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In 2012, Houston-area restaurateur Brad Bailey traveled to Tampa for the Republican National Convention to convince delegates to support a legal pathway for foreign labor — and to soften the immigration rhetoric.
Now, Bailey is likely headed to the Texas House in a campaign supporting the border wall and President Donald Trump’s deportations.
Bailey, the GOP nominee to succeed outgoing state Rep. Steve Toth in House District 15, was the subject of a New York Times dispatch from the 2012 convention about his “personal campaign” to add the foreign labor component to the party platform. Along the way, he condemned the rhetoric around illegal immigration coming from hardliners like then-Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
“Jan Brewer and Joe Arpaio are hijacking the issue and damaging the Republican party brand,” Bailey said at the time. “We need to stop the hatred language and fix this problem.”
Fourteen years later, Bailey, now an elected official, has changed his tune. He says he now opposes all attempts at amnesty — or granting legal status to undocumented immigrants already in the country — and supports Trump’s “bold actions” on the border. However, he declined to say where he stands on the guest worker program he was calling for back in 2012.
“The Biden administration’s open-border policies and willingness to allow millions of illegal immigrants into our country have completely reshaped this issue, making me and many other conservatives craft a new solution for the problem that exists today,” Bailey, chair of The Woodlands Township Board of Directors, told The Texas Tribune.
Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office were the subject of a string of racial profiling lawsuits that came to a head in 2011 and 2012. At the same time, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling upholding the state’s “papers, please” provision Brewer signed into law in 2010. In that context, Bailey and others feared the Hispanic vote would doom Republicans in 2012.
Since then, the GOP has followed Trump’s lead in embracing much of the Arizona-style immigration policy and rhetoric once denounced by Bailey. Some of the biggest immigration laws passed by the Texas Legislature have their roots in Arizona’s SB 1070, including the 2017 sanctuary cities ban and last year’s Senate Bill 8, which requires sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration authorities and passed over Democratic opposition that invoked Arpaio’s controversies.
Amid all this, Bailey notes, Republicans have gone from Mitt Romney’s estimated 27% of the Hispanic vote in 2012 to the 48% that went for Trump in 2024. Republicans also cracked South Texas’ longtime status as a Democratic stronghold, turning the Rio Grande Valley red last year as Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz won a majority of the Hispanic vote in Texas.
“The facts show that President Trump’s comments on border security and illegal immigration are resonating with Hispanics and growing the Republican base, not hurting it,” Bailey said.
Bailey will face Democratic nominee Moniqua’ Scott in November. Trump carried HD-15 by 27 percentage points in 2024.
Bailey ran unopposed for the GOP nomination after Toth, one of the staunchest conservatives in the Texas House, launched his challenge against U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Humble. Toth was going to support the Texas Youth Summit’s Christian Collins as his successor, but Collins never jumped in.
Despite Bailey’s evolving position on immigration, if elected in November, he’ll likely be a change in pace and tone for the district — at least based on the people and groups he surrounded himself with during the campaign.
He was supported by Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC and the Associated Republicans of Texas, the latter of which backed then-Conroe ISD Board President Skeeter Hubert against Toth in 2024. On top of his $20,000 from TLR PAC, Bailey also received $5,000 from former U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, who successfully defended himself against a primary challenge from Toth in 2016, and $500 from retiring moderate GOP state Rep. Sam Harless in nearby HD-126.
That likely aligns the former restaurant owner with the business wing of the Texas House Republican Caucus. But although some in the business community have warned that deportation raids are hurting the South Texas economy and their standing among Hispanic voters, Republicans at-large are holding the Trump line.
“I still recognize that finding skilled and unskilled labor remains an issue for all business owners, but hiring illegal immigrants to fill these positions is not the solution,” Bailey said.
As the House prepares for a new freshman class after the previous session-defining class of hardliners, Bailey likely isn’t the only candidate whose positions on conservative policy have evolved, particularly around immigration.
“The world today is nothing like it was in 2012, and pretending otherwise ignores reality,” Bailey said.
Disclosure: New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.