




Primary Election
Party selects its nominee.
Current roleAttorney (election law, campaign finance, ethics)
PartyRepublican
Political ideologyConservative Republican
GenderMale
LocationTexas
BackgroundAttorney (election law, campaign finance, ethics)
EducationTexas A&M University (BA, 1997)
Notable personal detailsJames Edwin “Trey” Trainor III is a Republican election-law attorney from Texas who served as a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission from June 2020 to October 2025, including serving as FEC Chair in 2020. He has worked in Texas state government, including as General Counsel to the Texas Secretary of State and as counsel to the Texas House Committee on Regulated Industries. He ran for U.S. House in Texas’s 21st Congressional District in the 2026 cycle.
Supports cutting taxes, reducing government spending, and deregulation to lower costs for families; favors making Trump-era tax cuts permanent, reopening federal lands for energy production, and repealing what he calls the Biden natural-gas tax.
The candidate supports enforcement-first border policies including finishing the border wall, codifying Remain in Mexico, ending catch-and-release, reinstating asylum agreements with Central American countries, defunding sanctuary cities, mandating nationwide E-Verify, and expanding resources and legal authority for ICE and Border Patrol. The campaign frames these actions as making Trump-era immigration policies permanent and imposing consequences on countries that do not accept deported citizens.
The candidate supports personhood for the unborn and seeks to ban abortion with no exceptions, including sponsoring the Life at Conception Act; he also calls to defund Planned Parenthood, end taxpayer funding of abortion, and stop mail-order abortion pills.
Opposes aggressive federal climate mandates and supports expanding domestic fossil-fuel production and energy independence. Favors repealing regulations and taxes seen as burdens on energy (including a stated repeal of the Biden natural-gas tax and opening federal lands for drilling), and opposes certain clean-energy incentives near Hill Country aquifers (proposing limits on Inflation Reduction Act credits and DOE guarantees for battery storage projects).
The candidate opposes most new firearm restrictions and supports expansive Second Amendment protections, including national constitutional carry reciprocity, repeal of certain ATF rules, removal of red‑flag laws, and removing some items from the NFA. The campaign platform also calls for defunding federal efforts to register or confiscate lawful firearms and ending taxes on guns and ammunition.
Trey Trainor is in the news because Kalshi said it suspended and fined him and two other political candidates after finding they bet on their own races. The company called that political insider trading and said it has added safeguards to stop candidates from trading on their own elections. He is also being mentioned in broader coverage of the 2026 Texas election cycle, but the betting issue is the main recent development.




Aggregation source: FiftyPlusOne
2026
LatestCycle 2026
Source: FEC
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We're monitoring and will update when new data impacts the race.