Musk-aligned lawyer to succeed McCaul in House

Chris Gober (R) is projected to defeat Caitlin Rourk (D) in Texas’s 10th District, according to Decision Desk HQ.

Gober will succeed Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas). McCaul, the 64-year-old former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is departing Congress after more than two decades on Capitol Hill.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Gober worked as a counsel in the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice (DOJ) during former President George W. Bush’s tenure.

After leaving the DOJ, Gober worked at the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He then entered the private legal sector, briefly returning to politics as general counsel for Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign.

Gober then aligned himself with tech mogul Elon Musk, as the chief lawyer of the trillionaire’s America PAC. The committee spent hundreds of millions in support of President Trump’s 2024 campaign.

On the campaign trail, Gober vowed to lower the cost of living, secure the border and “protect” rural farms and ranches in his district. The safely red 10th District, which was left mostly unchanged after state lawmakers redistricted last year , includes suburbs of Houston and Austin.

Rourk is a member of the Army Reserve who worked in the communications division at Dell Technologies.