Texas Rep. Van Taylor drops re-election bid after admitting to extramarital affair

A Republican Congressional Representative for Texas, Van Taylor, has ended his re-election campaign after it was revealed he had an extramarital affair with a woman who was the widow of a former recruiter for the Islamic State group.

Days before Taylor’s primary election, two right-wing websites published an interview with Tania Joya, who claims she had an affair with Taylor, who is married, from October 2020 to June 2021.

In the interview, Joya explained she had met Taylor while she worked with a program that helps reform ex-Jihadists, which is a cause personal to Joya as she herself is a former Jihadist and the widow of an American-born man who was a recruiter for the Islamic State in North Texas.

Taylor admitted to the affair and apologized to constituents in a Wednesday statement. “About a year ago, I made a horrible mistake that has caused deep hurt and pain among those I love most in this world,” he wrote. “I had an affair, it was wrong, and it was the greatest failure of my life.” He also announced in the statement he would be dropping out of the runoff election.

Joya contacted one of Taylor’s opponents, Susan Harp, to tell her of the affair five days before the primary. Joya claims she did not intend for her allegations to result in the publicizing of her affair with Taylor.

“All I wanted was for Suzanne Harp to just say, ‘Hey, I know your little scandal with Tania Joya. Would you like to resign before we embarrass you?’ But it didn’t happen like that,” Joya told the Dallas Morning News.