Alex Mealer’s Platform Has One Big Problem: Reality
Alexandra Mealer is not hiding what she wants to be.
Her campaign website calls the newly drawn Texas 9th Congressional District the “future of the Republican Party” and says its purpose is to deliver President Trump’s “America First Vision.” (Alex Mealer for Congress | TX-09)
Good. That makes judging her easy.
Take her promises seriously. Compare them with the facts.
The problems start almost immediately.
A “Golden Age” With a Shrinking Workforceet
Mealer says that under Trump, America is approaching a “new Golden Age.”
Someone forgot to tell the economy.
The United States lost 23,000 jobs in July. The government also revised May and June downward by another 103,000 jobs. Another 264,000 people left the labor force, pushing labor-force participation down to 61.4%. (Reuters)
Inflation was still running at 3.4% in July, above the Federal Reserve’s target, while inflation-adjusted wages were lower than a year earlier. (Reuters) Grocery prices have risen about 3.4% during Trump’s current term, despite his campaign promise to bring prices down. (Reuters)
Mealer can call it a Golden Age.
Families still have to pay the grocery bill.
“America First” — Until America Comes Second
Mealer promises to fight for Trump’s America First agenda.
Those words sound good until America has to decide what actually comes first.
Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander of U.S. European Command, warned Pentagon leaders that without another Navy destroyer, stretched American military resources could force him to prioritize defense of the U.S. homeland over Israel. (The Washington Post)
That is not some anti-Trump Democrat talking. That is an American general responsible for protecting this country telling the Pentagon there are limits.
America First should mean exactly what it says.
America first.
Turn 40,000 Latinos Into 40,000 “Illegal Aliens”
Then we get to Mealer’s immigration message.
Her website describes Colony Ridge as a development of “over 40,000 illegal aliens” and immediately promises federal help to fight cartel activity. (Alex Mealer for Congress | TX-09)
There is one large problem.
The approximately 40,000 figure was an estimate of Colony Ridge’s entire population, not its undocumented population. AP investigated the claims and found no evidence supporting portrayals that most residents were undocumented or that cartels controlled portions of the community. Local law enforcement said its crime was comparable to other Texas communities. (AP News)
So Mealer takes an estimated population of roughly 40,000 people and turns it into 40,000 illegal aliens.
Then comes the word cartel.
That is not accidental political decoration. The construction of the message is obvious: illegal immigrants, 40,000 of them, cartels, danger.
Fear is the product being sold.
And when an overwhelmingly Latino community is described that way, the message encourages people who have never been there to look at brown families and see an invading criminal population.
The facts tell a different story.
“Make America Safe Again” — Compared With What?
Mealer also promises to “Make America Safe Again.” (Alex Mealer for Congress | TX-09)
Again, look at the numbers.
When Trump finished his first term, the FBI reported a 2020 violent-crime rate of 387.8 per 100,000 people, up from the previous year. (FBI)
By 2024, before Trump returned to office, the violent-crime rate had fallen to 359.1 per 100,000. (USAFacts)
America was already safer, by that national measure, when Trump returned than when he left.
That does not mean crime disappeared. It does mean politicians selling voters the image of an America descending into uncontrolled violence ought to have to explain the numbers.
Mealer prefers the frightening picture.
She Lost an Election. Now Election Complaints Are a Platform
Mealer says elections should be “easy to vote, and hard to cheat.”
Fine. Almost everybody agrees with that.
She then says her experience in the 2022 Harris County election taught her that elections are often difficult to vote in and easy to cheat. (Alex Mealer for Congress | TX-09)
There were genuine administrative problems in Harris County that year, including ballot-paper shortages and polling-place problems.
But Mealer lost to Lina Hidalgo by more than 18,000 votes, challenged the election in court, and eventually dropped her lawsuit. AP reported that her original attorney withdrew because she disagreed with Mealer’s ballot-fraud claims. (AP News)
There is something wonderfully consistent about politicians and elections.
Democrats bitch when they lose. Republicans bitch when they lose.
Republicans have simply become much better at turning the bitching into a party platform.
Mealer apparently trusts elections enough when they produce the result she wants. She won the Republican nomination for TX-09 in May. (The Texas Tribune)
AI Is Wonderful. Who Gets the Electric Bill?
Mealer’s AI position sounds impressive.
Beat China. Protect American technology. Build infrastructure. Protect people from deepfakes. Keep America dominant.
There are things in that list worth supporting.
What her platform barely discusses is what happens to the Texans living next door to the massive data centers required to accomplish it.
Who supplies the electricity? Who builds the transmission lines? Who pays for them? How much water disappears into cooling systems? What happens when a small community discovers that one enormous data center wants more electricity than the town itself?
Even Greg Abbott, hardly an enemy of the technology industry, has become concerned enough to intervene.
Abbott has ordered state regulators to make data centers pay their own electric-infrastructure costs rather than shift those costs to residential customers. He has also demanded water-efficient cooling and protections for communities affected by data-center development. (Texas.gov)
Mealer’s campaign received another benefit from the AI boom: an AI super PAC spent about $234,000 supporting her in the Republican primary. (The Texas Tribune)
Her website tells us plenty about what AI can do for America.
It says considerably less about what Texans may be required to give AI in return.
The Future of the Republican Party
That brings us back to Mealer’s opening claim.
She says TX-09 represents the future of the Republican Party.
Maybe she is right.
Her platform gives us Trump worship, a Golden Age that working families cannot find at the grocery store, an immigration claim that converts an entire community’s population into “illegal aliens,” cartels placed conveniently beside brown immigrants, election grievances after losing an election, and enthusiastic support for an AI boom while leaving many of its costs out of the sales pitch.
She does not merely have Trump’s endorsement.
She has chosen to make herself the local delivery system for Trumpism.
If that really is the future of the Republican Party, voters in TX-09 deserve to know exactly what they are being asked to buy.
