La Grange Man Running for U.S House Seat

Jared Lovelace, a 30-yearold U.S. Army veteran and entrepreneur, is running to unseat Rep. Michael McCaul, who represents Fayette County and the rest of Texas House District 10 in the U.S. Congress. Lovelace, a Republican, will challenge McCaul in the primary election next year.

Lovelace faces an uphill battle against McCaul, a powerful congressman in his 10th term who serves as Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He’s also one of the wealthiest members of Congress.

Lovelace sat down for an interview with the Record last week.

“There’s a necessity for there to be a challenger in these races,” Lovelace said. “Are we really being active participants in our democracy if we only chose the same person who runs in every single election, because they’re the only ones in the ballot? That’s not a very active democracy. Win or lose, I’m running because I believe in the democratic process. By voicing the issues I’m voicing, if I do lose, that will hopefully instigate Congressman McCaul to take a harder look at what some of his stances are on things, and also wake up the district a little bit to some of these issues I’m bringing up, where I differentiate myself from him.”

Lovelace said the two biggest issues for him are national spending and foreign policy. McCaul has been one of the leading proponents of U.S. intervention overseas, military spending and foreign aid.

“We would love to be the world police, force everyone to adopt democracy and the American way of life and have liberal values, but we simply cannot afford to continue doing what we’ve been doing for the last several decades,” he said. “I think we need to pull out of some of these conflicts and accept the fact that these countries aren’t going to be like us. They’re not going to govern like we want them to. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have diplomatic relations. That doesn’t mean we can’t build some kind of bridges with these different countries. Instead of fighting wars against us because they hate us and want to counter us in every possible scenario, maybe we have an economic tie, or we simply aren’t fighting a war with them constantly.

“The more we try to force the Middle East to be like us, the more China is going to have influence,” he added. “They’re going to come in and be a hero for the oppressed populations who feel like they’ve been minimized by the United States economically and militarily over the last several decades.”

Lovelace said foreign policy plays a big part in the national debt and the associated financial problems facing the Nation.

“I’m very passionate about the national debt,” he said. “It’s at $33.6 trillion right now. When McCaul took office back in 2005, the national debt was at $7 trillion. Congressman McCaul and I align on a lot of conservative issues, but the two major areas where I think I differentiate myself are, one, fiscal responsibility - we have to stop spending so much money, we’ve got to stop operating at a deficit and start looking at the long term. If we continue to let the debt blow up, we might not be a free country anymore. We might be on paper, but when it really boils down, other countries are going to have way more leverage in what we decide to do with national policy, because they will be our debt owners.

“And we have got to shift our foreign policy,” Lovelace said. “Billions of dollars go overseas for different projects: military aid for different countries like Ukraine and Israel, we’re funding and fighting proxy wars all across the Middle East against Iran in Yemen, Syria and now Hamas, which is backed by Iran. McCaul is super big into foreign policy. He’s the chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee. This all ties into our fiscal responsibility.”

Concerning the current crisis in Israel, Lovelace described his views as “neutral.”

“Regardless of what happened in the past, we need to start looking at the now and the future,” he said. “You can’t get rid of Palestinians and you can’t get rid of Israelis. It’s their issue to figure out. I think the United States needs to be neutral and not favor Israel over Palestine or Palestine over Israel. I think we need to stop sending foreign military aid in general to all these countries, including Ukraine and Israel. Right now, Israel is living in a bubble that has been created by the United States in the funding of their military and the aid we give them.”

Lovelace said he lived in Jordan for a year and got to know both Israelis and Palestinians, and he developed a deep appreciation for both cultures.

“The best thing that Israel can do right now is learn how to build bridges with the region so they can be an independent and self-sustaining country that isn’t dependent on foreign aid,” he said.

Lovelace, a proud member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints, also lived abroad in Germany as part of a church mission. He graduated from Brigham Young University before earning a commission in the U.S. Army. He served four years in the Army, mostly in Alaska. He and a group of investors launched a start-up travel company in 2022. He and his wife Courtney and their three young children moved to Fayette County earlier this year at the conclusion of his military service. They live in the Holman area on property that he said has been in his mother’s family for seven generations.

Read more about Lovelace and his campaign at www. jared2024.com.