{"id":188219,"date":"2026-03-03T10:07:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/188219\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T10:07:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:07:06","slug":"chameleon-candidate-houston-republican-faces-scrutiny-newsradio-740-ktrh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/188219\/","title":{"rendered":"Chameleon Candidate: Houston Republican Faces Scrutiny | NewsRadio 740 KTRH"},"content":{"rendered":"

Election Day has nearly arrived in the Texas primary, and mystery still surrounds some candidates. The latest drawing scrutiny is Alex Kalai, running as a Republican in Houston’s 7th Congressional District, which is currently held by Democrat Lizzie Fletcher. Texas Scorecard took a closer look<\/a> at Kalai’s background and found it doesn’t match up with his party affiliation. “Federal election records show Alex Kalai’s father has given more than $100,000 to Democrats and Democrat-aligned committees, and Alex has never voted in a Republican primary,” says Sydnie Henry<\/a>, managing editor for Texas Scorecard. “So that really just kind of raises the question of how are we really choosing our people?”<\/p>\n

Records show Kalai’s father’s only Republican donation was $2,800 to Pierce Bush. As for Kalai, not only has he never voted in a Republican primary, but he loaned more than $100,000 to his campaign while working at his father’s company. This raises the question of whether Democrat money is influencing a Republican primary. Issues like that are one of the reasons the Texas GOP is trying to close its primaries, but remains tied up in a legal battle<\/a> with the state.<\/p>\n

Kalai’s campaign<\/a> has focused on mostly non-partisan issues like job creation and helping veterans, or what the campaign calls “common sense” ideas. However, more in tune with Republicans Kalai touts his support of school choice and protecting women’s spaces from biological men.<\/p>\n

“We talked to Alex Kalai and he said his father is a Democrat, that he’s a Republican, and that he’s more like his mother that way,” says Henry. “And that may very well be the case, but you’ve never voted in a Republican primary and now you’re running as a Republican…so it certainly raises some questions.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Election Day has nearly arrived in the Texas primary, and mystery still surrounds some candidates. The latest drawing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":188220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49975,2671,409,56,58,57,66,223,39580,8234,27,2279],"class_list":["post-188219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-candidate","tag-congress","tag-election","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-local","tag-news","tag-primary","tag-republican","tag-texas","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/188220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}