South Texas Congressman Vicente González, a shady Blue Dog, with a “D”-rated voting record, thought was making the smart decision to move from TX-15 to neighboring TX-34 after the latest round of redistricting. His old district’s slim blue partisan lean is now exactly even, while TX-34’s D+5 went to a very safe D+17. And Filemon Vela, a corrupt slime bag incumbent decided to retire early and go for his dream job as a lobbyist. The early retirement triggered a special election. González didn’t run and complacent Democrats slept through it while the Republicans elected a MAGA-nut, Mayra Flores, now the incumbent.
FiveThirtyEights’ forecast has both districts looking like they will narrowly go for the Democrats, TX-15 for Michelle Vallejo (48.5% to 48.2%), and TX-34 for González (51.2% to 46.2%). Gonzalez has outraised Flores slightly but has massively more in his campaign account than she does as they head into the final 3 weeks before the election. Kevin McCarthy’s SuperPAC, the NRCC and their allies have spent $1,341,144 bolstering Flores and another $1,930,632 attacking González, The DCCC and its allies has spent $1,239,186 attacking Flores.
How could a Trumpist be competitive in a district this blue? Let’s see… González is a piece of shit, making it hard for the Democrats to deploy their only campaign strategy, namely that they may be terrible but that the Republican is worse. And Flores is worse, but for people not into lesser of two evils politics, González is a bitter pill to swallow. Under the new boundaries Biden would have beaten Trump by 15.5 points— 57.2% to 41.7%. And González still may lose!
Last week, Matthew Choi wrote that “The 34th District has a strong record of Democrats succeeding down the ballot. Cameron County, which makes up the district’s population center along with portions of Hidalgo County, voted 54% for Democrat Lupe Valdez in the 2018 gubernatorial election, even though she was widely seen as a weak candidate even within her party.
Republicans contend that Gonzalez fled the 15th District to the 34th in order to enjoy running in an easier race for a Democrat.
“He had no idea who he was going to be running against. He had no idea he was going to have to be running against an incumbent,” Flores said. “He’s abandoning his constituents.”
It’s a narrative that visibly irritates Gonzalez, who retorts that he moved because the Legislature put his home in the new 34th district. Members are not legally required to live in their districts.
“We could have won [District] 15 as well. It would have been more of a challenge because of the way they drew it to be a very Republican district,” Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez faced off with Monica De La Cruz, who is ideologically and personally close to Flores, in the 15th District’s 2020 general election. The incumbent Gonzalez spent over twice as much money as De La Cruz but won by a margin of only 2.9 percentage points.
His run in a far safer district also leaves the much more modestly funded and lesser-known progressive Michelle Vallejo responsible for defending the hotly competitive 15th District. Vallejo has brought in just under $700,000 as of the end of June with under $160,000 in cash on hand — a shadow of the seven figures at Gonzalez’s disposal.
Regardless of the new district, Gonzalez says his ties to the community are unchanged. He has represented the region as a lawyer for decades before taking office and built relations throughout its legal and political community. Gonzalez also has personal ties to the coastal areas of South Texas. He was born in and attended college in Corpus Christi, whose southern portion dips into the district.
Gonzalez worked closely with Vela on South Texas issues on Capitol Hill, including legislation impacting District 34. The two were often aligned on the policy issues, voting together well over 90% of the time, and Gonzalez co-sponsored nine bills sponsored by Vela, mostly over parochial concerns and border issues.
The two, along with U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar of Laredo, belong to a brand of moderate [corrupt right-wing] South Texas Democrats who can butt heads with the more progressive wings of their party. Though Democrats have made climate change a central policy issue this congress, Cuellar and Gonzalez were staunch defenders of their districts’ oil and gas workers (both members still voted for Democrats’ signature climate and social spending bill this year after weeks of holding their cards close to the chest). Gonzalez sits atop the Congressional Oil and Gas Caucus and is a member of the centrist groups the Blue Dog Coalition, the New Democrat Coalition and the Problem Solvers Caucus.
Gonzalez tried to distance himself from Flores, his Republican opponent and the first Mexican-born congresswoman, by casting himself as a native of the district who “wasn’t born in Mexico,” Newsweek reported in June.
“I didn’t come here through chain migration, I didn’t come through asylum or amnesty or whatever,” he told Newsweek.
Gonzalez also landed in hot water after his campaign paid for advertising on a Texas political blog that used racist and sexist language to describe Flores. Flores often now says the congressman “hired” the blogger to verbally sexually harass her, but Gonzalez denies knowing about the content of the blog and vowed not to give it any more money.
Flores said he was attacking her identity as an immigrant because he was panicking over her momentum.
“He should be talking about himself, and he’s just constantly attacking me and constantly disrespecting me,” Flores said.
U.S. Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-CA), a fellow member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus with Gonzalez, defended his colleague as a “champion for immigrants in Congress” who “fights to help people of all backgrounds achieve the American Dream.”
“I’ve known Vicente for a long time— he’s Mexican American and proud of his roots,” Cardenas said in a statement. “The idea that he’s attacking Mayra Flores, or anyone, for her heritage is absurd.”
Gonzalez has also come under fire after The Texas Tribune reported that he and his wife misfiled on their property taxes for years, claiming homestead exemptions on more properties than is usually allowed. The couple “voluntarily corrected” the “simple oversight” as soon as they were aware of it, Gonzalez said.
…[I]t’s no secret Gonzalez’s legal practice has made him rich. He owns investment properties in the nation’s capital, Texas, Mexico and Spain. He won his 2016 primary over Juan “Sonny” Palacios Jr., a deeply connected Democrat coming from a highly influential Valley political family, after lending well over $1 million of his own cash to his campaign.
While Gonzalez cast the personal spending blitz at the time as freeing him from corporate interests and the result of years of hard work out of a working class background, Palacios’ camp at the time felt he was buying his election.
…When asked in an interview about her biggest wins, Flores first cited funding for local infrastructure projects in her district. Flores was not in office when the House voted on the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that poured billions into regional projects. She joined all Republicans in voting against the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats’ cornerstone climate, social spending, health care and energy bill.
Flores adds that in her short time in Congress, she has blown up visibility for the district’s issues, hosting town halls and attracting national attention simply by having such an aggressive ground operation. No one cared about District 34 before she rolled around, she said, with Democrats merely assuming the seat was safe.
But Gonzalez is confident in the maturity of his campaign operation and his seniority to meet the challenge. While both candidates tout their aggressive door-knocking and town-halling, Gonzalez and his allies lean on the fact that this is far from his first time at the rodeo.
“To the extent that Democrats are fretting and concerned about what happens in November in that district, they’re just getting worried about nothing,” Vela said.