Matt Hinton
Matt Hinton (Republican Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Texas' 22nd Congressional District. He lost in the Republican primary on March 3, 2020.
Hinton completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. Click here to read the survey answers.
Elections
2020
See also: Texas' 22nd Congressional District election, 2020
Texas' 22nd Congressional District election, 2020 (March 3 Republican primary)
Texas' 22nd Congressional District election, 2020 (March 3 Democratic primary)
General election
General election for U.S. House Texas District 22
Troy Nehls defeated Sri Preston Kulkarni and Joseph LeBlanc in the general election for U.S. House Texas District 22 on November 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Troy Nehls (R) | 51.5 | 210,259 |
 | Sri Preston Kulkarni (D) | 44.6 | 181,998 | |
 | Joseph LeBlanc (L)  | 3.9 | 15,791 | |
| Total votes: 408,048 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Republican primary runoff election
Republican primary runoff for U.S. House Texas District 22
Troy Nehls defeated Kathaleen Wall in the Republican primary runoff for U.S. House Texas District 22 on July 14, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Troy Nehls | 69.9 | 36,132 |
 | Kathaleen Wall | 30.1 | 15,547 | |
| Total votes: 51,679 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Texas District 22
Sri Preston Kulkarni defeated Derrick Reed, Nyanza Moore, and Carmine Petricco III in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Texas District 22 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Sri Preston Kulkarni | 53.1 | 34,664 |
 | Derrick Reed | 24.7 | 16,126 | |
 | Nyanza Moore | 14.5 | 9,449 | |
| Carmine Petricco III | 7.8 | 5,074 | ||
| Total votes: 65,313 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Chris Fernandez (D)
Republican primary election
Republican primary for U.S. House Texas District 22
The following candidates ran in the Republican primary for U.S. House Texas District 22 on March 3, 2020.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Troy Nehls | 40.5 | 29,583 |
| ✔ | | Kathaleen Wall | 19.4 | 14,201 |
 | Pierce Bush | 15.4 | 11,281 | |
 | Greg Hill | 14.1 | 10,315 | |
 | Dan Mathews | 3.0 | 2,165 | |
| Bangar Reddy | 1.6 | 1,144 | ||
 | Joe Walz | 1.4 | 1,039 | |
| Shandon Phan | 1.1 | 773 | ||
 | Diana Miller | 1.1 | 771 | |
 | Jon Camarillo | 1.0 | 718 | |
 | Douglas Haggard | 0.5 | 398 | |
 | Howard Lynn Steele Jr. | 0.4 | 283 | |
 | Matt Hinton | 0.4 | 274 | |
| Brandon Penko | 0.1 | 96 | ||
 | Aaron Hermes | 0.1 | 92 | |
| Total votes: 73,133 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Schell Hammel (R)
- Keli Chevalier (R)
- Clint Morgan (R)
- Felicia Harris Hoss (R)
Libertarian convention
Libertarian convention for U.S. House Texas District 22
Joseph LeBlanc advanced from the Libertarian convention for U.S. House Texas District 22 on March 21, 2020.
Candidate | ||
| ✔ | | Joseph LeBlanc (L) |
| ||||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Campaign themes
2020
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Matt Hinton completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Hinton's responses.
What would be your top three priorities, if elected?
1. Fix the health care/health insurance system. My plan will lower health insurance premiums like they were before the ACA was passed, offer coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, and cost 98% LESS than a single payer system. 2. Make the tax cuts permanent, while eliminating the loopholes that allow companies like Amazon and Netflix to make billions in profit and not pay one penny in federal income tax. 3. Fund the border wall and pass immigration reform that will limit low skilled immigration. I am open to giving dreamers permanent residency (not citizenship) if it helps us get a better deal.
What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?
Lowering Health Insurance Premiums Lowering Taxes Fixing the Immigration System Nominating a Speaker of The House who will actually put bills on the floor that the citizens voted for. (unlike Paul Ryan) Strengthen the STOCK Act so that we can criminally prosecute members of congress who conduct stock trading based on their insider knowledge of what legislation they are about to pass. Passing Fair Trade Deals that will help secure American jobs and increase domestic wages. Reforming or eliminating the CFPB. My experience has shown me that it is hurting the people it was created to help. Reduce The Federal Deficit Privatize the TSA - Make the Airports and Airplane Companies fund the TSA if they feel that is best way to keep their passengers and property safe. Stop the FDA overreach on Stem Cell Clinics.
Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Washington, Rand Paul, Donald J Trump, Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Dave Rubin, Joe Rogan, and Tucker Carlson.
Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?
A quote from Benjamin Franklin best describes my political philosophy. “He who sacrifices freedom for security is neither free, nor secure” I will not give up my freedom for the promise of security. I will not give up my weapons for the promise of security. I will not give up my due process for the promise of security. I will not give up my privacy for the promise of security. I will not give up my dignity for the promise of security.
What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?
To be detailed and honest with the people of your district about what policies you will try to implement when you get elected. It is also important to be brave enough to stand up to your party when they are breaking a promise they made to their voters.
What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?
I am not beholden to any special interest. I am not a politician. I am an outsider who is passionate about creating good policies.
What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?
To promote and pass good legislation that does not infringe on any of the rights afforded to US Citizens by the Bill of Rights.
What was your very first job? How long did you have it?
Burger King - Cashier - 1 year
What is your favorite book? Why?
Saving The Constitution - Richard Proctor
What was the last song that got stuck in your head?
Death From Above 1979 - Romantic Rights
If you are not a current representative, are there certain committees that you would want to be a part of?
I would want to join the Freedom Caucus.
What are your thoughts on term limits?
I am for Term Limits.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign website
Hinton’s campaign website stated the following:
| “ |
Healthcare – I will never vote for any healthcare legislation that politicians are immune from. The politicians who passed the ACA exempted themselves from the legislation. This is unacceptable, and any legislation that is passed for the public should also be applied to the politicians who passed it. My fix for the healthcare system is to let all people with pre-existing conditions keep their current health insurance plan. We will lock their premiums in place so that they cannot rise more than the current level of inflation. Then I would let health insurance companies offer free market health insurance like they did before the ACA was passed which would lower premiums significantly. For those few people who still choose not to get health insurance and later get diagnosed with a chronic disease, they will be able to get on medicare by paying a slightly higher income tax rate to help offset the burden on the tax payers. Taxes – Make the tax cuts permanent. Cut out loopholes in corporate taxes that allow companies like Amazon and Netflix to post record profits and not pay a single penny in taxes. In 2018, Netflix reported its largest profit ever which was $845 million. Not only did they not pay a penny in income tax, but they got a $22 million rebate from our treasury. Amazon reported an $11.2 billion profit, paid no income taxes, and received a tax rebate of $129 million. This is absurd and it needs to stop. Speaker of The House – It is too often that Republicans will run on the policies their citizens want, only to break their promises when they get elected. One way the establishment Republicans have been getting away with this is by electing a Speaker of the House who will not keep the promises made to the American people. Paul Ryan was the most recent Speaker for the Republican Party. He sold out the American citizens that voted Republican so bad that he decided to not seek re-election. The speaker holds the power of whether or not a bill will get introduced to Congress for a vote. This is why it is so important to elect a speaker that actually wants to give the American people what they voted for. STOCK Act – We need to strengthen the STOCK Act so that we can criminally prosecute congress members who conduct stock trading based on their insider knowledge of what legislation they are about to pass. Term Limits – Pass legislation that forces House members to resign after 3 terms and Senate members to resign after 2 terms. Anyone forced to resign from a seat in congress because of term limits will have to wait 6 years before they can run for that seat again. Section 702 FISA Amendments Act – This is what gives the National Security Agency (NSA) the ability to conduct warrantless surveillance of American emails and other personal communications. This means that a portion of the taxes you are paying is funding the ability for your government to spy on you. Yes, you are paying your government to spy on you. I will never support the extension on Section 702. Budget – We need to reduce the spending of our Federal Government. The first place to start is by halting all financial aid to foreign countries. We should not consider giving money to other countries until we have a budget surplus. The second proposal I have is to fix the Use-It-or-Lose-It budget rules. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, Federal agencies spend an average of 4.9 times more in the last week of their fiscal year than in a typical week. This obviously means that these agencies are being given more money than they need, and in an effort for them to prevent their funds from decreasing they rush to spend it on things not needed at the end of the fiscal year. I want to average the weekly spending of these agencies for the first three quarters and use that quarterly average to set their budget for the 4th quarter of the following year. This will significantly cut down on the amount of money wasted by federal agencies. It is also absurd that we have news outlets and television stations receiving money from our Federal government. If these news outlets can’t stay afloat from advertisers, ratings, and donations from viewers that believe in their cause, then they should not be in business. There is also a huge conflict of interest if a news organization relies on money they receive from the government to stay in business. Immigration – We need to build a wall to help CBP gain control of who is entering this country. It is imperative for the safety and prosperity of our citizens that we know everyone who is attempting to get into our country. We need to limit the amount of low skilled labor that is being brought into our workforce as this holds wages from rising for citizens of this country have low skilled jobs. The best way to raise the wages of the poorest people in our country is not by raising the minimum wage, it is by limiting the labor supply in those job areas. The best way to limit the labor supply is to make it extremely difficult for people to enter our country illegally. I am open to giving dreamers a path to permanent residency (not citizenship) if it helps us get a better immigration deal through congress. Trade – We need to support the president in negotiating better trade deals for the American worker. The labor force participation rate was 59.6% in 1969. This rate consistently increased up until the 1990s. What is interesting about this is that regardless of the income tax rates, regulations, corporate tax rates, the labor force participation continued to grow during those decades. Then in the 1990s there was a free trade movement that resulted in NAFTA being ratified. NAFTA started being implemented on January 1st, 1994 and shortly thereafter China was granted access to the World Trade Organization on December 11th, 2001. The labor force Participation rate peaked at 67.3% in April of 2000. Those two trade blunders have decimated our workforce. The labor force participation rate would only decrease from that point forward. The lowest point it reached was 62.4% in September of 2015. We need to stop the bleeding of our economy and workforce by getting better trade deals or withdrawing from deals that have not worked out. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) - The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created on July 21, 2011. It was created to try to crack down on discriminatory lending practices against protected classes. Sadly, it has created a lending environment that hurts those protected classes that it is trying to serve. At the beginning of 2011, there were 6,519 banks in the US. In 2017, the FDIC reported that there were only 4,918 banks operating in the US. The amount of regulations the CFPB puts on banks makes it difficult for smaller banks to stay profitable while complying with all the regulations. The CFPB has gotten out of control. It has 1,648 workers, 198 of which get paid more than the chair of the Federal Reserve, 54 of theses workers are being paid more than $223,000 per year. This institution needs to either be seriously reformed or completely shut down. Stem Cells – The FDA over reached when it started shutting down stem cell clinics. The FDA should have no authority over what we chose to do with our own body’s stem cells. I am OK with the FDA requiring that these clinics put a sign up that says “We haven’t certified that this process is safe, proceed at your own risk.” Any further regulation than this should not be tolerated. Due Process – We need to get back to respecting the Bill of Rights. Civil Asset Forfeiture is a blatant violation of our right to due process. The government should not be allowed to steal assets from citizens until they have been proven guilty of a crime beyond reasonable doubt. Due Process has also been violated by at least 17 states with the passing of red flag gun laws. In these states, the government can confiscate a person’s guns before the person has committed any crimes. The government does not give this person the opportunity to confront his accuser and defend himself in front of a judge or jury before taking his guns. Instead, the government takes his guns without hearing his side of the story and then tells him to prove his innocence to a judge to try to get his guns back. This is not how our justice system is supposed to work. Everyone should be assumed innocent until proven guilty, and everyone should be afforded the opportunity to confront their accusers and defend themselves in a trial by a jury of their peers. 2nd Amendment – Shall not be infringed. For the wealthy, poor, all races, and genders. This amendment allows people to protect themselves and their families and to not solely have to rely on the government for protection. Whether you are trying to protect your family from a tyrannical government, gangs, Islamic terrorism, White Supremacist Terrorism, and/or any other threat of violence to your family. If you do not trust that your government will pass the laws you think are required to protect your family, or that there is no law that can be passed to fully protect your family from violence, you have the second amendment which will afford you the opportunity to defend your family from violence. I will never support any red flag laws that allow for the confiscation of guns when no crimes have been committed by the accused. For people that say: "Don’t worry about the slippery slope and that you just need to judge the law being proposed on its single merits", look at what happened with the Income tax. It started out with a 1% tax on the top 3 percent of earners in the US in 1913 after the 16th amendment was ratified. Now look at where it is. Don’t try to convince me that there are no slippery slopes in government policy. The line in the sand has been drawn on the 2nd amendment and we cannot let it be crossed again. 1st Amendment – We need to push for legislation that will declare any social media platforms that have banned and/or demonetized users who have not done anything illegal publishers instead of platforms. Which would open them up to law suits for the content published on their websites. All of these social media platforms love to claim how they are a digital public square. The Marsha versus Alabama ruling by the supreme court has already set the precedent on if a private company who owns the public square can restrict speech. It decided that even if the public square is privately owned, you cannot infringe on anyone's first amendment rights. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) – The TSA invades the privacy of US Citizens every day. They touch children and the elderly and everyone else all over their bodies. The promise to the citizens of America is that if you let these people grope you and your family, then you will be safer when you fly on airplanes; yet the TSA doesn’t even work. A report that leaked from the TSA revealed that a team of investigators from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) managed to sneak weapons and fake bombs past airport screeners 95% of the time. We are essentially allowing our bodies to be violated by these people and it still does not make us safer. Let’s get our freedom and dignity back and stop the federal government from funding the TSA. If some airline companies believe the TSA is the best way to protect their customers and their property, then let them fund the TSA. If different airlines believe they have a better way to protect their customers and their property, then let’s let them do that. An additional benefit of ending the federal funding of the TSA is that whenever we have the next government shutdown, we don’t have to worry about our airports shutting down too. Life – Abortion is a horrifying concept to me. I did not think a whole lot about the issue until my wife was pregnant with our son. At just six weeks, I could hear my son’s heartbeat. Knowing that my wife and I were legally allowed to stop that heart beat made me sick to my stomach. Almost everyone I know, no matter what their political leanings, have the opinion that they would not personally get an abortion. The only difference I see is whether or not they support other womens’ right to have one. I will fight for the life of these children. I will introduce legislation that will require any doctor forcibly removing a child from a woman’s womb to treat the baby once it is removed as an individual and try to save the baby’s life just as they would a person admitted to the hospital in critical condition from a gun shot wound. The debate on abortion has come much further than her body, her choice. It has now come to the point of even when the baby is removed from her body and capable of living, she still has the choice in some states to kill the baby. This is absurd and should be considered murder. Once that baby is out of the woman’s body, she should have no say in whether or not it survives. The baby at that point is an individual who has the right to life, and the doctor should be obligated to do everything in his/her power to keep that baby alive. Audit The Federal Reserve – In an effort of transparency, it is time to audit the Federal Reserve and disclose the entire report to the public as there should not be any classified information about the Federal Reserve. Legalize Marijuana (Federally) – The federal war on drugs is unconstitutional. This is proven by the existence of the 10th amendment and the 18th amendment. The 10th amendment states that all powers not explicitly granted to Federal government by the constitution are reserved for the states. This is why the 18th amendment had to be passed to prohibit the sale of Alcohol on a Federal level. If our country wants to continue our war on drugs, we should amend our constitution or leave it up to the states to decide which drugs are legal or not. I would prefer to leave it up to the states. Liberty – Before voting for any legislation, I will seriously take into account if the legislation will reduce the amount of liberty enjoyed by the citizens of this country. The primary role of government is to preserve the freedoms and liberties of all people. Competition – Competition always benefits the consumer. We need to promote legislation that promotes more competition. Whether it is for health insurance, schools, or banks. We need to always promote policy that promotes more competition. [1] |
” |
| —Matt Hinton[2] | ||
See also
2020 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Matt Hinton 2020 campaign website, "Issues," accessed January 22, 2020
