Ed Meier
You’ve spent a lot of time traveling around the world, starting by growing up in Africa as a missionary kid. What keeps bringing you back to Texas and Dallas specifically?
I was born in Dallas. Lived north of Inwood Village and lived up in North Dallas with my family. I’ve always had a tremendous amount of Dallas pride. If you ask any of my local friends or friends outside of Dallas, [they] will tell you. It’s just something about being Texan; I think Native Texans have a tremendous amount of pride in where we’re born and where we’re from.
I always had this connection back here. We’d come back from Nigeria, where my parents served as medical missionaries in a teaching hospital. We’d come back home to Dallas, and I just loved the community and love the people here. I always felt like it’s home.
After grad school, I returned home to Dallas and worked for Regina Montoya when she ran for Congress against Pete Sessions. Then went down to Austin and worked for a Dallas legislator, Helen Giddings at the state legislature. After UT Law School, I really wanted to come here and start my family in Dallas.
I love the city and love the community. The more and more you start to invest yourself in a place, the more and more you want to stay invested in that place. There have been times that I’ve gone to D.C. and served the country. I had the opportunity to go and work in the state department, President Obama’s administration, and most recently was working for Hillary Clinton as a senior adviser, helping her on the campaign and then her pre-election transition team.
In all those times in between, I’ll always come back home to Dallas. This is where we started our family. We’ve got a daughter and a son, and we’re instilling in them good Texas values. Love the Texas sports teams, too.
What was it that made you decide that this was the time to run against Pete Sessions? Was running for office something you always intended to do?
I’ve always been committed to public service. I’ve always been interested in politics. In 2004, my wife worked for Lupe Valdez when she became sheriff for Dallas County. I was a lawyer at the time. I’d spend my nights and weekends canvasing. I always had a passion for public service and the importance of politics.
I never thought I would necessarily run. It was after the election, after Nov. 8, when that really was apparent. My daughter looked at me and asked me, “Is Donald Trump going to do all the mean things he said he was going to do?” It was after the inauguration, we started to see. Yeah, he’s going to implement a lot of awful policies with those executive orders the first week.
It really was a moment I realized I wanted to be home. I wanted to be back in Dallas. I wanted to fight for what I believe in. Fight for working people. Fight for treating people with dignity and respect. That’s what I believe in. That’s how I was raised. I love Dallas. There was no better place to be and no better thing to do then to be in the fight and take on Pete Sessions, who was standing up for Donald Trump 100 percent of the time.
It sounds like you feel passionate about taking on Pete Sessions specifically.
With Sessions, there’s a couple of pieces. One is, for me personally, I have a lot of experience in working with foreign policy, working on federal policy issues, on domestic economic and foreign policy issues at the federal level. These are issues I’m passionate about. I’m knowledgeable about it. I’ve experienced it.
It was really the opportunity to come home. Take on Pete Sessions, knowing that we can beat him. He’s been in Congress for 20 years. Again, he is standing up and pushing Trump’s agenda through the House as chairman of the Rules Committee. Everything that ends up on the House floor comes through Pete Sessions and his committee. When Trumpcare landed on the House floor without a CBO [Congressional Budget Office] score, then we saw that 23 million people were going to be kicked off of health insurance.
This is somebody that needs to be removed from Congress. I’m passionate about the issues. Passionate about folks here in Dallas. It makes sense that this was the place where I could have the greatest impact. Really take my public service to the next level.
This is a companion to their Q&A with Colin Allred, who are the two main contenders for the nomination in CD32. Like Allred, Meier is an Obama administration alum who like many other people has felt compelled to take action following the November electoral disaster. I kind of have a hard time imagining there being a similar storm of former Trump staffers running for office after his tenure ends, if only because they have been so lackadaisical about hiring anyone, but I hope we get to find out beginning in 2021.