Service. Grit. Leadership.

ABOUT JOHN LIRA

Before I ever wore this uniform, my parents taught me what service meant: taking care of others and giving back to your community.

I grew up on San Antonio’s southeast side in a working-class, fourth-generation Mexican American family. I spent my childhood dancing at quinceañeras, cheering at Friday night football games, and working as a busboy on the Riverwalk.

After graduating from East Central High School, I joined the United States Marine Corps and served in Iraq. The Marines taught me discipline, leadership, and what it means to serve something bigger than myself. When I came home, I continued that service as an intelligence analyst, a policy expert, and later as a senior presidential advisor for AmeriCorps.

Throughout my career, I have focused on helping others find their own path to serve. At the Small Business Administration, I worked to help veterans start their own businesses. At AmeriCorps, I helped expand national service opportunities for young Americans ready to make a difference in their communities.

But my most important mission is the one I have here at home: my wife, Michelle, and my daughter, Rozlyn. I want my daughter to have the same opportunities I had, and a future that is safe, affordable, and full of promise.

Now I am running to represent Texas’s 35th Congressional District with that same Marine spirit, to defend democracy, lower costs for working families, revive small businesses, and build the infrastructure of the future.

Marines run toward challenges, not away from them. That is the same commitment I bring to this campaign: to make sure your voice is heard and that Texas families have a leader who will always show up and fight for them.