Meet The Candidates: Steven Shook For Texas Congressional District 26

Meet the guy trying to unseat a man who thinks his in-laws shouldn't be citizens.

Note: We only have 100 days left until the election, or 15 more weekends. From now until the election, I’ll be doing TWO Meet the Candidate episodes each weekend. A few days ago, I asked readers, “What did they want to see more of?” The number one answer was, “Democratic Candidate Spotlights.”

This series is called Meet the Candidates. Over the next three months, I’ll spotlight a handful of Democratic races each month, mainly in the Legislature and in Congress. These aren’t endorsements. They’re introductions, a way to understand who’s running, the districts they hope to represent, and what’s at stake for people across Texas.

Who is Steven Shook?

Steven Shook has spent his career keeping people alive. Since 2009, he’s worked in critical care, treating the sickest and most injured patients in the DFW metroplex. Fort Worth-born and raised, from a family of healthcare workers and small business owners (the kind of Texas biography Republicans like to cosplay), he earned degrees from Tarrant County College, Texas Tech University (summa cum laude), and UT Arlington.

He’s running for Congress in Texas’s 26th district, a seat currently held down by a dumpster fire. Shook is running on how he’s spent his whole adult life in rooms where bad policy shows up as a body on a gurney, and he’s tired of watching Congress write healthcare law like it’s an abstraction.

He calls it restoring the nation’s democracy to health. The resume behind the line is real, and in a district that’s been treated like a lost cause for a decade, real might be exactly what’s needed.

The district.

While the map above looks like this district is spread between three counties, it’s important to note that 74% of the district’s population lives in Denton County. Cooke and Wise Counties are pretty much red and rural. Denton is doing all the work for this district.

The district is 55.6% Anglo, 44.4% non-Anglo. Broken down: 20.3% Hispanic, 11.6% Black, and 10.2% Asian. Suburban Denton County cities like Flower Mound, Lewisville, and Carrollton have been diversifying for a decade while the district lines got redrawn to paper over it. Among the voting-age population, the Anglo share climbs to 58.9%, because that’s how Republicans do it. Older, whiter, more likely to already be registered.

Registration numbers tell the other half of the story. In 2024, this district had 572,023 registered voters and 388,007 of them turned out, a 67.8% turnout rate. In 2022, a midterm, turnout dropped to 52.6% of 521,227 registered voters. That’s a real midterm dropoff.

Cook Political Report has TX26 at R+11. But we’re not expecting a normal election year. Some analysts are predicting Democrats could overperform by double digits in November.

I’m not going to tell you CD26 is the marquee flip of 2026. But “not the marquee flip” and “not winnable” are different sentences, and Republicans redrew this seat because they know the difference too.

The gap between 2024’s 67.8% and 2022’s 52.6% is the whole ballgame. Democrats don’t need to invent new voters in CD26. They need the presidential-year Democrats who already live there to show up in a midterm-adjacent wave year the way they showed up in 2024. That’s an organizing issue, not a persuasion issue.

Steven Shook has to run like a Denton County candidate, not a generic Democrat. A healthcare worker with fifteen years in critical care and a Fort Worth biography is exactly the profile that plays in suburban swing turf, if the campaign runs on kitchen-table stuff, healthcare costs, property taxes, and grid reliability. Suburban Denton voters who might cross over would do so because their power bill doubled and their kid’s school district is fighting over vouchers.

The Asian and Hispanic growth in the district has to be organized. 10.2% Asian population in a suburban North Texas district is a coalition opportunity that doesn’t build itself.

A wave happens in a genuinely bad Republican midterm environment, combines with a Democratic base that turns out like it’s a presidential year instead of sitting home. If national conditions hold, TX26 is the domino that tells you the wave was real.

The incumbent.

Brandon Gill. First elected in 2024 after Michael Burgess, an insurrection supporter, retired after 22 years. Gill’s a Dartmouth guy turned investment banker turned right-wing media guy, and his father-in-law is Dinesh D’Souza, the guy who made “2000 Mules,” the documentary that told a bunch of gullible people the 2020 election was stolen using lies and conspiracy theories.

Gill is a literal walking Fox News fever dream. He introduced a bill to declare that anyone who enters the country without authorization, or is born here to a parent who did, is legally an “invader,” and to strip their kids of birthright citizenship. The bill amends the Immigration and Nationality Act to exclude the children of what it calls “invaders” from birthright citizenship.

He also introduced a 25-year moratorium on immigration from Somalia, and spent a January hearing accusing Tim Walz of enabling “widespread Somali fraud”. Then there’s the bill requiring naturalized citizens to prove English proficiency before they can become Americans.

He picked a public fight with Ilhan Omar, circulating a petition arguing the country would be better off if she were deported to Somalia. When Mehdi Hasan pushed back on him, Gill told him to “go back to the UK” and claimed Muslims are arriving “en masse” to “fundamentally transform the landscape of American public life,” later telling Newsmax that “Islam is a political ideology that is incompatible with the United States.” And when Minnesota Rep. Shri Thanedar called him out for referring to Indian Americans as “7-Eleven workers,” Gill’s response was to post a moody selfie captioned about how calling him racist “doesn’t work anymore.” Again, his wife is Indian American.

So, this is a guy who has spent his first eighteen months in office trying to redefine who gets to be American, and who counts as one, while targeting the people with the same status as his wife and in-laws.

In Steven Shook’s own words.

Below are some questions I asked Shook, based on previous reader polls, along with his answers.

Q: Do you support a Green New Deal or similar large-scale federal climate action plan?

Yes. I support a large-scale federal climate action plan that rapidly expands clean energy, modernizes the electric grid, lowers energy costs, and creates good-paying union jobs. Texas should lead this transition, not be left behind. That means investing in wind, solar, geothermal, battery storage, transmission, and energy efficiency while ensuring that workers and communities dependent on traditional energy industries have a real place in the new economy. Climate action must be ambitious, practical, and centered on affordability, reliability, and economic opportunity.

Q: Do you support universal, publicly funded healthcare (i.e., Medicare for All or a similar single-payer system)?

Yes. I support universal, publicly funded healthcare that guarantees comprehensive coverage to every American, including hospital care, primary and specialty care, mental healthcare, and prescription drugs. As a critical care nurse practitioner, I have seen patients become sicker, disabled, or die because they could not afford treatment or medication. Healthcare should be based on medical need, not employment status, income, or an insurance company’s profit margin. I support a Medicare for All-style system that preserves patients’ freedom to choose their doctors while eliminating premiums, surprise bills, and excessive out-of-pocket costs.

Q: Would you support major tax reform, including raising taxes on billionaires and large corporations?

Yes. I support major tax reform that requires billionaires and large corporations to pay a fairer share. Working families should not carry a heavier burden while the wealthiest Americans use loopholes to avoid taxes and profitable corporations receive special treatment. I would support closing tax loopholes, strengthening enforcement against wealthy tax evasion, establishing a minimum tax on large corporate profits, and using the revenue to lower costs, protect Social Security and Medicare, and invest in healthcare, education, infrastructure, and good-paying jobs.

Q: Do you support ending U.S. military aid to countries with ongoing human rights abuses, including Israel and Egypt?

Absolutely yes. The United States should not provide military aid, weapons, or diplomatic cover to any government committing serious or ongoing human rights abuses, including Israel, Egypt, or any other ally. Our standards cannot change depending on which country is responsible.

Military assistance must be conditioned on compliance with U.S. and international law, protection of civilians, and meaningful accountability. When a government uses American weapons to enable collective punishment, unlawful killings, forced displacement, torture, or the denial of humanitarian aid, that assistance should be suspended. American tax dollars should never fund human rights abuses.

Q: Should the U.S. demilitarize the southern border and repeal harmful immigration policies?

Yes. I support demilitarizing the southern border and repealing policies that criminalize asylum seekers, separate families, deny due process, and place military forces in civilian communities. Border security should be handled by properly trained federal agencies, not the military, and enforcement must respect constitutional rights and human dignity.

We can secure the border without abandoning our values by investing in modern screening technology, adequately staffing ports of entry and immigration courts, protecting the right to seek asylum, and creating lawful pathways to citizenship. A humane, orderly immigration system will make our communities safer and our border more secure than mass detention, indiscriminate deportation, or military-style enforcement.

Bonus Question: Who are your political role models, living or dead?

My political role models include Barbara Jordan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Lewis, and Paul Wellstone. Barbara Jordan demonstrated that moral clarity, constitutional integrity, and a powerful voice could change both Texas and the nation. Roosevelt showed that government can act boldly when working people face an economic crisis. John Lewis embodied courage, dignity, and the principle that democracy requires persistent participation. Paul Wellstone proved that a progressive could stand unapologetically with workers, patients, and marginalized communities while remaining grounded and deeply connected to constituents.

I also admire the many nurses, teachers, union organizers, civil rights advocates, and local volunteers who may never hold national office but devote their lives to serving others. They remind me that public service is not about personal power, it is about using whatever power you have to improve people’s lives.

TX26 has to choose.

Your choice in TX26 is a guy who’s spent fifteen years keeping strangers alive on some of the worst nights of their lives, running on Medicare for All because he’s watched what happens when people can’t afford insulin. Or the other guy, a Dartmouth trust-fund racist who married into the “2000 Mules” family and has spent his first term in Congress trying to figure out new ways to strip citizenship from people who share his own in-law’s immigration status.

It’s close on math, because Texas Republicans drew the maps to protect fascism. R+11 sounds like a wall until you remember November may come the wave Texas Democrats have been praying on for years.

The other side of this one is Denton County’s presidential-year Democrats, the ones who showed up at 67.8% in 2024 and stayed home at 52.6% in 2022. Attendance problems get solved by somebody knocking on a door and asking a person to show up.

I’m not going to tell you Steven Shook is a lock. I’m not going to tell you a wave is guaranteed, either, no matter how many times a pundit types “double-digit overperformance” into a headline. What I will tell you is that Republicans don’t gerrymander seats they aren’t worried about.

If you live in TX26, or you know somebody who does, this is the year attendance matters more than persuasion. Show up. Bring your neighbor. Let Denton County finish the death sentence Texas Republicans have spent a decade trying to hang on our necks.

You can find out more about Steven Shook on his website, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

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