State Rep. Briscoe Cain and former Harris County judge candidate Alex Mealer are the frontrunners for a newly drawn Republican-leaning congressional seat in east Harris County that contains some of Texas’ biggest economic engines.
Cain, who has represented part of the area in the Texas House for nearly a decade, and Mealer, the GOP nominee against Democratic County Judge Lina Hidalgo in 2022, are among a field of nine Republicans running for the 9th Congressional District. The seat, currently occupied by U.S. Rep. Al Green, is one of five Democratic districts reconfigured by Republicans in the state Legislature with the goal of flipping them in November. Much of the new 9th District covers entirely foreign territory, prompting Green to run instead in the neighboring 18th District.
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GOP operatives expect a close race between Cain and Mealer, who have consolidated much of the fundraising and endorsements among the crowded field. While Cain has solidified support among local Republican figures and has run and won in communities like La Porte and his hometown of Deer Park since 2016, Mealer has outraised him and earned support from conservative groups in Washington.
Cain has the stamp of approval from a host of Texas elected officials, including Gov. Greg Abbott and 48 of his state House colleagues, along with dozens of local precinct chairs and organizations such as the Oil and Gas Workers Association — a notable stamp of approval in a district that includes the Houston Ship Channel and its surrounding refineries. He’s a well-known name in his state House district, the entirety of which is contained in the new congressional district, and frequently boasts of his Rice University rankings as the most conservative member of the state House.
In the Legislature, Cain has been one of the most aggressive anti-abortion crusaders amid the state’s crackdown on the procedure, and he initially carried the GOP’s contentious 2021 bill overhauling the state’s election laws. His relations with some in the Texas GOP’s rightmost flank turned frosty in 2023, when he served as one of the House impeachment managers prosecuting Attorney General Ken Paxton, though he has remained on the outer right edge of an increasingly conservative lower chamber.
At a recent candidate forum hosted by the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce, Cain led with his MAGA culture war credentials.
“I believe America is at a turning point,” he told attendees when introducing himself. “I believe we’re witnessing a revival of bold Christian conservative warriors who are unafraid of speaking the truth and pushing back against the woke mind virus that’s trying to destroy this country.”
Mealer, a West Point graduate and former Army captain who went on to work in energy finance, lost the 2022 election for Harris County judge — a position akin to the county executive — by less than 2 percentage points. In that race, Mealer attracted support from a number of prominent Republican donors, including Houston businessman Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale and a range of Houston business leaders.
In the years since her Harris County judge bid, Mealer waged an unsuccessful challenge to the 2022 election results and has served stints as chair of the Texas GOP’s 2024 Victory Fund and a board member for Houston’s METRO transit authority, where she was public safety chair. She has the endorsement of a number of law enforcement organizations, including the National Border Patrol Council and various local police unions, the Houston Region Business Association, local elected officials across Deer Park and Baytown, and Harris County’s only Republican commissioner.
Mealer has also garnered support from power players in Washington, including House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio — a conservative firebrand and former speaker candidate — and the well-heeled conservative group Club for Growth.
Jordan, who could mount another speakership bid in the future, has been engaged in primaries around the country and in late January appeared at a campaign rally with Mealer in Pasadena. Both his campaign account and his leadership PAC raise more money from Texas than any other state.
Drawing on her business background, Mealer is pitching herself as the best fit for a district that she says is “the most important district to our national economy in Texas” and one that needs more federal investment than it received under the Biden administration.
“The infrastructure is not keeping up with what is needed to compete,” Mealer said at the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce forum. “And so what I want to use this job [for] is to make sure that this economic engine has the support it needs. And if you can keep the Houston Ship Channel firing, you will keep job growth throughout the district.”
The district’s profile
The Republican primary will be the first test of the electorate in the newly created district, redrawn by the Texas Legislature last summer to turn a safely blue seat into a more suburban district that voted for President Donald Trump by 20 percentage points in 2024.
The new 9th District takes in parts of Houston’s heavily Hispanic East End, including Magnolia Park, and cities in the eastern part of Harris County, including Baytown, Deer Park and Pasadena. Heavily Republican Liberty County was also tacked onto the district.
The next representative will be responsible for advocating for some of the biggest economic assets in the region, including the Houston Ship Channel and the high concentration of refineries and petrochemical production facilities alongside it.
Republicans drew the district to be one of multiple new seats that have narrow Hispanic majorities while remaining favorable to the GOP, a strategy that relies on a combination of Hispanic Texans’ shift to the right in recent elections and the lower turnout of Hispanic voters relative to the districts’ conservative white voters.
Just over 50% of the 9th District’s eligible voting population is Hispanic. About 44% of registered voters in the district have Spanish surnames, and in 2024, 37% of voters who turned out for the general election had a Spanish surname.
The new 9th Congressional District has some of the lowest turnout in the state, ranking 33rd out of Texas’ 38 congressional districts for turnout rate in 2024. In the last midterm election, in 2022, just 36% of registered voters cast a ballot; in the Republican primary, that figure was only 8%.
Republicans seeking to represent the district are thus courting a diverse array of primary voters that includes the right-wing activists who have elected hardline conservatives like Cain to office; a significant stable of oil and gas business interests; and a multifaceted majority-Hispanic constituency that overlaps with some of the latter groups, yet is also moving away from the Republican Party, recent polling suggests.
Inside the contest
Mealer has outraised Cain by over $600,000 this cycle and has a war chest of over $600,000 — more than double the size of Cain’s. The race has also seen an infusion of outside spending, nearly all of which has benefited Mealer. Veterans Duty Fund, a super PAC, has spent nearly $900,000 on ads highlighting Mealer’s military background, while Win It Back PAC, a group with ties to Club for Growth, has spent nearly $300,000 on anti-Cain mailers and an additional $105,000 on the airwaves.
Cain, an attorney by trade, has also raised about $190,000 through a joint fundraising committee with his leadership PAC, most of which has already been spent.
Mealer has attacked Cain for taking campaign contributions from the developer of Colony Ridge, a development in Liberty County that came under Republican scrutiny for selling land to undocumented immigrants.
Cain, meanwhile, has emphasized his roots in the district, where he grew up and where his parents worked in refineries. Mealer, a California native, moved to Texas in 2012.
He has also emphasized his state House record on both economic and social issues and vowed to continue pursuing staunchly conservative policies in Washington.
At the Pasadena forum, Cain said his top two priorities if elected would be to codify Trump’s executive orders on immigration — “We’ve got to clean up our immigration system and deport every illegal immigrant here in this country,” he said — and make homes more affordable by striking down regulations that he says drive up housing costs.
Mealer said she plans to encourage Congress to reassert its budgetary powers to rein in deficit spending, while at the same time securing more funding for law enforcement and Houston’s infrastructure, including improving port depth and roadway capacity.
None of the nine members of Congress who represent Harris County serve on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
The White House and House Republican leadership have engaged in several of Texas’ House primaries this cycle, but have yet to wade into the 9th District. With nine candidates on the March 3 Republican ballot, the race is likely to go to a May runoff between the top two finishers, unless someone clears 50%.
Though the Republican primary is expected to be the deciding contest for the 9th District, Democrats, buoyed by their victory in a state Senate special election in Tarrant County driven by massive swings in Hispanic precincts, say not to count them out. Sen. Ted Cruz would have carried the district by 11 percentage points in 2024 had it existed then, while he would have lost the district by 1 point to former Rep. Beto O’Rourke in 2018.
Democrats have a crowded field of their own, headlined by retired astronaut Terry Virts, community organizer Leticia Gutierrez and public health advocate Earnest Clayton.
“I think it is ripe for the picking for Democrats this cycle,” said Kendall Scudder, chair of the Texas Democratic Party. “We are leaving no stone unturned this election.”
Disclosure: Rice University has been a financial supporter 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.