drew criticism from Democrats for having loopholes that would still allow insider trading.

Delaney Marsco, ethics director at nonpartisan legal organization Campaign Legal Center, said this effort could prevent meaningful reform because it doesn’t do enough to prevent conflicts of interest.

“People who, like me, have been working on this issue for years and years, are not happy with this bill,” she said. “It is not a good bill. It is essentially window dressing.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.