Army veteran Alex Mealer won the Republican nomination for Texas’ 9th Congressional District Tuesday, defeating state Rep. Briscoe Cain in the primary runoff election for a newly drawn red-leaning seat in east Harris County.
Mealer, a former GOP nominee for Harris County judge, won the runoff after earning the support of Washington power players, including President Donald Trump and members of House Republican leadership.
The Associated Press called the race for Mealer shortly after 8:15 p.m.
In a statement, Mealer said she was grateful to Trump, “the local leaders, law enforcement and those who trusted me to deliver results for the hard working families of TX-09.”
“We came to work and that doesn’t stop now,” Mealer said, mentioning “more jobs, safe streets and a secure border” as her top priorities if she’s elected in the fall.
Outside groups poured millions into the race on Mealer’s behalf, leaving Cain vastly outspent. His loss also reflects a setback for Gov. Greg Abbott, who had endorsed him in the race before Trump weighed in.
Mealer will face Leticia Gutierrez, a community organizer and the Democratic nominee, in the November general election. The district includes some of Texas’ major economic powerhouses, including the Houston Ship Channel and various refineries and petrochemical production facilities.
“We have a socialist to beat in November,” Cain said on social media after the race was called, without mentioning Mealer. “Let’s unite and win.”
The seat is one of five districts Texas Republicans redrew last year to favor the GOP, kicking off a national gerrymandering war after Trump urged red states to undertake an unusual mid-decade redistricting scheme to help pad Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the U.S. House during the midterm elections. Mealer and Cain finished atop a nine-person field in the March 3 Republican primary. Neither earned a majority of votes, pushing them into Tuesday’s runoff.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Al Green currently represents the 9th District; with the new lines covering an almost entirely different part of the map, Green shifted to run in the nearby 18th District.
Under its new lines, the 9th District would have voted for Trump by a 19-point margin in 2024. But the leftward drift of Hispanic voters, who narrowly make up a majority of the district’s eligible voting population, has convinced some Democrats they can make a run for the seat in November.
The district takes in parts of Houston’s heavily Hispanic East End and cities in the eastern part of Harris County, including Baytown, Deer Park and Pasadena. Solidly Republican Liberty County was also tacked onto the district.
Throughout the race, both Mealer and Cain ran on their Trump-aligned, conservative bona fides. Mealer showcased her support from Trump and experience in the Army, while Cain emphasized his homegrown roots in the district and staunchly conservative record in the Texas House on issues including immigration, abortion, elections and guns.
Mealer outspent Cain three to one over the course of the election cycle. Outside spending also flooded the contest, with several conservative groups wading into the race to boost Mealer and attack Cain.
Club for Growth, an influential and well-heeled national conservative group, invested over $1.1 million to support Mealer and oppose Cain, with funding going to mailers, text messaging, ads, a field program and more.
Win It Back PAC, a group affiliated with Club for Growth, pushed an ad attacking Cain for previously accepting campaign contributions from the developers of Colony Ridge, a development in the district that came under fire from Republicans for selling land to undocumented immigrants.
Additionally, Conservatives for American Excellence, a super PAC bankrolled by GOP megadonors that has opposed hardline candidates aligned with the House Freedom Caucus, aired an ad tagging Cain as a “liberal lightweight.” Another group affiliated with an Anthropic-backed effort supporting candidates who favor stronger guardrails around the AI industry, known as Defending Our Values PAC, spent over $400,000 supporting Mealer.
Cain, who hails from Deer Park, has been consistently ranked among the most conservative lawmakers in the Texas House over nearly a decade in office. Mealer attacked him, though, for supporting the House’s 2023 impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton, a MAGA darling running to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn.
Cain had just one outside group in his corner during the runoff: Building a Strong America, whose funding came entirely from a dark money nonprofit group that does not have to disclose its donors. The pro-Cain group spent over $85,000 on texts and digital ads opposing Mealer.
Mealer is a former U.S. Army captain and bomb squad officer. She graduated from West Point, Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School, and she served as the public safety chair for Harris County METRO. She was the 2022 Republican nominee for Harris County judge, a contest she narrowly lost to Democrat Lina Hidalgo and whose results she contested.
