Texas’s 19th Congressional seat will be open for the 2026 midterm election. West Texas Republican U.S. Representative Jodey Arrington has confirmed he will not be seeking re-election in 2026.
Arrington made the announcement with Fox News on Tuesday. He also released a video announcement on social media.
“There's a time and season for everything. And this season is coming to a close. That's why today I am announcing I will not be seeking re-election,” Arrington says as music plays and pictures of him flash on the screen.
The Plainview-native will wrap up a decade in the House, including a recent stint as the House Budget Committee chairman, which gave him a leading role in President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” tax plan that passed earlier this year.
McMurry Political Scientist Paul Fabrizio says several members of Congress are heading for the exit. So far 37 incumbents, 15 Democrats and 22 Republicans, have said that they will not run for re-election next year.
Fabrizio says while Arrington is in a position of power now, things don’t look good for the GOP in 2026, “Most political analysts believe that the Democratic Party is going to win the majority of seats in the House of Representatives in the midterm election next year. So he would go from this position of power to a position of backbench.”
Fabrizio says another complication will be the loss of influence for Arrington's party's leader as President Trump becomes a lame duck, “Starting with the election last Tuesday, and it will continue over the next year, more and more politicians are going to start to act as if President Trump is a lame duck. If Jody Arrington has been riding on President Trump's coattails helping President Trump, he's going to find that the person he's been working for and with is no longer the effective leader and even the center of the political universe.”
Arrington’s announcement comes just days after his office reported an endorsement from President Donald Trump, and after Democrat Kyle Rable announced his filing to be on the ballot for the District 19 seat next year.
Professor Fabrizio says this announcement will likely spark a rush of candidates who will file to be added to the ballot before the December 8th deadline.
“It is very, very hard to beat an incumbent. What the research shows is that the time to run for Congress is either when it's an open seat like we'll have in District 19, or when that person in the congressional seat is up for the first time. Once they've won and won re-election once, it's pretty solid that they're going to be there until they decide to leave.
If anybody's out there interested in running for Congress, now is the time you enter this race as quick as you can.”
And Fabrizio says it’ll be hard for any candidate outside of Lubbock to gain traction, “When you look at the district, Lubbock, Abilene, Weatherford, that big district, more than 800,000 people in it. To win that race, you really just need to win Lubbock. There's so many more votes in the Lubbock area than there is in the rest of the district. You could win by just winning Lubbock and getting very, very few votes from any place else in the district.”
Arrington did not specify what his next step would be after next year’s midterms, but that he would seek a “new leadership challenge.”
“I'll be looking for the next challenge. I'll be spending quality time with my family and I will be passing the torch to the next West Texan because I believe as our founding fathers did In citizen leadership, temporary service, not a career, and it's time to do what George Washington did and to ride off into that big beautiful West Texas sunset.”
In a written statement Arrington said he plans to focus on, “advancing the America First agenda, growing the majority, and delivering for the people of West Texas” for the remainder of his days in Congress.