HARLINGEN, Texas — After a Texas Young Republicans banquet last weekend, Albert Alaniz watched as Sen. Ted Cruz rallied the party faithful on behalf of three GOP Latina candidates running for Congress in the Rio Grande Valley, a Democratic stronghold through most of the state’s history.
The 55-year-old talent scout from McAllen said voting Republican in the Valley was an exercise in frustration before 2020, when the Donald Trump-led GOP began to gain ground.
“Republicans running in South Texas had no chance, and it’s a relief that we are now winning elections,” he said as Cruz and U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores posed for pictures with GOP activists. “My parents were Democrats, but my father was very conservative. If he would have been alive right now, he would be a Republican and enjoying himself.”
Once an area so blue that general elections were an afterthought, the Rio Grande Valley is now the most intense battleground in Texas.
With its arid climate and fertile farmland, the lower Valley extends to the southernmost tip of South Texas. It includes nine cities surrounded by bilingual, low-income neighborhoods called colonias, along with 1,200 miles of the Mexican border. Voters here care deeply about immigration, border security, economic development, jobs and quality housing.
Former President Trump’s 2020 win in Zapata County and near-victory in Starr County represented a shift to Republicans, and President Joe Biden’s margins of victory in the counties he won were smaller than Hillary Clinton’s in 2016.
After Flores flipped the 34th Congressional District in a June special election, Republicans want to win two additional seats in Congress this November, with help from new maps Texas lawmakers drew during redistricting in 2021.
The outcome has significant implications, with the GOP hoping to seize control of the U.S. House, and Latino voters, who represent 40% of the population and 30% of the electorate, poised to determine the course of Texas politics. Republican leaders see them as part of a coalition that will keep them in power, while Democrats have long viewed Latino voters as key to wresting control from the GOP.
Jerry Polinard, professor emeritus at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, described the state of South Texas politics as “evolutionary.”
“It continues to be predominantly blue, but the Democratic vote is not as locked in as it was a generation ago, arguably even 10 years ago,” he said. “We saw in 2016 and 2020 increasing evidence that Democrats can no longer take the areas for granted.”
Danny Diaz, political director for Lupe Votes, an offshoot of the Farm Workers Union, said the Valley has experienced short-term shifts in the past.
“Nearly half of the Valley voted for George W. Bush. And then four years later, 75% of the Valley voted for Barack Obama. So we’ve seen these types of wild swings in South Texas,” he said. “It’s just interesting to see if Trump’s performance is going to stick, or if it’s just a 2020 phenomenon.”
Critical congressional contests
In addition to Flores’ seat, Republicans are hoping Monica De La Cruz defeats Democrat Michelle Vallejo in the 15th District, which Texas lawmakers drew to lean Republican, and that Cassy Garcia wins the 28th District, which incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar has held since 2005. Cuellar, a conservative Democrat, survived a primary challenge this year from progressive Jessica Cisneros.
U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a three-term congressman, is departing the nearby 15th District, where he defeated De La Cruz in 2020, to run in the general election against Flores in the more Democratic-friendly 34th. Since Flores won the special election, the November contest is a battle of sitting members of Congress.
Democrats didn’t put much money or resources into the special election Flores won in June, which featured multiple members of their party and had low turnout. Under the previous district map, Biden won the area by 4 points in 2020, but the redrawn district covers an area he won by 15 points.
The power of incumbency and the money spent on behalf of Flores, a Mexican immigrant who is married to a border security agent, make her a serious threat to win reelection, political observers say. Cook Political Report lists the race as a toss-up.
At a recent rally in Harlingen, Flores mocked Gonzalez for switching districts.
“He ran away from Texas 15 to come here because he thought, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be much easier for me,’” she said. “He wasn’t willing to fight for the district he had represented for three terms and came here because he thought it was going to be an easier race. Well, that didn’t happen. Texas 15 doesn’t want him. … Texas 34 doesn’t want him, either.”
Flores’ event was part rally and part revival, where she pushed religion and patriotism, popular themes in South Texas. The large crowd was encircled by food trucks. Many people used umbrellas to shield the midday sun.
“It’s so important, especially now, that we stand for our values and that we are not afraid to speak the word of God,” Flores told the crowd. “People are constantly telling me God doesn’t belong in politics. Are you kidding me? This is his planet. This is his universe. He belongs everywhere.”
She said the residents of the Rio Grande Valley are tired of being taken for granted. And she urged voters to return the area to its conservative roots.
“I am [Democrats’] worst nightmare,” she told the crowd. “All of a sudden, an immigrant, a woman, a mother is dangerous. The hypocrisy. They’ve been claiming all these years that they are for people like me.”
Flores declined to be interviewed, but said she was confident of victory and praised her campaign team.
In Weslaco, Gonzalez told The Dallas Morning News it was important that he beat Flores, who he said would take the district in the wrong direction.
“We’re uplifting our community,” he said, as folks jammed into the restaurant for a Mexican-style brunch. “We’re not where we need to be, but we’re moving in the right direction. Now Republicans are trying to come in and swoop in and tell us that we are really conservative and are voting Democrat out of habit. Well, that’s absolutely false.”
“I have a radical right wing opponent who immigrated from Mexico,” he continued. “Her family wasn’t here during the struggle that we’ve had for generations, and now all of a sudden she thinks that somehow she’s a Republican. We all know her slogan is God, family country. We’re all for God, family, country, all of us, Democrats and Republicans.”
U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat of New York joined Gonzalez for the brunch with the Hidalgo County Democrats, a sign that national party members are making an effort to ensure the Valley stays blue.
The congressmen told The News that voters should be reminded that Democrats were the party that gave them Social Security, Medicare, Pell grants and the Affordable Care Act.
Gonzalez said “Trump radicalized” some residents in the Valley, particularly the uninformed, but that they are paying more attention to politics.
“They are more awake now than we were two years ago,” he said. “What happened two years ago shocked the community. And then that special election woke us up.”
Cruz, who was visiting the Rio Grande Valley as part of his bus tour to elect conservatives to Congress, predicted all three Latina Republicans — Flores, De La Cruz and Garcia — would win.
“Hispanics were always conservative Democrats in those primaries 50 years ago. Those values have remained constant,” Cruz told The News on his campaign bus. “The Democratic Party has turned to the left in an extreme way, and it is driving Hispanics away from the party. It’s also driving African Americans away from the party. And it’s driving working-class voters of all ethnicities away from the Democrat Party.
“The result is a fundamental transformation of the parties. I believe the Republican Party today is a blue-collar party.”
Mike Carrera, a political consultant based in Edinburg, said the federal races will be tough fights, but even if they lose, Republicans will continue to target races in the Rio Grande Valley.
“Democrats at the local level are going to be fine,” he said. “At the national level, Republicans are testing it. If it doesn’t work, they’ll try it again next year.”
Winning over voters with issues
Jorge “George” Martinez, a Mission Republican who is director of coalitions for the conservative policy group the Libre Initiative, said the GOP’s 2020 success was years in the making.
“Building trust takes time. This is something that Democrats, honestly, have done a very good job with since the ‘60s,” he said. “But there was nothing happening in this area and we wanted to inform the community on policy and why limited government policies are better for our community to improve our lives.”
Martinez said Trump was able to woo South Texas voters because of his record on the economy and jobs.
“What we saw in 2020 was not people voting based on character, but more voting based on policy,” he said.
Democrats are working hard on the ground to blunt the GOP’s momentum, said Diaz, the political director for Lupe Votes.
“We’re trying to do everything we can on the ground, because we have deeper relational ties with the community that counter what they are doing,” he said. “But it’s a fact that I just don’t think that progressive groups or Democratic groups have been able to match Republicans on spending on TV on ads and things of that nature.”
AdImpact, a group that tracks campaign ad spending, shows that Republicans have spent over $4.5 million in the 34th District, compared to the $3 million spent by Democrats. In the 15th, Republicans have outspent Democrats on television and digital ad spending by $2 million — $7.4 million to $5.4 million. Democrats are overwhelming Republicans in spending in the 28th, $18.5 million to $7.2 million.
Polinard, the political scientist, said the amount being spent on ads is unprecedented in the Valley.
“I tell my friends that one of the things that’s fun about all of this change is that for the first time we actually get to watch television ads from different general election candidates,” he said. “In the past nobody bought television ads down here because it was so blue.”
Diaz said his group and other progressives are trying to appeal to Rio Grande Valley voters who live in some of the most impoverished areas in the country.
“We’re back to the bread and butter issues,” he said. “We know that Democrats have brought Medicare for the elderly, a $15 minimum wage, living wages. We are talking about these issues.”
Passion on both sides
Border security is an issue that has attracted a lot of attention among Republican voters.
“They’re very upset with what’s going on, especially at the border,” said Lional De La Fuente, a Harlingen military veteran who served two tours in Vietnam. “Also, the wages are very low and we feel it because everything is so high, so expensive.”
De La Fuente, who stood in a long line to meet Cruz and Flores, also made a point that resonates with many GOP voters in South Texas, where former President John F. Kennedy and other Democrats established a loyal following.
“We all were taught by our fathers to always vote Democrat because they represent the poor,” he said, adding that much of the Valley was still in poverty and the GOP’s conservative solutions were better options. “Nowadays, we begin to get more educated and we’re beginning to realize that our parents were wrong.”
Leslie Davies, a 31-year-old corrections officer from Cameron County, says she likes Flores, the 34th District representative, because “she puts God first.” Davies also said she supports Republicans because she thinks Democrats let people abuse the welfare system.
“I understand people live through hardships and stuff like that, but they should not take advantage of it,” she said.
Many Democrats The News interviewed at a Weslaco restaurant said they caution voters that Republican candidates are not as they seem.
“We are Democrats. This area is Democratic,” said Terry Palacios, the Democratic nominee for Hidalgo County district attorney. “Nobody ever paid attention and now that we have bankers and doctors and lawyers and businessmen, now they want to have an interest in us.”
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