What I learned interviewing congressional candidate Matthew Lucci
Here's what I learned from interviewing the 25-year-old medical-technology entrepreneur and 2024 House of Representatives candidate
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Matthew Lucci is a 25-year-old medical-technology entrepreneur running for congress in 2024. After interviewing him Saturday at Dwell in Old Town, I’m impressed by how intelligent he seems, interested in his campaign and eager to learn more about him.
Lucci is running as a Republican candidate to represent the 25th district of Texas, which includes Burleson along with parts of Johnson, Tarrant and other counties, in the House of Representatives. He’s pitted against incumbent Roger Williams, who’s been the district’s representative since 2013.
Since it’s hard for me to imagine being a successful entrepreneur at 25 years old and wanting to run for congress on top of that, the first thing I asked Lucci was why he wants to run.
The biggest reason he’s running is he wants something done for our community, he told me. He also pointed to Williams not doing much for the district recently. The last thing Williams passed into law was designating Burleson’s post office as the “Sergeant William Moody Post Office Building” in 2014, Lucci said.
“No disrespect to Sergeant Moody, but if we’re going to be sending someone to congress, we need them to be addressing bigger issues than renaming post offices,” Lucci said.
Those bigger issues Lucci wants to address include the not-so-great economy, bad inflation and the southern-border “crisis,” Lucci said.
“We need someone in the position who’s actually going to get something done,” Lucci said. “If no one else is going to step up and do it, you can’t be looking around [asking] who’s going to do this [and] who’s going to do that.”
I don’t know that Lucci’s sense of responsibility is very common for people his age. That could be why congress is older today than ever before with the median age of its members being 57.8 years old, which Lucci thinks is a problem.
Lucci wants to increase representation in congress of people who grew up after 9/11 when it’s been “actually difficult” to afford a college education and buy a home, he said. The stuff we’ve been doing since the 1950s doesn’t work today because the world is drastically different, Lucci said.
Burlesonians may recognize Lucci from his appearance at the Burleson City Council meeting September 5. He and former Burleson City Council candidate Jake Wernette spoke to the council about their disapproval of the council’s decision to increase the total property tax revenue in Burleson’s 2023-24 budget.
“The people of Burleson are not stupid,” Lucci said at the meeting. “You will not pull the wool over our eyes. We will remember if you lie to us, and we will feel it when you reach your greedy little fingers deeper into our pockets, so I urge no new taxes.”
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