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.
Tom Sell is the Republican candidate for the position. He faced off against six other Republicans in the primary election earlier this year, and went into a runoff in May.
KTTZ’s Brad Burt interviewed Sell about some of the issues that are top of mind for West Texans and the experience he would bring to the office.
KTTZ’s partner station in Abilene, KACU, conducted an interview with Sell’s Democratic opponent Kyle Rable. You can find that interview 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:
Brad Burt: Sitting down with Tom Sell, candidate for District 19. Thank you very much for joining us.
Tom Sell: It's great to be here with you today.
Brad Burt: One of the issues that has prompted a lot of the bipartisan support on trying to find a resolution to the Iran crisis has been the price of gas that has risen alongside that. Diesel prices here in West Texas reached almost $6 a gallon. It's still likely to be a number one issue in January when November winners take office. Have you looked at efforts to address fuel prices if you were to be elected?
Tom Sell: I think we always have to be careful to look at look at the long range and not be too distracted by kind of short term blips. I will say, the inflation we've seen in gas prices, especially fuel prices, here in the Trump administration has been temporary. I remember at the beginning of this campaign in February, I think I actually did a post about filling up gas for less than two bucks a gallon, and that felt great, yeah, in the moment. We were covering a lot of ground and a lot of miles, and then and then we started this campaign in Iran, and it shot up, the Strait of Hormuz. There are very fundamental reasons.
And there is a reality. It could be so much worse, but for what we've done really since the Bush administration and trying to secure our American energy productive industry. I remember as a kid, every night on the evening news. It was what did OPEC do today, and what's that going to do to our oil prices? We no longer really – That's not in the news cycle anymore. It's because we have this domestic industry still producing a global commodity, fuel, that is priced on a global market, so the tightness of the world has affected us. But at least the gains that are being made from that are being made in the U.S. oil patch and domestic refining capacity.
I think we've got to be careful in politics to not always just kind of chase the momentary things. Contrast this inflation, the Trump administration, to what the Biden administration was doing in trying to fundamentally change our energy sector, right? And with the Green New Deal and the efforts to try and create this artificial market around carbon credits, they were deliberately trying to drive up the cost of fuel. They were doing the same on food, trying to – they were, you know, Secretary Vilsack in his second term with President Biden said he had two goals in agriculture. One of those being to fundamentally change the ag sector with respect to how it produces food, believing that it needed to to address what he deemed the existential crisis of climate change, rather than doing the basic good of feeding the people of this world. So Trump has shifted that more to productivity on the agricultural side. Same on the energy sector.
We have this temporary blip. We'll get through it. Fuel prices still, when you compare them to inflation over time, we're still way underneath. You know, when you look at a family in 1970s and what they paid for gasoline to fill their car as a percentage of their net income or gross – or the domestic income. (I’m sorry. Very short night. I'm not even remembering the terms.) You know the measure I'm talking about. It's we're way underneath. You know, incomes have risen. The percentage of the family budget that's going to these things is smaller these days.
I'm not trying to minimize the the reality of of the the pressure that we feel because of high fuel prices, but we do need some perspective. We'll get through this. We'll get to a better place. We are building out our domestic energy infrastructure even more to provide more resilience for the future.
So we got to have some patience and just call upon people's kind of better angels to see the bigger picture, because security is also a big part of that. I mean, if Iran, worst case scenario, were to have been allowed to develop nuclear missiles that could have presented a real threat. Think of what they could have done to our oil and gas markets in that case. Much, much worse situation.
So I think we have to weigh the good with the bad and I think we have to give some leash here and just buckle down and do what good West Texans do, which is kind of struggle through it, get stronger, build the infrastructure to be better for the next round of of challenges, which are always going to be there, and it's that grit that makes us us truly great out here in West Texas.
BB: That kind of comes to what is being said is the number one issue for voters this year, which is the cost of living and affordability, and you kind of touched on this, but it's such a wide-ranging issue. I mean, there's the ability to afford a home.
TS: There's medical.
BB: There's medical. Yeah, all of these. Do you have something that you want to focus on going into it, if you're elected?
TS: I do think the best thing we can do is kind of rebuild this American manufacturing and productivity base, that helps on the affordability over the long term. And it's having an impact even in the near term. It's just you know we're in a time of inflation, so it's hard to see. But inflation is down relative to where it was just, you know, two or three years ago, so we're making good long-term steps.
And then I think you look at the other side. What can we do, maybe in the form of tax credits or, you know, incentives to help people get that first home. I mean, this was a huge thing for Kyla and I when we were young and married. You know, I was a staffer in D.C. as a young man. I went out there working for the 19th District Congressman at the time, Larry Combest, who was a great member of Congress and a great legacy for this 19th District of Texas. And Kyla and I were aided by a tax credit that was in place at the time in the District of Columbia, for first-time homebuyers. And it was very meaningful. It allowed us to get into that first home.
It was still a struggle, right? It was pinching pennies, man. We got into that home, and the air conditioner went down in the first two months as summer was approaching, and we didn't have the money to pay for it. But we worked through it. We got through it, and that home ended up appreciating and helping us build a small nest egg. You know, we were poor as church mice when we made these sacrifices. We sold everything we had to get into this home, including our car, so we were walking all that stuff. But that tax credit was meaningful. And I think we can look at those kinds of tools, which can be very powerful. They're a direct benefit to the would-be consumer, the purchaser of that first-time home, and that was an incredibly powerful tool for us as we were able to build that nest egg. So that's where my mind goes. That's where I'm really thinking about.
Certainly, our Senate candidate rolled out a plan on kind of a homebuyer's credit, a significant one, and it's been kind of panned by the media, but I think he's on the right track in trying to think, what are the tools that we can put directly in the in the toolbox of would-be purchasers? Not some big government program trying to match and marry things, which is always clunky and never really works that well. But a tax credit just goes directly to that would-be buyer and helps empower them to make that purchase or encourage that purchase. Which is, if past is prologue, and I think we've got to measure it by the past, that's always going to be a really good investment for the future. Get into a home, put some sweat equity into it. It's a great way to start in this economy.
BB: Getting more into your area of expertise, agriculture. The farm bill has gone back and forth a lot over the summer since we talked. Currently kind of in a stall in the discussion about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and SNAP as it relates to the Farm Bill, but they're not expecting anything really on that until December. But we've got farmers here, dairy farmers that have a January 1 deadline that they have to think about. Is this something that you're thinking about ahead of the election?
TS: So much. And I will say, I'm hopeful. You know I want the listeners to hear this: You know that the House, led by Chairman G.T. Thompson from Pennsylvania, did pass a Farm Bill through committee and across the House floor, and actually 13 or 14 – I can't remember – Democrats joined in passing that bill, and kudos to them. It’s rare that you get – You know, that's not super bipartisan. It's not a big split, but you had near Republican unanimity, and then you had another you know chunk of Democrats. And kudos to them, this is the way it should work. And it's a good bill. Senate got it through committee. They're hung up now – but I think there is a real opportunity in this lame duck session of Congress. So after the November 3 election, when the current Congress goes back before the new Congress is seated on January 3, in this lame duck session, I think there's a real desire to get this and a number of other critical pieces of legislation done here at the end of the year.
And I think there has been this dynamic between the traditional farm programs, conservation programs, and then SNAP. When I was a staffer in Congress, we had this great alliance, bipartisan alliance, between Larry Convest and Charlie Stenholm, who was a Democrat down from the Abilene area, and just a wonderful man, a truly great public servant and patriot. Charlie was in the Democratic Party, even then was – they kind of counted it their duty to be the defenders of of this social welfare welfare program called called SNAP or food stamps, at the time.
But Charlie, what made him unique was he's like, ‘If we're going to do this it's going to be an unimpeachable program. We got to run it clean. We can't tolerate any fraud. We don't need to be supporting people who should be out there in the workforce.’ So limits on able-bodied adults without kids were in place at that time. Part of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act that President Bill Clinton said was one of the greatest successes of his presidency. All those things were in there. What the Republican Congress tried to do this time was to bring some of that back, particularly with just time limits on ABODs, as they're called, able-bodied adults without dependents, men. So it's it's it's it's it's targeted at males in that category who don't have kids. And that's what that's what the Democrats kind of cried foul over, and so many just wouldn't move it because of that, and because of some state accountability requirements. The error rate in food stamps, which is about $120 billion a year program, is about 10%. So call it $12 billion a year that is not going to the people that by law it's intended for. And so they put some accountability measures in for the states to say, ‘You got to bring this down, or you're going to pay the difference for the error rate that you have.’ I think that's actually really good policy. It creates accountability. But that has really hung up some of the Democrats. I think they can work out a deal here in the end of year, and I'm hopeful for that.
And I think the social welfare programs are important. We are a compassionate society, and we want to take care of those most in need. But we don't want to set up systems that become abused, where it becomes a cultural phenomenon to kind of pass on welfare benefits or do it in ways that are not healthy. We've seen big problems with this in other programs like Medicaid and other social services programs. We've uncovered a lot of just outright fraud, and that's fraud against the U.S. taxpayer, in states like Minnesota. And sadly that's not the only state.
I'll go back to making Congress great again. This is where Congress needs to step up and do its oversight authority. The Article One authorities granted to Congress the power of the purse. Part of that is the duty of oversight, knowing where the dollars are spent. So the fact that we uncovered this is in some ways an indictment of Congress letting it go on for so many years. Congress has to do a better job of oversight to make sure these programs, whether it's farm programs or welfare programs, that they're being used for who was intended, and that they're achieving the goals that are set forth in the statute.
BB: Part of this is, like with the SNAP specifically, part of the conversation has been putting it back towards the state powers in that oversight. Is that getting away from congressional oversight, or is that a diversification of the authority?
TS: SNAP has always used state agencies to deliver those benefits. So really, what they're trying to get to is just greater accountability with the states. There are a lot of kinds of waivers that were created in the you know mid-2000s that states took advantage of, and it's just allowed the program to get too loose. So they made some changes in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. They kind of started down this road, and a lot of people have cried foul about it. But food stamp spending has come down 15%. But the reality is, those who need it and truly qualify, benefits have not been taken away from anyone who meets the statutory requirements for those that we say that we want to help through this program. So you know, people talk in big numbers. ‘Oh, CBO 15%; it must be really hurting someone.’ But I think the reality on the ground is, it's not. We can do better with these programs. We need to do better with these programs. That's the attitude I'm going to bring into Congress. We want all these programs again, whether it's a farm program, crop insurance or Title One or conservation programs, we want them to achieve the goals that are set forth in the statute, and we want them to be run efficiently and well. So those dollars are actually going to those who truly need them.
BB: I appreciate your optimism, and it's encouraging to hear. I think on a political front, at least. But when – like the Republican Party in Texas has really pushed the unity, this has been a major point across the party. But when people are already kind of skeptical of government figures, and then you hear ‘unity, there's a wonder. And this gets away from party commitments or policies. I think it's about the individual, the person in that seat.
TS: Absolutely.
BB: If there's a person with a Republican title that is acting corruptly, are you going to be one that calls that out?
TS: Absolutely. We got to have high standards. I want the people to think critically, more critically, more thoughtfully. I want them to ask the hard questions. I want them to go beyond what is popping up in front of them on their social media, or even what mainstream media puts out. I want them to listen to long form interviews like this and think critically and hold their politicians to a higher account. That's what I expect for myself. You know, it's why I love engaging with the people. It's why we've spent time traveling around and having so many meetings. It's been a joy. You know, seeing the great work that's coming from this 19th District of Texas. But we need to hold our politicians to a higher standard.
And we need to get away from just personality politics, right? We're all flawed people in some way, and just carping on little personality things only goes so far. We need to think about the policies that are embraced. That's really what matters. Let's talk about the issues. Let's really have a good discussion about what is going to provide for the general welfare in the best way. What is going to allow us to pass this nation on to our kids in a more prosperous and better and more just way than it was passed to us. That's why I'm running, and I would ask all the voters to just think very critically. Not in terms of just being negative, being very thoughtful and digging deep on the issues and what are the issues that this or that person is going to stand for and how's that going to impact our nation's future.
BB: Not just responding to the latest social media fad?
TS: Yeah. Please no.
BB: Thank you, Tom Sell, candidates for District 19.
TS: It's great to be with you.
BB: Thank you for sitting down with me. This was great.
TS: Yeah. Happy to do it.