TEXAS, USA — Brandon Gill calls the North Texas district he hopes to represent in Congress “Trump country.”
He defeated 10 other candidates in the Republican primary on Super Tuesday and now faces Democrat Ernest Lineberger III, a former Navy officer, in November’s general election.
But District 26, which spans parts of Tarrant, Wise, Denton, and Cooke Counties, is favorable to Republicans.
Rep. Michael Burgess has held the seat for more than two decades. He is retiring.
Gill, 30, moved to Flower Mound a little more than a year ago.
In the final few weeks of the primary campaign, ads for and against him seemed to fill every commercial break.
“Just out of nowhere, we saw these big D.C. swamp super PACs starting to come after me, and they didn't go after anybody else, and they didn't prop up anybody else,” Gill told us on Inside Texas Politics.
He believes he was the target of an effort to hurt candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
“They spent more money in my race than we've seen anywhere else,” Gill said. “Over $2 million in a congressional primary prior to a runoff when there's 11 people on the field, I mean, that's pretty unusual.”
“They knew Trump was going to be the nominee," he added. "So they looked to take out his candidates and they failed miserably in this case.”
If elected in November, Gill said he will be a “solid, across-the-board constitutional conservative” because that’s what he believes the people of District 26 want.
He said border security is the number one issue for the district. Gill pledged to complete a border wall, reform asylum laws, and bring back the remain-in-Mexico policy if he's elected.
“In other words, all of the policies that were in place under President Trump that Biden got rid of basically on day one,” he said.
After the border is secure, Congress should “look at deportations,” he said.
Gill said he would not have voted for the bipartisan border security bill negotiated by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., because he claims Democrats are manufacturing the border crisis.
“You don't sit down and negotiate with somebody who's operating in bad faith. So, I think that what James Lankford did is frankly a disgrace,” he said.
Gill called himself 100% pro-life and said he’d “take a look” at a nationwide ban on abortion.
He also said the social media app TikTok is a “cultural poison,” but he isn’t sure a ban is the right answer.
“You know, you never want the solution to be worse than the problem. And that's what we need to pay really close attention to here,” Gill said.
(Note: This video was published Feb. 23, 2024)