Embattled Rep. Van Taylor (R-TX) on Tuesday failed to win outright his five-way Republican Texas primary after an alleged affair with an “ISIS bride” was reported earlier in the week.
Taylor, first elected to Congress in 2018 by 10 percentage points, received less than 50 percent of Tuesday’s vote (49.9 percent) and thus will enter a runoff with Keith Self, who placed second.
Appointed to the United States Military Academy at West Point, Self served in the army for 25 years. He later ran for and was elected County Judge in Collin County.
Taylor was the overwhelming favorite to win outright. But after a newly alleged affair with ‘ISIS Bride’ Tania Joya was revealed Monday by Breitbart News, Taylor came up shy approximately 800 votes to avoid a runoff.
Taylor’s alleged affair with ‘ISIS Bride’ Tania Joya, which lasted from November 2020 to June 2021 — entailed a payment from Taylor to Joya for $5,000, Joya told Breitbart News:
The payment, she says, was made in cash given to her by the congressman. Joya showed Breitbart News banking records that demonstrate she made a $5,000 deposit into her account when she says the affair occurred, as shown in the photo below[.]
The $5,000 payment, she said, was given in cash. Joya showed Breitbart News banking records that demonstrate she made a $5,000 deposit into her account when she says the affair occurred.
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In a text message that Breitbart reviewed between Joya and Taylor, the congressman requested “a long slow rim job” and “deep throat” sexual acts “while you stroke my cock and I cum on your tonsils.”
Taylor has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
Taylor is married and is the father of three children. He was first elected to Congress in 2019 as a Republican. Taylor did vote in favor of enacting the January 6 Committee, perhaps due to an increasingly blue district back home.
District three has a population of about 913,000 residents, which voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by 14 points. In 2020, Trump defeated President Joe Biden in the district by one point. Yet Taylor won the general election in 2020 with 55 percent of the vote against the Democrat (42 percent).
In recent years, district three has morphed blue reportedly due to the dissipating white population. The Cook Political Report reported on the district demographics:
Nowhere has this surge in the population of people of color been more pronounced than Texas’ 3rd [Congressional District] held by GOP Rep. Van Taylor. Back in 2010, this district, which takes in the fast growing exurbs north of Dallas (such as Plano and McKinney), was 62 percent white. Today, Census data shows that the white population has dropped almost 13 points to 49.8 percent. Leading the surge in population growth in these exurbs were Asian residents who now make up almost a quarter of the population in the district — up from 15 percent just ten years ago.
The runoff election day will be Tuesday, May 24.