WASHINGTON — Having broken Democrats’ centurylong grip in the Rio Grande Valley, Mayra Flores received a hero’s welcome Tuesday evening as she became Texas’ newest member of Congress.
Fellow Republicans packed their side of the House to greet the McAllen respiratory therapist whose breakthrough victory they see as a portent.
A red wave is coming in November, they say, and Flores proved that Hispanic voters are up for grabs.
Having cracked the Democrats’ South Texas stronghold, Republicans hope to send two more Latinas to Congress from border districts in the fall. That’s a transformative scenario with implications for the politics of immigration and border security debates, and on statewide elections, after Donald Trump showed surprising strength in the region.
“The people who live and work in South Texas have had enough. We want to be heard and we are tired of being treated like second class citizens,” Flores declared moments after Speaker Nancy Pelosi had sworn her in. “I have risen from working in the cotton fields to representing the community I love in the United States Congress, and I will give them a voice.”
Most other Texas Republicans in the House flanked her on the House floor as she spoke.
Few Democrats were on hand. Texas Democrats were alarmed at Flores’ win and furious that the national party did so little to defend the seat after Brownsville’s Filemon Vela resigned to take a job at a law firm, even as GOP groups pumped more than $3 million into the contest.
But Flores, who campaigned as a Trump-loving, gun-loving border security hawk, will have to hit the ground running to avoid becoming a seven-month asterisk.
“We haven’t stopped,” she said between family photos.
Born in a tiny village in Tamaulipas state, Flores is the first woman in Congress born in Mexico, though three Democrats now in office were born in Mexico, all men.
Her family moved north — legally, she emphasizes — when she was 6 years old.
Her husband John is a Border Patrol agent. She described herself to voters and to her new House colleagues as a “proud Border Patrol wife” and mother of four.
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy saved Flores a front-row seat after the swearing-in. A parade of GOP well-wishers swarmed, including Texans and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
McCarthy gestured to the Speaker’s rostrum and joked that Flores will soon be running the place.
President Joe Biden carried the district she won last week by a 4-point margin – easy pickings compared to the 16-point edge Democrats enjoy in the district she’ll compete for in November.
That’s the new, post-redistricting playing field.
And instead of an open seat, she’ll be facing an incumbent, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a McAllen Democrat who jumped from a neighboring district for his reelection bid to take advantage of that 16-point edge. He has blasted the party for neglecting Vela’s old seat.
“I hope the DCCC learns their lesson with this before it happens across the country,” he told Politico, complaining that “they have just forgotten about the brown people on the border.”
More GOP Latinas
Republicans hope to see Flores joined in Congress by two other South Texas Latinas.
Cassy Garcia, former deputy state director for Sen. Ted Cruz, is trying to topple Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo, who eked out a 300-vote win in his primary runoff.
In the Valley, Monica de la Cruz, a small-business owner from Edinburgh, is vying for the seat left open when Gonzalez changed districts. She’ll face Michelle Vallejo, a business owner in Mission who won her Democratic runoff by just 35 votes, backed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and a progressive lineup like the one that supported Cuellar’s primary rival, Jessica Cisneros.
Cook Political Report rates the Cuellar-Garcia race as a tossup, and sees a GOP edge in the de la Cruz-Vallejo contest.
In the Flores-Gonzalez race another nonpartisan handicapper, Inside Elections, changed its rating from “Solid Democratic” to “battlefield” after Flores won.
“We finally feel we have a voice,” she said Tuesday evening off the House floor, predicting that her victory will embolden Hispanic conservatives and prompt voters to reassess traditional partisan loyalties.
And she professed optimism that she can beat Gonzalez regardless of the turf.
“Lines don’t change the values,” she said. “Our district remains to be all about faith, family and hard work. It hasn’t changed.”
Pelosi spent about 10 minutes in a ceremonial side room with Flores reenacting the swearing-in, cameras clicking as they posed with Flores’ husband and their kids: 16-year-old John Michael and his brother Jaden, 12, and their sisters Maite and Milani, who are 8 and 6.
“Thank you for your courage to run for office,” Pelosi said. “It’s a great honor to welcome Congresswoman Flores to the Capitol.”
It’s safe to say their political values are out of sync, though.
“I’m the first Mexican born Congresswoman in the history of this great nation and I STAND WITH TRUMP,” Flores wrote in a fund-raising email on Tuesday. “The left HATES me for that. They hate that I break their narrative that Trump and the GOP is the party of white nationalism. That we have NO diversity.”
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, an Austin Democrat and a senior member of the 36-member Texas delegation, introduced Flores for her swearing-in.
“With Latino Texans bearing a very disproportionate burden from the pandemic, she has been on the frontlines combating COVID,” he said, drawing cheers as he noted her political calling card: “Mayra will be the first Mexican-born woman to serve in this House, and the first Hispanic Republican woman to serve in our Texas delegation.
“She ran a very vigorous campaign,” Doggett said, needling Republicans a bit by noting that in a healthy democracy, “recognition of the results of fair elections you lose” is just as important as claiming victory when you win.
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