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“If the Texas congressional maps that have been proposed pass, a large part of my constituency will be in District 34,” Gonzalez said in a statement first provided to POLITICO. “I got a lot of calls from all over South Texas encouraging me to run in this district. If in fact these are the last cards, I will very seriously consider running in the 34 and continuing my southern representation. Texas and the Rio Grande Valley. “
House Republicans, who identified the current McAllen-based Gonzalez district as their best pickup opportunity in Texas, will welcome the news that Democrats are losing the power to hold the post in a difficult battlefield.
Gonzalez, who was first elected in 2016, said he had more than $ 2 million in his campaign account to use in a primary for Vela’s seat. He also said that if he changed districts he would “make sure we have another candidate” who could keep his 15th district in the hands of the Democrats.
Even before the GOP-controlled redistribution began, Gonzalez was likely to have a tough re-election. His current district, which includes McAllen and stretches north toward San Antonio, took a sharp right-hand turn last year.
Hillary Clinton won the seat by 17 points in 2016; but Joe Biden won it by just 2 points four years later. Meanwhile, Gonzalez saw his margin of victory shrink to 3 points in 2020 against an opponent who spent less than $ 300,000. This candidate, Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, is starting this cycle again.
The three districts of the Rio Grande valley experienced a similar shift to the right in 2020 – something incumbents have attributed both to Trump’s rise to prominence among Latino men and to some progressive Democratic policy proposals and slogans that have not worked well along the border.
This made the three a target for GOP mappers in the redistribution. So far, the state legislature has acted rather conservatively, proposing turning the Gonzalez district into a battlefield and giving its neighbor to the west, Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar, a seat Biden would have won by 7 points.
The Republicans card would transform the Brownsville seat held by Vela, who announced his retirement earlier this year, into a seat that supported Biden by nearly 16 points in 2020.
In a statement to POLITICO, Vela said, “I will support Congressman Gonzalez regardless of which district he runs in.”
Gonzalez said he chose to run for Vela’s seat because the incumbent is retiring and because Vela has absorbed some of his Democratic voters in Hidalgo County.
But Gonzalez has yet to clear the Democratic primary field. He could still face carpet bag attacks because his hometown of McAllen is in his old neighborhood, and he’s also more moderate and a member of the Blue Dog Coalition.
Four Democrats have applied for the seat. The most prominent is Rochelle Garza, a civil rights lawyer from Brownsville. But most will likely struggle to match Gonzalez’s War Chest.
A litigator by trade, Gonzalez also has the possibility of self-financing.
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