The seat to represent U.S. Congressional District 19 is on the ballot for voters from Lubbock to Abilene. The position has been held by Jodey Arrington for ten years and now there are two first-time candidates running for the office.
Kyle Rable is a member of the U.S. Army Reserve and has served as secretary of the Lubbock County Democratic Party. He ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
Rable sat down with Josiah Wonnell from KTTZ’s partner station KACU to discuss his platform, largely built around serving working class West Texans.
You can find KTTZ’s interview with Rable’s Republican opponent Tom Sell here.
You can find more coverage on the midterm elections here.
Early voting runs Oct. 17-30 and Election Day is Nov. 3.
The following transcript has been edited for clarity:
Josiah Wonnell: First off, just for the people of Abilene and the surrounding areas, what is kind of the general statement that you want to tell them in terms of who you are and why your name should be on their minds?
Kyle Rable: Yeah, I think the most important thing is that I'm one of you. I'm a regular working class guy that's just raised in his family. I think it's time that America works for us and not for billionaires and overseas interests.
Josiah Wonnell: Okay, so let's talk about the billionaires, the inflation, the financial side of things. Okay, inflation and tariffs right now, super big topic. It's been massive over the last two years. At your position, if you were elected, what were the main things that you would want to focus on?
Kyle Rable: Yeah, I mean, in general, we have to rein in the presidency. It doesn't matter if it's Republican or Democrat. The presidency has way too much power, and it wasn't meant to have this amount of power. So we have to rein in the presidency and ensure that the economy is working for the working class folks. The tariffs are not helping us; they're increasing the costs, and they make it so that you can't do everyday things. Gas, for example, or diesel – for a lot of us out here driving diesel trucks, like myself – it's increased the payload so much that you can't do your regular day-to-day work. So we need to stop doing the things that we're doing. We need to ensure that we aren't exporting too much either, ensuring that we're making sure Americans have access to American goods. And we have to end things like these continuous wars and these tariffs that seem to be more of a vanity project than actually helping Americans. We need to wipe the slate clean with that and ensure that Americans are put first. And I think that I'm the one that's going to bring that forward with bills on limiting presidential powers, ending this war in Iran, and things like that.
JW: Okay, so you mentioned it there for a second from a Texas state level. What do you think big change can be made in terms of what you could do if you were elected?
KR: Yeah, I mean, up in D.C. you can do so much, and when you work across aisle, which I'm willing to do to ensure that Americans are actually put first, you put bills forward that limit powers. You put bill forward that maybe even we need to limit policies and stuff like that, that impact us negatively. We need to make sure that people aren't there for 30-4 years in Congress and the Senate because when you are there for so long, you get complacent and you aren't actually fighting for your people. So once we do things like that, you actually can see there will be a generational change. And when you have younger generations of people making decisions, money is what's going to matter, and making sure that our prices are decreased and that we're using American products first and foremost, that's what's going to happen.
JW: Immigration is huge in the state of Texas. This is one of the obvious hot spots in the entire United States. The conversation right now has switched dynamically since our last president. What kind of things are you mostly focused on – in terms of what kind of changes will be made in D.C., in terms of what changes, against whatever the president is coming out or in favor? What are the main things that you're focusing on in terms of actual change?
KR: Yeah, I'd like to state that a strong border is logical. We need to have a strong, controlled border. We need to stop the flow of drugs. That starts twofold. We need to have a border position that makes sense, but we also need to ensure that we're helping people on the backside in America get off of drugs. The drug issue is fueled by our consumption, and we need to attack that issue. That's first and foremost to stop those flows. But second of all, the major issue with undocumented immigration into this country is because the immigration process makes no sense and is vastly overexpensive. And that was happening before President Trump. That was happening under Biden. That was happening under Obama. This system is far too complicated, and good people that want to come to America and be Americans aren't having the opportunity, so they're getting caught up in cartels and bad systems to get them here, and then they're getting bought out into those bad systems, and their lives are getting destroyed, and they're becoming criminals, quote-unquote, because of this.
I think an immigration policy that makes sense, that makes this system make sense and work for people, is the best way to cut down on undocumented immigration, along with a strong border. It's logical. That's what defines a nation. We do need a strong border, but we shouldn't be criminalizing and hurting and killing people in the streets just for coming to America.
JW: Yeah, well said. Could you go back and talk a little bit more about the idea of, the mentality of, going towards the drugs first in terms of the United States and the Americans dealing with that situation? And then going to immigration because I think that's a really interesting dynamic.
KR: Yeah, one of the biggest issues that drives much of the crime that's across the border is drug consumption. Correct? And America has a high drug consumption. We have a problem with drug use in this country. There are twofold issues here. We need economic prosperity that we are not seeing that would cut down on drug drug consumption, and we need to attack this from a perspective of caring about the people in our communities, we need to have programs that help people get off of drugs and get them back on their feet, so they don't turn back to drugs. If we cut those down, you cut down the crime rate going through the border, and then you have a strong border, you may be able to cut it down completely. But you need to focus on helping people here in order to stem the flow of drugs coming to America.
JW: Okay, so switching subjects. When you think about Social Security, especially the you know elderly population that might be voting in this upcoming election, as they start to think more long term, what are the specific things that you're advocating for as you move forward in that realm?
KR: Yeah, we need to fully fund Social Security. So one of the best ways to do that is to get rid of the cap that you pay on Social Security. So, for example, Elon Musk paid that cap a very long time ago, and he could technically pull Social Security when he retires, even though he's a trillionaire, right? We need to stop that. Elon Musk and billionaires and millionaires to that level should continue to pay into Social Security because that's what's making this not solvent any longer. Once you hit that cap, you're no longer paying into it, which means that it's essentially the poor paying for the rich to retire because the poor won't have enough money saved up, and you can't live off of Social Security any longer because it's not enough money to buy eggs and beef and anything else, because again, inflation has increased the cost of living. So we need to attack that by ensuring that the wealthiest among us are doing the Christian thing and continue to pay into the system, so our elderly are taken care of.
JW: You just mentioned ‘the Christian thing.’ Is that a part of your candidacy right now? Your faith?
KR: Yes, yes. I'm a devout Catholic. I've got two kids. Like I said to you, when this airs, it would have been about two and a half weeks since I had my daughter, and I have an 18-month, 19-month old son. And faith has been very important. It's kind of held me together through this. It has been a long time. It's been over a year since I launched this campaign. And every Sunday church mass conversation there has really helped me and my family kind of get through this. And I think that that's also guided me with what Pope Leo has talked about with helping our communities and focusing in on those people that have less than us and ensuring that we have a society that takes care of everyone instead of demonizing people for what they don't have.
JW: As you use those values and you look towards the international trade world, the different conversations we're having right now with Canada, but also Mexico, and then ultimately what's going on with international conflicts. As you start to look outside the domestic border right now, what are your main things that you want to focus on and begin conversations about.
KR: Yeah, everything that I do and everything I'm focused on is the American person, American worker first. So every trade deal we have has to have a positive impact upon the American worker and the American person. I think that the issues with our trade wars, as they really are, have actually increased the inflation issue. I believe in ensuring that we have American-made products, but some products just are not made in America. We need to make sure that we're equally working within the system so that our workers get the most out of the system, and they're not getting drug through every buck that they have in their pockets. And again, I will continue to say this probably throughout the interview, we need to end forever wars because that's what is greatly increasing the cost of living here in America.
JW: So you just mentioned it. Many people consider this war with Iran a forever war. It just continues to go. In terms of that conversation and the way that that is being addressed right now in Washington D.C., as well as military spending in general, so these obviously two different topics, but kind of intertwined. What is your approach to that in a really strange, different situation that we're used to?
KR: Yeah, I wouldn't say strange or different than we're used to. This has been going on since Vietnam. This is how we've done it. We need to rein in the war powers of the presidency. Does not matter if it's a Democrat or Republican. Both have abused this system too much. War should only be allowed and be declared when Congress has voted on it, because we are – ‘we’ when I am in there – are the representatives of the people, and we should be the ones speaking on where we're going to go to war and where we're going to send young Americans off. I'm a U.S. Army Reserve officer. I've been in it my entire adult life. I've led these young men and women, the greatest in this nation, and I don't want to see it wasted just because the president is bought out by AIPAC.
JW: How does your perspective change when – you just mentioned – how does that perspective change in terms of the military and the conversation behind all of these decisions to go out in foreign territory?
KR: Yeah, again, I believe in a strong military. I think it's logical and it makes us safe. I've benefited from having a military that works. I'm the son of a son of a son of a son that served, right? But I think that what's important is we shouldn't be wasting our resources on wars that have no benefit for the American people and don't protect us, necessarily. Iran was not close to developing nuclear weapon; they have somehow been close to developing nuclear weapon for almost 30 years, but they've never developed one. And I think that we're just playing games, and instead we need to focus on, if we're going to use our military, it needs to be for justice and for the right causes, and not just because someone paid somebody to do something.
JW: Okay, you need to help me with this one. This is something I'm not as informed about, but specifically having a conversation about medical reimbursement. So going back to kind of our conversation about Social Security, but also on the medical side, that's a really big deal here in Abilene. We have Hendrick, we have a lot of people in this town and surrounding areas employed by a hospital, but that entire world of conversation about medical reimbursement – Where do you land on that issue and conversation about that as you look more nationally?
KR: Yeah, I think that first and foremost, the medical system here in CD 19 was the largest employers of people in the district, and so making sure that this system works is vital to continuing the system, but also making sure people can feed their families. And so the medical reimbursement system is very interesting because it doesn't work, and it's not for the reasons we think of scams or crimes. It's because it just isn't made to work efficiently. We need to go in there; we need to cut the bullcrap. We need to make sure that these systems, Medicare and Medicaid, are actually paying out what they owe – specifically our rural hospitals. With the cuts that retiring Congressman Jody Arrington pushed through, we could lose up to six rural hospitals in our district. The rural hospital systems throughout this country are going to be decimated because they're not going to get the payouts that they need because these systems live off of Medicare and Medicaid payouts. We need to make sure this reimbursement happens. We need to make sure that we strengthen Medicare and Medicaid. We need to make sure that access to medical care is available to everybody. And the only way we do that is by ensuring that we're paying into the system efficiently, and we're not wasting money on overseas wars. And instead, we can put that towards our medical disbursement problems.
JW: Would you use the term redistribution instead of – and utilizing financial wherewithal the best as you can?
KR: Yes, I think that there's the conversation to have that we should cut spending on things so that we can efficiently spend on things that are more important for the American people.
JW: Understood. Okay, so I'm originally from Kansas, so I'm very familiar with agriculture and just the entire world of that. Multiple family members grew up on a farm. Farm Bill is a real big deal right now. Where do you kind of sit on that as we just try to get an idea of what the approach will be if you're elected?
KR: Yeah, I think the current Farm Bill is a start because we haven't had a good one in a very long time, and we've just continued it. But I don't think it does enough for our farmers. I think that there needs to be more support, and specifically for out here in CD19, we had a drought. The cotton crop is about to be really, really bad. Our farmers are going to be really hurt. Not even conversating the fact that we have increased the input costs for our farmers, and the break-even keeps going up when the price that you can buy for is going down. So we need to ensure that this bill actually helps them. And one of the things that we keep cutting is SNAP in this bill, which doesn't make any sense because when you have producers that do more than cash crops like cotton, they need SNAP because SNAP feeds into the system. Well, if people are using SNAP to buy food, they can use their cash to buy cotton goods. We need this system to work. It's a good flow, but if we keep cutting things and pretending like it's going to help our farmers to cut SNAP, that's just illogical. We need a fully funded system. We need to ensure that there are things in place to ensure our farmers can diversify what they're growing as well. We need to support things like growing hemp and things like that, and diversifying what we're growing out here, so that our farmers can continue to do what they've done for generations, and that's feed, clothe, and fuel this country.
JW: That's well said. It's not a carbon copy, but do you believe that's kind of the general situation across the country in terms of what CD 19 is experiencing right now? Obviously, not the same exact circumstances, but overall, the situation with SNAP and all the different economic problems.
KR: Yeah, it 100% is. While we are the biggest cotton patch in this country and produce 80% of what cotton that comes out of this state, I think that it's important that we understand that there's a giant impact across this country, and that the state of Texas produces more than just cotton. And so, when we are looking at the issues we are facing, we need all farmers to succeed. We keep losing farms; they keep getting bought out. And I think that we instead need to make sure that those generations of family businesses that we they can continue to live their American dream, which is owning their family farms, and the best way to do that is a Farm Bill that has a well-rounded approach instead of just a cut and slash, and then pretend like the other parts of it are going to do enough.
JW: A conversation right about now, that usually comes up, is national debt. And the conversation about obviously you're not going to fix that in one term. But when you look at the national debt, what is your number one thing that you are focused on in adjusting if you were to make it?
KR: Yeah, no more forever wars. The amount of money we have spent on the global War on Terror that gained us almost essentially nothing-that is where a lot of our debt has come from. When you look at us continuously – when George W. Bush got into the presidency, he got an economy and a debt system that had nothing in it because Bill Clinton had zeroed that out. We are now trillions of dollars in debt with no concept of how to get rid of it, and the interest rate on that thing is more than you have in my house. We need to fight this, and the best way to do that is to cut spending on needless things, and the best and most needless thing that we keep doing for the last 30 years is wars in the Middle East that have gained us nothing. We have wasted so much resources and so many lives, and crushed youth after youth doing these things. When instead we could have reinvested – I’d rather be in debt because we reinvested in the American system than be in debt because we keep fighting wars that we aren't needing to fight. It
JW: It feels like the spring cleaning concept, right? Going in and then changing things, but it feels like – not that you are not concerned about foreign affairs – but you are very concerned with the individual American and how their life is affected. Is that correct?
KR: Yes. I'm not saying that it's not important that we are a world player on the stage. I think it's vital. And we are again the best and greatest nation on this planet and God has given us so much. But in order to continue to be the best and greatest, we need to ensure that the American worker that has built this country is able to live the American dream. And I think right now, in the way that we're doing stuff, the American dream is disappearing, and we need to fight to get that back. We need to fight to get back to where we were. ‘Make America Great Again,’ just in the vision that I see it as something that we had post World War II, where you had insane, well-paying jobs, high union rates, and jobs that made it so that you could feed your family and have a white picket fenced house. I think we need to get back to that instead of pretending that we are continuously having to be the only world police.
JW: So going back to the economy, you already touched on this earlier, but I filled up my car last night with gas, right? It's a little bit lower than it was, but not much. Where does the current oil slash gas industry stand right now in your mind?
KR: I think that we need to support oil and gas a little bit more. I think that there's been conversations about stopping exports. That's an avenue to explore that cuts down on the profits for our people out here. And listen, West Texas is oil and gas and cotton, that's what you have – and cattle – and so you can't just attack these industries. We need to make them work efficiently. Someone like Jon Rosenthal, who's running for railroad commission, that's a man that's going to make sure that this industry works well for us out here in West Texas, and I support every bit of his policies he's bringing forward. Logical production of oil and gas out in West Texas will lower what happens on our stage across this nation, and again, it will continue to go back to why are we at war in the Middle East, and that is increasing our costs as well here at home from oil and gas all the way down to the food that you're eating.
JW: So that starts the process of affordability, right? With everything. They want me to mention a $5,000 check. Does that make sense…
KR: Yeah, yeah. The bribe that President Trump offered everyone to vote Republican. By the way, that's illegal. You won't see it. It's kind of like the DOGE checks or the rebates or anything like that. Listen, I love a good gimmick. It's fun and I think sales is cool, but that's what the president is. He's a salesman. And at the end of the day, I can't get on board on bribing somebody to vote for me. You should just vote for somebody in a party because you believe in it, not because they're going to give you $5,000, which by the way won't materialize, because again, we're trillion dollars in debt, and the tariff money hasn't hit quite yet.
JW: So you're speaking on corruption in some way, not just at the presidency level, but at every level. What methods, I guess what steps, will you take if you're elected to make sure that corruption is not on the minds of the American people as a potential?
KR: Yeah. So step one, AIPAC needs to register as a foreign entity in our country that is influencing our politics. Step two, we need to end gerrymandering. The district should represent the people. The district shouldn't be drawn just to cut out people. We need to end Citizens United, which has created this flow of dark money to our politicians and has made it so your politicians are bought and paid for by data centers, medical corporations, big pharma, big alcohol, big oil. All of them have bought out your politicians, and we need to cut that out. And your politicians should be bought by you as the individual American because they need to earn your vote. And lastly, we need term limits. We don't need Nancy Pelosi's, Chuck Schumer’s, or Mitch McConnell's out there forever making money off of our backs and insider trading while the rest of us go hungry. I think it's time that we cap how much you can do, how much you can trade, and how long you sit in D.C. and make a good paycheck.
JW: You mentioned the data centers. This is a big conversation in Abilene right now, specifically, but obviously throughout all of West Texas and the nation. But where do you sit on the development of artificial intelligence? As you clearly made a point to focus on the individual American, how do you think artificial intelligence goes into that? Is that a positive or negative connotation in your mind?
KR: The Pope has been very clear that we need to be wary of artificial intelligence, and that it is not made in the image of God; it is made in the image of a man that has a lot of money, for the most part when it comes to these AI corporations. And I think that this AI is meant to replace the American worker and take your jobs and we need to be very wary of how it's going to be used by massive corporations to cut us out. AI can be used to help so many things. I believe that it can make your job better, make it safer, make it all logical. It can make things go faster. But we need to ensure there are massive regulations on this industry. Just AI alone, not even data centers, but the federal level, you can make sure that things are part of the fair practices of labor laws, and that we're not cutting people out of jobs. My union, the CWA, has a lot of call center workers. AI is going to take a lot of my brothers and sisters' jobs, and I cannot stand for that, and as a Catholic, I've seen what the president – or the Pope – has said, and I cannot, in good faith, continuously be silent on what AI has the possibility to negatively impact the American worker and the general humanity.
JW: So that's all my policy questions, but I do want to hear a little bit more about why you chose to run. The encouragement, the mindset behind what you're doing and what's inspired you to run. You said you started this candidacy a year ago. What was the spark for that?
KR: Yeah. So I had gotten involved accidentally in local politics, because I had heard a Section 8 housing in the middle of July a couple years ago didn't have any AC. Middle of July in West Texas, that's about 110 degree heat. So I called around until someone got back to me. There was this whole movement. We got them AC units, and then the next question from the county party in Lubbock was, ‘Hey, do you want to get involved, I guess?’ And I said, ‘I mean, I guess so.’
And it kind of snowballed, and then 2024 happens, and I work really hard. I'm on the ground trying to do door knocking and phone banking, and then we lose. And we don't just lose. We lose spectacularly. Because we had candidates that didn't do enough, that didn't talk about the issues correctly, that didn't have plans that made sense to the American people. And in West Texas, we didn't run a Democrat for this seat. We hadn't ran a Democrat for this seat since 2020. And so I went back to my wife, she was still pregnant at the time, I was like, ‘There's more to do here. There's something more here. I don't know what it is. We got to think about it.’ We had my son in March of 2025, and I looked at him, and I knew I had to do something big, and it had to be something because his future is at stake. So we launched May 11th of 2025 because, I think that I'm fighting for my son's future to be able to achieve the American dream that I believe is slipping away from us. And that's been our fight: is just making sure that the future exists and that it works for the regular working class. We've been all over this district. The amount of times we've driven out to Abilene is crazy when you go and do it from Lubbock, and I go home every night because I've got a wife and kids at home, so I need to help to get the morning started. So I drive home after every event I have, the two hours or more.
And it's been a crazy learning experience. But the fight that I've been able to bring forward and the conversations I've had, West Texans are tired. We've had a one-party rule for 40 years. They haven't had many new ideas, and I think a lot of people understand that affordability is the biggest issue. And my opponent doesn't have an answer to affordability because he's just a continuation of the same. Where I can bring to you, I know how much formula and diapers cost because I just bought a bunch of diapers the other day, right? I know how much the bill was, even with Tricare, to get out of the hospital with my daughter on two, three Mondays ago now. This is important, and I think that's what I brought to the table, and I think that's why we've done so well with such little money, facing dark money PACs that are supporting my opponent and all the money he's been able to pull. We've been able to fight on the ground in the way that you're supposed to, door to door, talking to the average West Texan.
JW: If a parent's listening right now, obviously there's a lot of related relatability, right? But why, as a human, do you think that you relate the best to those parents out there?
KR: Because I've been, I'm in your spot. I know where you're at. I know what it's like looking at the bills that are piling up, and knowing that you might have to sacrifice things. I know what it's like to be a real regular working class parent and not a millionaire parent. And I think that that's a distinct difference for me is that I can tell you that I know what it's like to cut costs and be like, ‘Well, maybe we won't do that trip this year. We might not get to visit family that's not right next to us, because it's just difficult right now.’ And I hope that we can fight to make that better. That's across the aisle. I would happily work with Republicans to fight to make affordability happen for West Texans. And so that's what I promise, and that's what I'd bring.
JW: If the people that are listening take away one thing from this conversation, what would that one thing be as you kind of make a final statement to the people that are listening right now?
KR: The one thing that that would be would be that I want to put West Texas first, truly put America first by ensuring that our money is spent on you and making sure that your costs get lowered by any means that I can do myself, by bringing bills forward, working across the aisle, and ensuring that West Texas stays West Texas, but you can afford to drive across it.
JW: Well, you drove across most of it to get here. I really appreciate the conversation today.
KR: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's fun. I love coming out to Abilene anyway, so it's not too much hair off my back so much.
JW: Thank you very much.