Roy, age 52, is seeking a fourth term in Congress, and previously served as chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). The Hays County resident sits on the House Judiciary, Rules and Budget Committees and is the policy chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
Hear from the candidate
Please tell voters about yourself.
I live in Hays County, near Dripping Springs. My great, great, great grandparents are buried just a few miles away from the property that my wife and kids live on. My family goes back to that part of the country going back to the 1850s.
I went to the University of Virginia for undergrad, and then went to law school in Texas where I met my Aggie wife.
I’ve worked in both the private sector and public service. I served as Sen. Cruz’s chief of staff, as an advisor to former Gov. Rick Perry and as an assistant attorney general for the state of Texas. I also worked in banking and oil and gas.
What three issues do you consider to be most pressing for your district and how do you plan to address them?
The issue I get the most, and the issue that I think ranks highest when I look at polling data for TX-21, is the border. We’re dealing with it significantly, with the tractor trailer migrant deaths, with the fentanyl issue, with the proximity of the border, with all of the issues involved with it. Obviously I’ve been front and center on that issue, and the way you deal with it is actually enforced the law, which this administration is not doing.
I think we’ve made headway in moving the needle about the things we need to do, but there’s obviously a very clear divide, and it’s going to be heavily divided in this election.
The second issue that I hear the most about is overall economic strength and inflation. That goes back to one of the issues that I ran on, which is spending and the regulatory state, which are driving up the cost of goods. I hear about it all the time and the only way to deal with it is to get inflation down, which means getting competition going and stop regulating people to death and stop spending so much money.
I don’t pull any punches of calling out members of the Republican Party on their failures, and we’ve moved the needle some on spending. We held non-defense spending flat. We paid for the defense spending increase over the last two years. But then we still have to go deal with all the mandatory spending.
The third issue is overall public safety and concern about police officers getting the support they need. San Antonio police officers getting support they need, Austin and the community generally, and just making sure that we don’t have criminals on our streets. I hear that a lot from constituents.
How would you approach Congress’ ongoing gridlock on numerous issues including spending bills?
For someone who’s a pretty outspokenly conservative, I’ve introduced and passed a not insignificant number of bipartisan bills, from a stock trading ban with my friend U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Virginia), to a bill with U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minnesota) that tweaked the PPP loan program. Many restaurants and businesses in San Antonio that were shut down during Covid benefited from that to make it work better for them.
My point being, the way you solve the problem is you put out solutions, you work with your colleagues, and you forge ahead regardless of partisanship. I’ve passed a fairly significant number of pieces of legislation. I’ve even gotten some of the president’s desk. You do that by being willing to sit down and work with people across the aisle, regardless of party.
Describe your approach to being an effective lawmaker in order to best serve the needs of voters in your district?
It’s to engage heavily with the district. Our rule is that constituent services are 100% apolitical. Does not matter where you are, doesn’t matter which part of the district, doesn’t matter what party, we solve problems. Whether it’s passports or IRS or Social Security or whatever it is.
To be effective, you’ve got to be out and about and engage with your constituents. I try to do that as much as I can. Given that we’ve been in D.C. a lot the last several years, I think that’s critically important.
You also have to be willing to work on issues that aren’t always in the mainstream. For example, going after and taking on Kinder Morgan when their pipeline was going under the Blanco River and the Pedernales River. I’m a conservative. I want to conserve our environment. Sounds funny, because I fight my Democratic colleagues on things like that deal, because I think it’s garbage in terms of messing with water supply and not having a pipeline just rooted through the Hill Country.
There are things like that where you find a way to work together to try to represent your constituents, because you know they want you to.
How do you solicit input and feedback from residents in your district?
We do a lot of tele-town halls. It’s the easiest way to reach the biggest number of people. We go out into the district as much as we possibly can. When I’m not in D.C., we have an open line of communication, again, regardless of party, for all the constituent affairs, and we try to respond to every letter, every email that we get, and I review them all.
Occasionally I’m sure we miss something that falls through the cracks, but we generally get pretty good reviews from people saying that we’re responsive and we answer all their questions.
I try to get on various forms of media. I do a lot of local talk radio and a lot of I try to do TV whenever I can, in San Antonio or Austin, to be able to be seen in the district, and then get feedback from folks.
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