Brandon Gill, a former Wall Street investment banker who ran a pro-Trump site that perpetuated misinformation about the 2020 election, defeated two opponents to win outgoing Congressman Michael Burgess’ District 26 seat.
Gill bested two other candidates: Democrat Ernest Lineberger III, a retired U.S. Navy officer who spent 27 years at Texas Instruments, and Phil Gray from the Libertarian Party.
With the backing of former President Donald Trump, Gill was able to secure victory over a field filled with GOP challengers in the March primaries.
Trump's backing seems to have helped Gill, who is new to the district, on Tuesday night.
Gill's lead widened to almost 63% of the ballots counted by 11:30 p.m., according to unofficial results from the Texas Secretary of State's Office, leaving Lineberger with about 35% and about 2% for Gray.
Gill claimed victory shortly after 8 p.m. in a statement shared on social media.
"It's my greatest honor and privilege to have earned the trust of Texans who call the 26th District home," Gill said in the statement. "Thank you to our community for your patriotism and your votes, to President Trump for his endorsement, and to my beautiful wife Danielle for her support. I look forward to representing the people of Texas 26 in Washington, fighting the D.C. swamp, and defending the freedoms we all hold dear.
"We have a lot of work to do. We must seal the southern border and deport the illegal aliens inundating our communities, balance our federal budget and demolish the woke and weaponized administrative bureaucracy."
Burgess said on KXAS-TV (NBC5) on Tuesday night that his successor, Gill, will find "a very active district" with constituents who'll write lots of letters and keep him busy. Burgess has represented the 26th Congressional District since 2002 and declined to seek a 12th term.
Gill plans to be Trump’s biggest advocate in Congress because he believes it’s what his constituents want.
District 26’s constituents hail from portions of Denton, Wise and Tarrant counties and the entirety of Cooke County. The district's large portion of Denton County includes the southwestern part of the city of Denton as well as Lewisville, Corinth, Highland Village and Little Elm.
“What President Trump is looking for right now, more than anything else, is he's looking for somebody who's going to go to bat for him in Congress, who's going to defend him,” Gill told The Texas Tribune in March.
Trump’s embrace led to Gill raising about $1.6 million — about 87.5% of it from outside House District 26 — and spending $1.5 million this election cycle.
Lineberger raised about $52,000.
Both Gill and Lineberger mentioned border issues as part of their policy focus, though Lineberger was the only one to offer ways outside of building a wall to address it, such as immigration reform.
In a recent conversation with the Denton Record-Chronicle, Lineberger noted that immigrants are a foundation of a stable economy.
“It [doesn’t] need to take that long to get good, vetted, hardworking people to become citizens in our country,” Lineberger told the Record-Chronicle last month. “So that might be one thing that several people have talked to me about. The border — I’m 100% behind that. We definitely need to secure the border, but on the other hand, we definitely need to support immigration.”
