Van Taylor

Nicholas Van Campen Taylor (born August 1, 1972), known as Van Taylor, is an American businessman, military veteran, and Republican politician from Plano, Texas, who served as a Representative from Texas in the United States Congress from 2019 to 2023. He was the U.S. representative for Texas’s 3rd congressional district, a seat encompassing much of Collin County, a suburban county north of Dallas, and was first elected in 2018. A seventh-generation Texan, Taylor is a descendant of Humble Oil co-founder Robert Lee Blaffer. He was born in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in Midland, where he attended the Hillander School and San Jacinto Junior High School before leaving the state for secondary education. He graduated from St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, and then attended Harvard College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in history. Entering with numerous Advanced Placement credits, he completed his undergraduate studies in three years. He later returned to Harvard to obtain a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 2001.

Following his formal education, Taylor pursued a career in business and finance. He worked for the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company and for the real estate firm Trammell Crow Company before joining Churchill Capital Company, a real estate investment banking and principal investment firm. From January 2002 to December 2018, he was employed at Churchill Capital as a real estate investment banker, building a parallel career in private-sector finance while beginning to seek and hold public office. His business background informed his later legislative focus on fiscal and economic issues at both the state and federal levels.

In addition to his business career, Taylor served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve and is a veteran of the Iraq War. Assigned to the Marine Corps’ Company C, 4th Reconnaissance Battalion, he fought with 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company during Operation Iraqi Freedom. As a captain, Taylor led missions in advance of Task Force Tarawa that detected and defeated several Fedayeen ambushes. He also participated in a casualty evacuation of 31 wounded Marines, transporting them safely to medical treatment. For his service, Taylor received the Navy Commendation Medal with “V” device for valor, the Combat Action Ribbon, and the Presidential Unit Citation. He ultimately left the Marine Corps Reserve with the rank of major.

Taylor’s first bid for federal office came in the mid-2000s. In 2005 and 2006, he ran as the Republican nominee for Texas’s 17th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. He won the Republican primary with 54.03 percent of the vote but was defeated in the general election by incumbent Democrat Chet Edwards, receiving 40.31 percent. He subsequently turned his attention to state-level office. On December 2, 2009, Taylor announced his candidacy for the District 66 seat in the Texas House of Representatives, based in southwestern Collin County. The incumbent, Brian McCall, announced on November 30, 2009, that he would not seek reelection and endorsed Plano city council member Mabrie Jackson as his preferred successor. In the March 2, 2010 Republican primary, the candidates were Wayne Richards, Jackson, and Taylor. Jackson led with 41 percent of the vote but fell short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff. Richards promptly endorsed Taylor, who then defeated Jackson in the April runoff election. When McCall left the House early, Taylor was sworn into office on April 20, 2010, by Collin County Judge Keith Self.

Taylor served in the Texas House of Representatives until 2015 and was regarded as a major ally of the Tea Party movement. In 2013, he sought to advance his legislative career in the upper chamber of the state legislature. On August 2, 2013, he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the Texas Senate, District 8, a seat then held by Ken Paxton, who was stepping down to run for Texas attorney general. Taylor was endorsed by the North Texas Tea Party in his 2014 campaign, reflecting his alignment with conservative and limited-government principles. He won election and represented the 8th district in the Texas Senate from 2015 to 2019. During his tenure in the Senate, he sponsored and supported legislation on education, public safety, and ethics. In 2017, he introduced a measure to establish a statewide registry of individuals barred from employment at educational facilities due to misconduct with students. The proposal was designed to prevent any school employee—not just administrators and faculty—from working at a school if found to have engaged in an improper relationship with a student.

In 2017, Taylor turned again to federal office. In August of that year, he announced his candidacy for the United States House of Representatives in Texas’s 3rd congressional district after incumbent Republican Sam Johnson, a 13-term member, declared his retirement. Taylor received backing from national conservative and veterans’ organizations, including endorsements from the Club for Growth and With Honor, a cross-partisan group supporting next-generation military veterans. He easily won the Republican primary on March 6, 2018, and prevailed in the November 6, 2018 general election with 54.3 percent of the vote. His victory extended the Republican Party’s long-standing control of the district, which had been held continuously by Republicans since a 1968 special election. Taylor became only the fourth person to represent the district since that time. Nonetheless, his initial win marked the closest race in the district in more than half a century and the first time since the regular 1968 election that a Democratic candidate surpassed 40 percent of the vote.

As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Taylor served two terms, participating in the 116th and 117th Congresses from January 3, 2019, to January 3, 2023. Representing a rapidly growing and diversifying suburban constituency in Collin County, he contributed to the legislative process and participated in the democratic governance of the nation while advocating for the interests of his district. He was unopposed in the 2020 Republican primary and faced Democrat Lulu Seikaly in the general election. Observers considered him potentially vulnerable due to demographic changes in the district and its high proportion of college-educated voters, a group that had been trending away from the Republican Party. Taylor was reelected by more than 12 percentage points even as President Donald Trump carried the district by only a one-point margin, underscoring both the competitiveness of the area and his personal electoral strength. In Congress, Taylor’s voting record reflected a generally conservative orientation with occasional departures from party leadership. He was among 129 Republicans who opposed President Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, and he was one of two House Republicans to co-sponsor the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act, which ultimately established Juneteenth as a federal holiday.

Taylor’s congressional service occurred during a significant period in American history, encompassing the latter years of the Trump administration, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the early portion of the Biden administration. On March 2, 2022, amid his campaign for a third term, Taylor publicly admitted to an extramarital affair and announced that he would suspend his reelection campaign and retire at the end of the 117th Congress. He completed his term, which concluded on January 3, 2023, and then left office, bringing to a close more than a decade of continuous elected service at the state and federal levels.