Republicans in the Texas 32nd Congressional District primary share why voters should choose them

Nine Republicans are running in the primary for Texas' 32nd Congressional District. 

The district's boundaries were drastically changed in last year's controversial mid-decade redistricting, and it is one of the five districts statewide that Republicans redrew with the aim of flipping the seat. The existing district, contained almost entirely in northern and eastern Dallas County, is heavily Democratic; Former Vice President Kamala Harris won 60 percent of the votes in the 2024 presidential election. 

The new boundaries stretch from northern Dallas County more than 100 miles east into deep-red East Texas. If the new boundaries were in place for 2024, President Trump would have earned 58 percent of the vote.

Incumbent Rep. Julie Johnson was drawn out of the district, and is now in a primary battle against former Rep. Colin Allred for the Democratic nomination for the 30th Congressional District.

With a newly safe Republican seat, whoever emerges from the GOP primary is all but assured to win in November. The primary is expected to result in a runoff between the top two finishers this week; with nine candidates on the ballot, it's unlikely one of them will receive more than 50 percent required to win outright.

Jack Fink recently spoke with four of the candidates in the race: Ryan Binkley, Paul Bondar, Darrell Day and Jace Yarbrough. (The other candidates are Aimee Carrasco, Gordon Heslop, Monty Montanez, James Ussery and Abteen Vaziri.) Three of them are spending heavily on TV ads and the fourth was the Republican nominee in the district two years ago. 

He asked each of them why they are running, with their responses lightly edited for clarity.

Ryan Binkley

Businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley mounted a long-shot run for president in 2024 and has been spending heavily on TV ads. has raised over $429,000 for his campaign, and loaned it over $1.5 million of his own money. 

Ryan Binkley: I'm running for Congress because our district needs leadership that really reflects their values. Right now, as you know, a lot of America is struggling mainly financially in the affordability of where their life is now compared to where it was five years ago. We printed about 40 percent of our nation's money supply in the last five years, and a lot of people are struggling to keep up. 

Bottom line, the dollar is not going as far as it used to in health care and business housing. So many key issues. And I think it's time to put a business leader in Congress some of the way President Trump was in the White House. Let's put a business leader in Congress. And so I'm a business leader here in the area, in the district.

I'm also a pastor, and I'm fighting for the next generation. I've got five kids that are 15 to 25, and they simply do not have the same opportunities that ... you and I had 30 years ago. And I'm fighting for them to make sure we get our country right now for our generation and save it for theirs.

Jack Fink: You've got a crowded Republican field. Why should Republican primary voters select you over the others?

Binkley: You have to decide who do you want to represent you. Right now, we've gotten in a lot of trouble. We're almost $40 trillion in debt. In fact, we haven't had a surplus in our budget and I think in over 25 years now. So we've had an addiction to deficit spending.

And we don't have leaders today. I think they can stand up against party groups and lobby groups that want to buy their vote and bring their influence in. So we have to have leaders that go to Congress that represent the district instead of representing the big power money groups out there. So I can't be bought. I want to come and make sure that they know that I have their best interests in mind.

And I think if they want a leader that understands money, how to balance the budget, how to bring DOGE cuts into law, which we only brought in 1 percent in the last legislation. I think we need leaders today that can be, you know, hold strong to that. I had a chance to meet with one of our congressmen recently in D.C., and he's retiring, Congressman Jody Arrington, and he handed me his balanced budget book because he fought for it for eight years.

And he said, 'Ryan, this is my biggest regret. I couldn't get it done.' And I said, 'Jody, if God gives me this opportunity, I'll take this mantle and we'll fight for this because this is the real fight.' How do we truly bring change economically and growth, but still cut costs to have a healthy country?

Fink: How do you do that?

Binkley: Wisdom. It's going to take a lot of hard work. I think the biggest way is to grow first. President Trump needs leaders that know how to grow small businesses, and that's what I do for a living. We help businesses grow in our company. We now have about 400 employees nationwide. And what we do is help businesses grow and sell.

And what business owners need is they need access to capital a little bit better through the SBA program. It's harder today. They need the government to get out of the way. We have more four letter and three letter acronym agencies out there putting undue pressure on them. Next thing we do is we have to solve the health care affordability crisis.

We have health care costs that are about 40 percent higher than regular inflation for 30 years. And I have a plan to gut that and to make it a free marketplace. When we do those three things, we'll get small businesses thriving again.

Paul Bondar

Paul Bondar is a businessman and former college football player based in Rockwall. After giving his campaign a $1.9 million loan, it has spent over $1.8 million, much of it on advertising. He grew up in Burlington, Wisconsin, where he was a teammate and friend of former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo.

Paul Bondar: I came to the conclusion that, you know, you can either be a Monday morning quarterback and you can just sit there and complain, or you can do something about it. And so after COVID, I said, 'I want to get involved. I want to represent people.'

I've been a businessman for 20-plus years. I started a business with one employee in the crash of 2008. And I started from very little, and I grew that company from one employee up to one of the top 120 something agencies in America. You have to be right a lot of times in order to do that, it's time somebody is right for the American people. And the folks here of Texas.

Fink: You've got a crowded field of candidates. As you know, there are nine. And so why should Republican primary voters select you over the others?

Bondar: Well, it is a crowded field, but a couple things. Nothing comes easy. You have to go out and work for it. I've been one of the ones that have been working and consistently involved. Secondarily, most importantly, I live in the district. You have a couple candidates who don't, and I don't understand how you can ask somebody to vote for you if you can't even vote for yourself.

So there's a couple candidates that well, I think we're going to have some issues with that because people want to have a representative that understands them. I go to the local church, they can see me. I'll be held accountable. And they say, 'Paul, why did you why did you vote for something like that?' And I'm going to be able to explain to them why I did and why they're going to be happy or not.

When you don't live in the district and you don't have that accountability, I think people are going to be there. People are afraid of of that type of dynamic. And so I think that that's a qualifying issue that that is really, really super important and a disqualifying issue that it's going to be a dealbreaker for many.

Fink: I know you ran for Congress in Oklahoma a couple of years ago. But you're in Rockwall now.

Bondar: Been in Rockwall for six years. And I had a secondary residency that I made into a primary residency because people in Oklahoma were saying, hey, we need somebody to run. We need help. We we are not getting good representation. And I turned them down. And that was 2022. And they kept asking in 2023 and 2024 I said let's go try to help.

I was talked to and I was flattered that people would say, they said, 'hey, we get all our best recruits to play at. Oh, you from Texas? It might just take a guy from Texas to get our politics right.' It was very flattering, but it ultimately I don't think it was the right thing because I underestimated how important it is to really live in the district.

I was able to vote for myself. I had property, I had a ranch, well over 500 acres. I had a vested interest. At least we have a candidate right now that's living in the shadow of the Oklahoma border right now. That's about as far away as what I was when I ran. You know, initially and decided to change my residence to my primary residence, but hasn't done that and can vote for himself, and has no vested interest.

I'm going back to my Rockwall roots of six years in the in that community. And people are going to want to have a representative that represents them.

Darrell Day  

Darrell Day is a small business owner and former member of the Arlington City Council. He was also the Republican nominee for the seat in 2024. Day's campaign has spent modestly in the race, and claims millionaires are trying to buy the seat.

Darrell Day:  We have drifted away from the basic tenets that have made our country great. And it seems like year by year, almost 250 years, it seems like we float further away from the Constitution. And there are other countries that have constitutions. Russia has a constitution surprisingly similar to ours, and obviously they don't follow it.

We have to get back to the Constitution. And that's very, very central to my campaign. And that's why I'm running.

Fink: You're in a crowded field. You've got a total of nine candidates, eight others. And why should Republican primary voters select you over the others?

Day: Number one, I'm one of the few that actually lives in the district. Majority of the candidates in this race don't even live in the district. Some of them live an hour outside the district. We also are not accepting out-of-state PAC money. There are some candidates in this race that are taking a lot of money from out-of-state PACs, and they're going to be beholden to out-of-state PACs.

We're endorsed by over 50 GOP precinct chairs in the district. We are the grassroots campaign. We are, like I said, endorsed by a lot of conservative Republican leaders. And that is our focus. Also, I'm a more of a hardliner on immigration. I've spoken out more forcefully about supporting ICE agents, even when they're, you know, pilloried by the Democrats, pilloried by the liberal media.

We have to support ICE agents in deporting criminals and also all illegal immigrants. Now, if they want to come back in the country, that's great. We are a nation of immigrants and we want them to come back. But the right way, the legal way a majority of Americans, 70 percent of Americans want all illegals deported. That's why President Trump got elected, his pledge to have mass deportations of illegal immigrants. 

Right now, Jack, our immigration is at the highest level it's ever been in our history, even higher than when we had the flood of Irish into to New York. Our level of immigration is the highest it's ever been, and we need to take a pause on immigration. I've suggested a five year pause on immigration.

You know, maybe if there a Nobel Prize winner in biochemistry, we'll we'll let a couple in. But basically a pause on immigration so the people here can assimilate. And also so we can set up the system to properly vet immigrants coming to our country. I mean, if you don't have a border, you don't have a country. And that's what Americans voted for when they voted for President Trump.

Jace Yarbrough

Jace Yarbrough is a military veteran and attorney. He is the only candidate who can tout the endorsement of President Trump and other prominent Republicans like Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson.

Jace Yarbrough: We looked around, saw the field, and realized that there wasn't a viable America First candidate in the race. And so we got in in order to be that and to provide for the people of Texas 32 that option. This is a Trump plus-17 district, a very Republican, very red district.

I'm very proud to be that America First candidate in the race. Our campaign is unabashedly a supporter of the president and his agenda. We are here to fight for that agenda and to move the ball forward and really make permanent a lot of the gains that have been realized by his administration just in this past year.

Fink: As you know, you've got a very crowded field of candidates. You have eight others that you're going up against. And all the Republicans say they support President Trump and his policies. But I'm wondering, at the end of the day, why should Republican primary voters select you over the others?

Yarbrough: Every election cycle, politicians stand up and say things that they know voters want to hear. And we, the voters, hope that we can trust them. And a lot of times, unfortunately, we find out that we probably can't. I would say the first thing is look at the past actions and behavior of each of the candidates in the race.

And so I'm very proud of my history and the things that I've done to demonstrate my commitment to putting America first, whether it's standing up to wokeism in the military or refusing the COVID-19 vaccine when others attempted to force it on me, whether my employer or the military itself, starting a classical Christian farm school for my children and other children in my community who whose parents didn't want them to be indoctrinated with a lot of unfortunate ideologies that we all realize were being pushed on our kids during COVID.

And so I think that's an important piece. And so, you know, I'm, I'm very much open and authentic about my convictions. They're very consistent. And and the president's agenda is very consistent with my past. But there's also, in addition to a policy conviction, there's also a disposition. I think that's really important. And it sets apart those who are seeking to represent what I call kind of the New Right, or others have called the New Right, the America First.

And that is a disposition that says, look, Republicans for too long have simply played defense, and they think that's enough. Right now, I'm I'm grateful for many things about William Buckley. But he famously said, 'we stand athwart history yelling stop!' And at the end of the day, the defensive strategy, as Napoleon said, ultimately leads to defeat.

We are experiencing a kind of slow motion cultural or civilizational suicide. We are being defeated. And Republicans too often offer what the left wants just at a slightly slower pace. Our approach, whether, as demonstrated through the kind of work that I do on the legal side, for example, bringing lawsuits against the left, is to say it's time for Republicans to go on offense.