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Nicholas Plumb

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Nicholas Plumb

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Republican Party

Candidate, U.S. House Texas District 2

Elections and appointments
Next election

March 3, 2026

Education

High school

Ingram Tom Moore High School

Military

Service / branch

U.S. Army

Years of service

2003 - 2006

Personal
Birthplace
Pensacola, Fla.
Religion
Non-denominational Christian
Profession
Executive
Contact

Campaign website

Campaign Twitter

Nicholas Plumb (Republican Party) (also known as Lee) is running for election to the U.S. House to represent Texas' 2nd Congressional District. He declared candidacy for the Republican primary scheduled on March 3, 2026.[source]

Plumb completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Nicholas Plumb was born in Pensacola, Florida. He served in the U.S. Army from 2003 to 2006. He earned a high school diploma from Ingram Tom Moore High School. His career experience includes working as an executive.[1]

Elections

2026

See also: Texas' 2nd Congressional District election, 2026

General election

The primary will occur on March 3, 2026. The general election will occur on November 3, 2026. General election candidates will be added here following the primary.

Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. House Texas District 2

Peter Filler and Shaun Finnie are running in the Democratic primary for U.S. House Texas District 2 on March 3, 2026.

Candidate
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Shaun Finnie

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Republican primary election

Republican primary for U.S. House Texas District 2

The following candidates are running in the Republican primary for U.S. House Texas District 2 on March 3, 2026.

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Daniel Crenshaw
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Jon Bonck
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Martin Etwop
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T.C. Manning
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Nicholas Plumb Candidate Connection
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Steve Toth
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Ava Zolari

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Endorsements

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Campaign themes

2026

Ballotpedia survey responses

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Candidate Connection

Nicholas Plumb completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Plumb's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

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I was adopted at four by parents born in the Great Depression. We lived in a trailer park on the edge of small-town Texas, where every dollar was stretched and every value was earned. My mom patched my jeans from the inside, my dad preached on Sundays, and I learned that discipline mattered more than image.

At eighteen, I enlisted in the Army. Later, I served in the Navy JAG Corps, deploying to Iraq and working defense at Guantanamo Bay. I’ve stood in rooms most politicians can’t pronounce, let alone endure. After the military, I rebuilt from scratch, rising through Walmart and Amazon, where I ran billion-dollar operations, launched sites, exposed fraud, and stood alone when it counted. I’ve led from the front in boardrooms and breakrooms, not just campaign rallies.

I wasn’t groomed for this seat. I built the tools to take it. And I’m not running because I need a title. I’m running because I’ve lived the consequences of bad leadership. Our government operates like a broken ops floor: bloated, misaligned, and serving insiders instead of outcomes. I know how to fix broken systems. That’s exactly what I intend to do.
  • I’ve run billion-dollar operations, launched fulfillment centers, and cleaned up the messes weak leaders left behind. I didn’t inherit power. I earned trust by fixing broken systems. I’ve led teams in war zones and warehouses, in courtrooms and crisis. Now I’m watching Congress operate like a bloated ops floor: detached, inefficient, and serving itself. I’m not running to be liked. I’m running to deliver. I bring real-world execution to a place that runs on excuses. If we want results, we need leaders who know how to get their hands dirty, call the bluff, and make the floor work again.
  • I’m not a polished politician. I’m a product of grit, service, and hard truth. I was raised by Depression-era parents, served in Iraq and Guantanamo, and worked my way from retail trainee to corporate fixer. I’ve seen how policy failure hits real families, and I’ve stood alone when integrity demanded it. When I say I’m running for working Americans, I mean the ones who don’t have lobbyists or golden parachutes - the ones who get up early, stay late, and still get priced out of the future. I’ve lived their story. I’ve fought their fights. I’ll take that truth to Washington.
  • I’ve seen firsthand how quiet displacement is reshaping our economy, how foreign labor programs, corporate loopholes, and captured leadership hollow out opportunity. I’ve fought that machine from the inside. We need a workforce policy built for American families - not spreadsheets. I’ll defend labor, protect veterans, and cut through the false choice between business and people. You shouldn’t need a master’s degree or visa to earn a life with dignity. If we want a future worth inheriting, we need leaders who still believe in the American worker and aren’t afraid to fight for them.
I care deeply about the dignity of work, the people who still believe in earning their way, and the systems that are supposed to support them. I’ve seen too many Americans pushed aside by policies written for someone else; whether it’s the worker priced out by foreign labor schemes or the veteran lost in bureaucracy. I believe in accountability, not as a slogan, but as something you live by: on the job, at home, and in office. I’m drawn to the nuts and bolts of policy that actually fix things: labor, infrastructure, government operations. Not theory. Execution.
I look up to my father. He wasn’t rich, powerful, or famous. He was a Depression-era preacher who wore boots to the pulpit and treated integrity like currency. He didn’t chase approval, and he didn’t tolerate lies. When I was a kid, a teacher accused me of something I didn’t do. My dad showed up in his Sunday suit, pressed that teacher against the wall with a calm voice and steel in his spine, and said, “My son doesn’t lie to me.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. He was a man who meant things.

He raised me to work with my hands, speak with clarity, and stand my ground even when it’s unpopular. That has cost me: in jobs, in relationships, in comfort. But it’s also why I’ve led billion-dollar operations, why I’ve exposed fraud inside massive systems, and why I’m still standing after it all.

If I bring his example to public office, I won’t need a rebranding campaign or spin team. I’ll need a desk, a voting card, and a conscience. And I’ll be dangerous to anyone who’s made a career out of hiding behind bureaucracy.
I’d point them to two things: one personal, one historical.

First, my own memoir - because unlike most politicians, I didn’t get here through back channels or branding. I was raised by parents born in the Great Depression, joined the Army at 18, served in the Navy JAG Corps, and worked my way up through Walmart and Amazon by fixing what others couldn’t. My political philosophy comes from a lifetime of earned perspective. I’ve seen what works, what breaks, and who gets hurt when bad policy meets no accountability. My story is the blueprint for my platform.

Second, I’d recommend “The Forgotten Man” by Amity Shlaes. It captures how real leadership isn’t about promises—it’s about hard tradeoffs, real-world understanding, and the unseen costs that hit working people first. It doesn’t idolize government, but it doesn’t dismiss it either. That balance matters to me. We need leaders who understand economics from the ground up, not just from textbooks or elite circles.

If you want to understand where I stand, don’t look for labels - look for lived experience. I’m not here to sound smart. I’m here to be useful.
Integrity is non-negotiable. An elected official should never forget that the seat they hold doesn’t belong to them - it belongs to the people. Too many forget that. They treat office like a career, not a responsibility. They serve donors, parties, and personal agendas instead of the citizens they represent. I believe public office demands the same qualities required to lead in the real world: courage under pressure, calm in chaos, and the ability to say “no” when everyone else is saying “yes” for the wrong reasons.

Discipline is just as critical. I don’t mean ideology, I mean consistency of character. Show up. Learn the system. Do the job. Listen more than you speak. Deliver outcomes, not soundbites. I’ve managed launch days, flood responses, labor negotiations, and investigations where failure had real consequences. I don’t respect leaders who pass blame. I respect the ones who stay late, take ownership, and fix the floor.

Finally, humility matters. You can’t lead what you refuse to understand. I’ve worked shoulder-to-shoulder with inner-city warehouse workers and career civil servants. I’ve stood in rooms with generals, CEOs, and federal judges. What I’ve learned is that the best leaders don’t pretend to know everything, they know who to listen to and how to stay grounded. That’s what we’re missing in Congress: not just competence, but character. Not just noise, but principle. That’s what I bring.
I’ve spent my life being the one who shows up when others don’t - whether that meant leading troops, launching a billion-dollar logistics site, or fighting fraud inside a system that didn’t want it found. I don’t flinch when things get hard. I work the problem until it’s fixed.

I bring operational discipline, moral clarity, and an ability to earn trust across every level of an organization. I’ve led people from every background: union workers, federal attorneys, hourly teams, special forces, and C-suite executives. I know how to get performance without politics, and results without excuses.

I also bring something Washington sorely lacks: a memory. I remember what it feels like to stretch a paycheck, to lose your job, to take pride in dirty hands. I haven’t forgotten who I am. That’s what keeps me grounded - and dangerous to the status quo.
The job of a Representative is simple to define and hard to execute: defend your district, steward your country, and stay loyal to neither party nor profit -only to the people who sent you. Too many lose sight of that. They get addicted to status, clicks, or committee assignments. I’ve managed billion-dollar operations where every decision affected real people’s lives. That clarity never left me. Your first duty is showing up and doing the work. Not just casting votes, but reading the bills. Not just holding hearings, but asking questions that matter. And when things break, you don’t tweet - you fix it.

The second responsibility is oversight. Congress is supposed to hold the executive branch accountable. That’s not partisan, it’s constitutional. But accountability is useless without knowledge. I’ve read 70,000 pages of classified discovery in a terrorism case. I’ve audited logistics pipelines to recover hundreds of millions in waste. You can’t fix what you don’t understand. Our country’s in trouble partly because too many in office don’t even know how systems work anymore.

Last - and this is personal: you owe people honesty. I was raised by Depression-era parents who believed your word was your bond. I don’t care how powerful the lobby is, how complicated the bill looks, or how many people are pressuring you to “just go along.” If it’s wrong, you vote no. If it’s right, you stand alone if you have to. That’s the job. And if you can’t stomach that, you shouldn’t run.
I want to leave a legacy of realignment, of showing that the American system still works when people with backbone and clarity step in to lead. I want to prove that you don’t have to be groomed, polished, or owned to make a difference. You just have to be ready for the fight.

I’d like my daughters to grow up in a country where working people are respected, where veterans aren’t tokenized, and where leadership means doing what’s right when it costs you - not just when it polls well. If I can help shift even a few parts of the system toward that, it’ll be worth it.

More than anything, I want people to look back and say, “That guy didn’t play the game, he broke it and built something better.”
My first official job was working at a public golf course - mowing, hauling, clearing brush, whatever needed doing. I’d be there before sunrise, sometimes clocking out just in time to head to my second job at a local record store. I was still in high school, balancing work, classes, and trying to hold it all together. That year, I left varsity football to join the work program. I wasn’t preparing for college - I was preparing for life.

I kept both jobs through my senior year, helping cover my car note, clothes, and basic expenses. We weren’t broke, but we were stretched. My dad was a Depression-era minister. We didn’t believe in handouts. My mom patched jeans from the inside so they’d last through winter. If you wanted something, you earned it.

That experience taught me more than any class. I learned what it meant to show up tired, to carry responsibility before you were ready, and to take pride in doing honest work - especially when no one was watching. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those early shifts would shape how I lead today. When I look at Congress, I don’t see a work ethic problem: I see a lived experience problem. Too few have ever had to do what the rest of America does daily just to survive. That has to change.
Being underestimated has been both a curse and a gift. I wasn’t born into status. I didn’t go to Ivy League schools. I was raised in a trailer park by Depression-era parents, started in special ed, and worked my way into gifted programs. Even now, people sometimes look at the beard, the tattoos, the lack of polish and assume I don’t belong in certain rooms.

They’re wrong. And I’ve spent my whole life turning those assumptions into fuel. But it does wear on you. When you’re constantly having to prove you belong, it can harden you. You start building walls. You stop expecting fairness.

It’s a struggle I still carry - but it’s also why I fight. I know what it means to be left out. That’s why I won’t leave others behind when I’m elected.
The House is closest to the people, by design. It turns over every two years, which means real accountability if representatives stop listening. It was built to reflect the heartbeat of the nation in real time. The Senate can posture. The courts can interpret. But the House has to produce - constantly.

That constant pressure is what makes it powerful when used right and dangerous when misused. It has the power of the purse, the voice of districts, and the responsibility to make government deliver results that touch real lives. When it forgets that role, when it acts like a club, not a job site -we all lose.

The House is also the one body where someone like me can still walk in: not groomed, not preselected, but forged by experience. It’s the place for people who didn’t come from privilege but came ready to serve. That’s what keeps it grounded - and worth fighting for.
It can help but it’s far from necessary. In fact, sometimes it’s the problem. Too much political experience without real-world execution creates lawmakers who know how to navigate systems, but not how to fix them. We end up with policy built for appearance, not outcome.

What matters more is whether a person has had to deliver results - under pressure, in imperfect conditions, with real lives at stake. That’s leadership. I’ve led operations, managed crises, trained teams, and exposed waste. I’ve had to make payroll, meet metrics, and stay until the floor worked again. That’s the kind of experience Congress is sorely lacking.

Government is not the only training ground for service. In fact, sometimes it blinds people to how most Americans actually live. We need more doers and fewer brand-builders. So no, I don’t think prior political experience is required. I think courage, clarity, and work ethic are.
Our greatest challenge isn’t just economic, military, or technological -it’s operational. We have the resources, the people, and the infrastructure. What we lack is executional leadership. We’re governed by systems built for the 1950s trying to handle the complexity of 2030 and the gap is widening.

From labor markets distorted by foreign work programs, to tech monopolies outpacing regulators, to massive government systems that can’t even process claims or secure data; we’re falling behind not from lack of power, but from a refusal to update how we govern. It’s death by misalignment.

The second great challenge is trust. People don’t believe in the system anymore, and they’re not wrong. Congress serves its own incentives. The courts are weaponized. Agencies are bloated. We must rebuild the legitimacy of governance through real transparency, clean execution, and a workforce-first national strategy.

If we don’t modernize our systems and restore faith in who operates them, we’ll have the tools of a superpower with the dysfunction of a failed state.
I support term limits. If you’re doing the job well, you’ll train the next generation to build on your work; not cling to the seat like it’s property. Our system was never meant to be a permanent political class. Founders served, then returned to private life. We’ve lost that cycle of service and return.

Too many politicians today view their seat as a brand or career path. They build war chests, make backroom deals, and insulate themselves from consequences. That disconnect leads to stagnation, corruption, and policymaking that serves donors, not constituents.

Term limits would force a sense of urgency by forcing leaders to focus on impact over image. They’d encourage mentorship, accountability, and fresh perspective. They wouldn’t fix everything, but they’d be a healthy disruption to a system that’s grown too comfortable serving itself.
Compromise is a tool- not a virtue. Used well, it can break deadlocks and move the ball forward. Used poorly, it’s how we end up with bloated bills, watered-down outcomes, and no one accountable for the result. I’m not against working across the aisle, I’ve done it in the military, in logistics, and in corporate environments where success meant aligning very different people fast. But compromise should serve the mission, not preserve dysfunction.

We’ve confused unity with uniformity. The real goal isn’t to agree for agreement’s sake - it’s to solve problems. If compromise gets us there without selling out the people we serve, I’m for it. But I’ll never trade principle for photo ops. If it’s a bad bill, I vote no, no matter who’s smiling behind it.
I’m interested in serving on committees where execution and operational reform matter most:

Oversight and Accountability – to investigate waste, fraud, and systemic failure across agencies, especially related to workforce displacement, procurement, and misaligned incentives.

Education and the Workforce – to modernize labor policy, restore integrity to vocational and veteran pipelines, and address quiet displacement through H-1B and other foreign labor loopholes.

Veterans’ Affairs – to ensure those who served get what they earned without navigating broken systems or empty ceremonies.

Homeland Security – with a focus on real infrastructure, not just theater - especially as it intersects with cyber, supply chain, and domestic resilience.

I bring systems thinking, field-tested leadership, and the discipline to drive real results - not just talk.
Financial transparency isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s the bare minimum. I’ve worked in environments where every dollar had to be accounted for, and leaders were held to hard metrics. If a logistics site or compensation system failed to balance out, heads rolled. Meanwhile, Congress can misplace billions and blame “the process.” That’s unacceptable.

Government needs real-time reporting, external audits, and hardline penalties for misuse of funds - at all levels. Every taxpayer should be able to trace where their money went and what it produced. If a government program can’t show measurable results, it shouldn’t get another blank check.

Accountability also means eliminating insider perks and backdoor deals. No more bills packed with carve-outs or midnight amendments. Publish legislation in plain language. Hold hearings that lead to action, not theater. And apply the same scrutiny to Congress that it applies to the people. You can’t restore trust without proof of discipline.

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Campaign finance summary

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Nicholas Plumb campaign contribution history
YearOfficeStatusContributionsExpenditures
2026* U.S. House Texas District 2Candidacy Declared primary$0 N/A**
Grand total$0 N/A**
Sources: OpenSecrets,  Federal Elections Commission ***This product uses the openFEC API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
* Data from this year may not be complete
** Data on expenditures is not available for this election cycle
Note: Totals above reflect only available data.

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U.S. House Texas District 2
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    Footnotes

    1. ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on July 10, 2025


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