It’s hard to dislike any political candidate whose campaign pitch includes the phrase, “After I lose this election.”

That phrase was uttered by Samuel Temple, the defiant outcast of the 18-candidate GOP field to succeed Lamar Smith in U.S. District 21.

Alone among the Republican hopefuls, this quantitative mathematician from the North East Side has dared to blast President Donald Trump (even floating the word “impeachment”), denounced what he views as Smith’s hostility to science, pointed out that border crossings by undocumented immigrants have generally been on the decline for the past decade and bragged about his desire to collaborate with Democrats.

To his fellow Republicans in the race, Temple is a hopeless irritant. But from where I’m sitting, Temple’s willingness to go off (as in way off) the party-line script is bringing some useful discomfort to the campaign; a little bit of creative friction which is healthy for the political process.

Temple, 34, got a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Texas Tech at a time when he was determined to single-handedly save the world (“obviously, I haven’t succeeded in that”). He later gravitated to statistics, the focus of his master’s from Texas A&M University.

He has the fast delivery of someone with too many points to make in too little time, and the demeanor of a proud geek who sees some of the humor in his own geekiness.

While quoting Albert Einstein on the benefits of compound interest, he stops himself and volunteers that he only learned the quote by playing the video game Civilization V.

Even though he lives in District 21 — which covers parts of San Antonio, Austin and the Hill Country — he doesn’t bother pretending to be alarmed if some of his opponents live outside the district.

“You run into an issue where we see in politics that a lot of people only care about the rules, the letter of the rules, when it suddenly can benefit them in some way,” he said.

To get a sense of how far afield Temple is from his primary rivals, consider the fact that a business-friendly, low-tax conservative like Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, who served in the administration of Ronald Reagan, is routinely lambasted by Texas Republicans as a left-wing traitor to his party. If GOP activists in this state regard Straus as a RINO (Republican in Name Only), how could they begin to process the rogue stylings of Temple?

Fortunately, for all concerned, he doesn’t much care.

“Lamar Smith was in my opinion a very lifelong, party-loyal Republican. I have a radically different philosophy,” Temple said. “I do not feel very much loyalty to any party. I feel very loyal to the people.”

Reagan, a former Democrat who went on to become an iconic figure in the GOP, often stated that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, it left him. At least to some degree, you could suggest a similar dynamic for Temple in his relationship to the Republican Party.

As recently as 2003, polls found that more than 75 percent of Republicans supported strict environmental regulations, according to Jane Mayer’s book, “Dark Money.” That was before wealthy conservatives intensified their funding of non-peer-reviewed studies that debunked the notion of man-made climate change.

Make no mistake, even 15 years ago Temple would have been a major GOP outlier. But in this political environment, in this primary, he sounds like nothing less than a mutant invader from another galaxy.

After listening to one opponent after another praise Trump this week as a strong leader who has created a strong economy and neutralized terrorism, Temple questioned which reality they were living in.

“I disagree with everyone in here, to the point where sometimes I’m wondering if I’m taking crazy pills,” Temple told the Express-News editorial board. “We have a man who campaigned that he’d never take a vacation, then set a record for taking the most vacation days. His expenses to the Secret Service have nearly bankrupted them in his first year alone.

“We just heard that his cabinet picks are wonderful, but we have more vacancies in the State Department than we’ve ever had. People are quitting in droves and we’re losing our ability to conduct international diplomacy. The head of the EPA is now trashing environmental regulations.”

That’s when Temple conceded that he will lose on March 6. He’s right. In fact, his defeat might be the only sure bet in that wild GOP race.

“At least I will have been on the right side of history,” he said. “And at least I will have been the first of the 18 to say it.”

Gilbert Garcia is a San Antonio Express-News columnist. Read more of his stories here. | ggarcia@express-news.net | @gilgamesh470