The Texas Republican Party gathered in San Antonio for its annual convention this weekend, but Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales, who represents part of San Antonio and lives there, was ambivalent about attending.
That’s not entirely surprising: One of the featured speakers was Rep. Matt Gaetz, who endorsed Gonzales’ opponent, Brandon Herrera, in Tuesday’s Republican primary runoff in District 23. The Texas Republican Party censured Gonzales last year for his vote in favor of gun control legislation backed by the Biden White House, introduced in the wake of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers. Uvalde is also in District 23.
Gonzales had four Republican opponents in the March primary, which stretches 800 miles from San Antonio along the U.S.-Mexico border to El Paso. Gonzales failed to obtain 50% of the vote, forcing him to go to a second round with Herrera, the next candidate with the highest number of votes. The winner of the second round will face Democrat Santos Limón in November.
Herrera only received 24% of the vote in the March primary, but the runoff has been a headache for Gonzales. With a runoff date so long after the primary and no high-ticket races on the ballot, turnout is likely to be low.
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“If this were a high-turnout election, (Gonzales) would be a lock,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University. In an election with low turnout, “anything can happen,” he said, because the most fervent voters are those who go to the polls. Jones said a candidate needs to “mobilize a handful of his staunchest supporters” to win.
That could be a challenge for Gonzales, who has positioned himself as the pragmatic option, compared to Herrera, a 28-year-old YouTube celebrity known as “The AK Guy” who has continually hit out at Gonzales for his vote on gun legislation. .
Brandon Herrera, Tony González
“What we’re seeing in the 23rd Congressional District is the story we see in all of Texas politics,” said Joshua Blank of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, Austin, “which is that an incumbent, usually a Republican legislator, takes a position that does not coincide 100% with that of the most conservative voters in his district.
This “creates the conditions for a primary challenger to try to unseat that member,” Blank said. He suggested that Uvalde’s vote had this same effect: “You can’t separate what’s going on there and the fact that an extreme gun rights YouTube personality is now in a runoff against him.”
Since the March primary, Gonzales has received endorsements from Republican establishment figures, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick. In addition to Gaetz, Herrera has received endorsements from other members of the House Freedom Caucus.
In response to those endorsements, Gonzales said on Keynote USA in March that he works “with some real scumbags” and told Keynote USA in a recent interview that these lawmakers and his opponent are not “serious people.”
“There is a bigger battle outside of this race, and that is what does the future of the Republican Party look like?” Gonzalez said. “Will it be conservative governors like me, or will it be these bomb-throwing gestures that want to come here and burn the place down?”
Herrera’s far-right campaign and his alliance with Gaetz and the Freedom Caucus would appear to align him with former President Donald Trump, but Trump has not endorsed him in the race and has said little about it. However, on his YouTube radio show, Herrera made jokes about Trump’s son, Barron Trump, and said Trump couldn’t win the general election.
Gonzales has tried to position himself as a “MAGA” candidate and has endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign.
Given his backing from establishment Republicans, Gonzales has significantly outpaced Herrera in the race. Gonzales has raised $3.4 million through May 8, compared to $367,000 for Herrera during the same period.
Gonzales has attacked Herrera for moving to the district only in recent years, while Herrera has attacked Gonzales’ 2022 vote for the bipartisan Safe Communities Act, which included a provision for the “groom” loophole for gun purchases, the It is the first time that Congress has passed any type of gun control legislation since the 1990s. Gonzales was one of 14 Republicans who voted in favor of the bill.
In a recent interview with Keynote USA, Gonzales defended his vote, saying he “worked very hard” to ensure the legislation “protected the Constitution, but also solved some problems.”
“What it did do was increase juvenile background checks, and I think that’s a positive thing,” Gonzales said.
Gonzales told “Face the Nation” on Sunday that he “knew in the moment” when he voted for the 2022 bill that it would hurt him politically, but insisted he is not “afraid of that vote.”
Although the district includes much of the U.S.-Mexico border area, immigration has not been as contentious an issue as gun control has been. Jon Taylor, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, noted that Gonzales had once tried to position himself as more pragmatic on the border, but has since moved further to the right, much closer to Herrera on the issue.
Gonzales was first elected in 2020 after Republican Rep. Will Hurd decided not to run again. In 2018, Hurd defeated Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones by just 1,000 votes. District 23 was once considered the “only swing district in Texas,” Blank says, but redistricting after the 2020 election made it considerably redder, which has allowed an extremist candidate like Herrera to win more votes.
If Herrera wins the primary, Blank said it is an “open question whether Herrera is an eligible candidate in a general election, even in a district that favors Republicans.”
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