In the email, the Plano Congressman cited an extramarital affair as the reason he was exiting the race.
“Today I am announcing I will not continue my campaign to seek re-election to Congress,” Taylor stated in the email. “I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world.”
Republican primary election results posted early March 2 showed Taylor receiving 49% of the votes. He was likely headed to a runoff with former Collin County Judge Keith Self, who finished second with 26% of the votes, according to results.
“I have talked with Keith Self to let him know of my decision, and I wish him the best as he seeks to become the next congressman for this district,” Taylor stated in the email.
According to the Texas Secretary of State's Office and state election code, if Taylor files a request to withdraw from the runoff election by 5 p.m. March 16, Self will become the party’s nominee and the runoff election would be canceled.
Self would be the Republican nominee for the U.S. House race in November and is expected to face Democrat Sandeep Srivastava, who was the top vote-getter in the March 1 Democratic primary.
Srivastava, who lives in Plano, started his career in information technology and later shifted to become a real estate consultant, according to his campaign website.
According to Self's campaign website, he graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and served 25 years in the U.S. Army. After retiring from the Army, he was elected Collin County judge in 2006 and served three terms before retiring in 2018, his website states.
Taylor lives in Plano with his family. He earned a bachelor's degree in history from Harvard College and then received a commission in the U.S. Marine Corps, according to his official biography. He later joined the Marine Corps Reserves while earning his master's degree in business from Harvard Business School. Two years after 9/11, Taylor was deployed to Iraq. He later served in the Texas House of Representatives for nearly five years before being elected to the Texas Senate, where he represented District 8 from January 2015-January 2019. He was sworn in to U.S. Congress in January 2019.
