Dr. Donald May – running for Congress in the 2026 Republican Primary for the seat Jodey Arrington will soon leave – said he does not consider himself to be a politician.
“I’m just a common citizen who wants to go up there and serve, spend four or five terms up there and come back to West Texas,” May said.
Ongoing coverage: Learn what’s coming as Lubbock Lights kicks off Texas Primary ‘26 coverage
Congressional race (District 19) candidate profiles
- Roofer ‘Fat Matt’ Smith running for Congress with deep conviction – viewing everything through lens of Scripture
– - Sell hopes experience working with Combest in Congress (emphasizing work on Farm Bill) will sell him to voters
– - Barbee funding his own campaign – standing apart from other candidates on taxes, healthcare too
– - Enriquez says run for Congress proof American dream he wants to fight to protect is ‘alive in West Texas’
– - Doctor, farmer, veteran Donald May hopes voters send him, a self-described ‘common citizen,’ to serve in Congress
– - Corley says no one should be able to ‘buy a congressman’ as he pushes for lobbying reform, also inflation, in bid for office
– - Zink running on January 6 record – not away from it – ‘not willing to back down’ from what he called unfair process
May calls himself a sixth generation farmer with a family-owned farm in Illinois.
“My dad was a tenant farmer – quit work when he was 13 … worked for a dollar a day as a hired man. Mom quit school, worked for 42 cents a day as a clock factory worker,” May said.
“I’m not going to take my salary. That’s going to be turned into scholarships and other things for local conservative students so we can have next future generations of great leaders,” May said.
As a kid, he was involved with 4-H In college, he studied nuclear physics and immunochemistry and went to medical school.
May says he was an early adopter and developer of vitrectomy – a form of eye surgery – sometimes even developing his own tools and instruments for the surgeries.
“I decided that one of the things that I really enjoyed was putting together severely traumatized eyes,” May said.
“I ended up in San Antonio, Wilford Hall,” May said – where he treated “traumatized military personnel and military civilians.”
May worked for several medical institutions over the years – coming to the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in 1989 – working there as a tenured professor and chair of ophthalmology until 1994.
“After 9-11, I started writing for a new publication called TownHall.com … wrote a 10 or 12-part weekly column called ‘One Nation Under God,’” May said.
“Basically, it explained, outlined, why our country is a Christian nation,” May said.
May described himself as a member of the Military Officers Association of America, the American Legion, the National Rifle Association and Farm Bureau.
Asked about top priorities
When asked about top priorities, May started by saying, “We’ve got prices that people want to get down. We’ve got wages that people want to get up.”
President Donald Trump is doing a good job with wages and prices, he said.
“I think people should be more optimistic than they are, but they’re not,” May said.
“We’ve had trade problems in the past. Other countries would charge us tariffs for the grain we sold,” May said.
He cited high tariffs, as one example, that Canada historically charged against American farmers.
“And Trump, with his tariffs and trade negotiations, is getting China to buy soybeans, and the prices are going up,” May said.
“Beans today are just about $11 a bushel, which is not superb, but it’s better. Corn, about $4.04 a bushel today, which is better than $3.30 a bushel. It’s not superb, but it’s coming up,” May said.
Trump is working the cost of “inputs” for farmers – things like fertilizer and chemicals, he said.
May thinks Trump has done a really good job of border security. If anything, he wants to see more of it.
“The border needs to be closed. We’ve still got still got over 1,000 miles of Texas border that doesn’t have a fence on it. … We need to know who is coming into this country,” May said.
The nation’s energy policy should recognize we depend on oil and gas, May said, adding he was not complimentary of the state’s renewable energy performance during the winter storm of February 2021.
“Windmills stopped working and froze up, the solar panels got covered with snow and ice, and we did not have a backup,” May said.
He thinks with the growth of A.I. and datacenters, there might be more need for nuclear power.
“We need to make sure we stay ahead of the Chinese. … If the Chinese were to get ahead of us in artificial intelligence, our Golden Dome [missile defense system] is going to be based on artificial intelligence,” May said.
“Term limits are important because it’s a great temptation to go and to become famous and to become powerful,” May said.
