WASHINGTON — In 2024, President Donald Trump won the White House buoyed by historic support among Hispanic voters, diversifying the GOP’s coalition and flipping Democratic strongholds like South Texas.
Two years later, a crop of Hispanic Republican candidates in Texas will aim to solidify Trump’s gains in defiance of the midterm headwinds facing the GOP this fall. The balance of the U.S. House could turn on whether they succeed: As many as four of the five Democratic seats targeted by GOP redistricting could feature Hispanic GOP nominees, while two of Democrats’ top targets will be defended by Hispanic Republican candidates. In all six of those districts, a majority of the eligible voting population is Hispanic.
GOP wins in those races would dramatically grow the ranks of Hispanic Republicans in Congress, building momentum for the party’s efforts to win over the historically Democratic bloc. Losses could signal a fracturing of the GOP’s newfound multiracial coalition soon after it was assembled.
In either scenario, the wave of Hispanic Republican candidates represents a watershed moment for Texas politics and the potential makeup of the House Republican conference.
“It’s always a goal to have candidates that are representative of their districts and fit the communities they want to represent,” said Christian Martinez, the national Hispanic press secretary for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Based on what we’ve seen over the past decade, the trend rightward from the Hispanic community, it was only a matter of time before that transpired into the elected officials and people getting voted into office.”
In 2024, Texas voters sent two Hispanic Republicans to Congress: Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, who flipped a Rio Grande Valley seat in 2022, and former San Antonio Rep. Tony Gonzales, who abandoned his reelection and eventually resigned over sexual misconduct allegations, clearing the way for GOP rival Brandon Herrera.
The number of Hispanic Republicans in Texas’ delegation could triple next Congress if, in addition to holding those two seats, the GOP manages to oust Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, and flip a pair of newly crafted seats in Houston and San Antonio that will feature either one or two additional Hispanic GOP nominees, depending on how the May runoffs shake out.
As things stand, there are 10 Hispanic Republicans in the House and two in the Senate, out of 270 GOP lawmakers between the two chambers. But Republican strategists are enthused about the uptick in Hispanic candidates running for Hispanic-majority seats they’re looking to flip in November. They believe their candidates can authentically connect with voters — particularly in seats that have long been represented by Hispanic Democrats, in a part of the country that was, up until recently, ancestrally Democratic.
Martinez pinpointed Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, a former Democrat who joined the GOP in 2024 and is now challenging Cuellar, as someone who can uniquely connect with Hispanic voters who cast their first Republican ballot last cycle for Trump — and whom the GOP needs to keep in its coalition to win South Texas seats in 2026.
“It’s very helpful to have Judge Tigerina running,” Martinez said. “He was previously a Democrat and is now a Republican. He is an embodiment of the rightward movement we’ve seen with Hispanic voters, especially in the Rio Grande Valley.”
But Democrats are optimistic about winning back Hispanic voters in South Texas, pointing to a series of special elections and polling data that suggest Hispanic voters are shifting once again. In a January special election for Tarrant County’s Senate District 9, for example, Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a seat Trump carried by 17 points in part by massively overperforming Kamala Harris’ vote share in heavily Latino precincts of Fort Worth.
Some local Republicans are worried about Hispanic voter backlash in South Texas, in particular, to Trump’s mass deportation agenda, which has included ICE raids at construction sites in the region, and continued economic malaise over high gas and grocery prices.
Jorge Martinez, the Texas-based strategic director at the LIBRE Initiative, a conservative Latino voter outreach group that played a key role in flipping South Texas, said that frustrations with the economy under President Joe Biden were a key driver in Hispanic voters’ embrace of Trump. He worries that a lack of focus on affordability in Washington — and continued high prices at the pump and the supermarket — will be a challenge for down-ballot Republicans.
“I believe that the South Texas Republicans that are running do have that [economic-focused] message,” Martinez said. “But the national political winds are just making it a little bit more difficult.”
Meet the candidates
State Rep. John Lujan, R-San Antonio, has seen Hispanic voter shifts in South Texas up close in his competitive state House seat. Lujan first won the district in a 2016 special election, but then lost in the general election that year and again in 2018. When the district became open again in 2021, Lujan won a special election in a seat then-President Joe Biden carried by 14 points, and then held the seat in 2022 and 2024.
Until 2024, he had been one of the few Republicans to carry the district, outrunning the top of the GOP ticket.
Lujan said the key to winning heavily Hispanic seats like his is to run strong candidates, so that voters focus on the candidate rather than the party. Where Republicans can do that, he thinks they can be successful, including in his own congressional race. Lujan is in a runoff to be the Republican nominee in the newly drawn 35th Congressional District, which favored Trump by a 10-point margin in 2024.
“I think the biggest difference, and if you see numbers, I think it’s [that] we’ve got to get good candidates — and candidates that really resonate with their district, their people,” Lujan said.
Some Hispanic Republican candidates projected confidence that the trends powering Trump’s gains are here to stay. Eric Flores, the Republican candidate in the majority-Hispanic 34th Congressional District, laid out a messaging strategy that mixes running on Trump’s accomplishments — such as the tax cuts contained in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — and tagging Democrats over contentious social issues.
“We have a secure border — 50-year all-time low apprehensions — and folks are really starting to see that,” said Flores, who is challenging the fifth-term Democrat Gonzalez. “They’re voting against the woke agenda — DEI stuff, having men in women’s bathrooms, boys in girls’ sports, and so on and so forth. So we’re going to continue to see that trend this coming November.”
In Gonzalez’s district, which stretches from Brownsville to Corpus Christi, Flores, a former federal prosecutor and Texas National Guard Army infantry captain, represents a fresh face for voters who have picked between Gonzalez and former GOP Rep. Mayra Flores in each of the last two cycles. Mayra Flores, who is not related to Eric, made headlines as the first Mexican-born member of the House when she won a special election in 2022, but she went on to lose the November election later that year and again in 2024.
Republicans have also failed in recent cycles to topple Cuellar, a self-described conservative Democrat who frequently crosses over to vote with Republicans. Cuellar was federally indicted on bribery charges two years ago, giving the GOP a ready-made attack against him, but the issue was effectively neutralized when Trump pardoned him last year.
Tijerina’s candidacy is a marked difference from last cycle, when Cuellar defeated Navy veteran Jay Furman, who is white, even as Trump won the 28th District. Tijerina has also gotten institutional support from GOP power brokers in Washington, priming him for a more competitive run than the financially overmatched Furman.
In the 35th Congressional District, which encompasses part of San Antonio and surrounding rural counties, Republicans are choosing between Lujan and veteran Carlos De La Cruz, the brother of Edinburg Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz.
Houston’s 9th Congressional District could yield a sixth Hispanic GOP nominee if voters pick former Harris County judge nominee Alex Mealer, who is of Spanish descent, over state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, in the runoff.
Immigration policy discord
If the November elections usher in a new wave of Hispanic Republicans from Texas, one immediate effect could be to shift the center of gravity in the Congressional Hispanic Conference — the House’s main Hispanic GOP caucus — from Florida to the Lone Star State. Florida currently accounts for five of the group’s 10 members.
But it remains unclear whether these Hispanic Republican nominees can overcome the difficult political climate shaping up for the fall.
“Republicans can try to rebrand all they want, but South Texas voters know a bad deal when they see one,” said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Bridget Gonzalez. “The extreme GOP agenda of health care cuts, high costs, and attacks on basic freedoms does not change because the messenger does. No matter who they run, Republicans are selling an out-of-touch and anti-Latino agenda, and voters see right through it.”
While some local Republicans are nervous about political backlash to ICE raids, including on construction sites in South Texas, Hispanic GOP candidates said they hear more about lingering frustrations from Biden’s border policy and appreciation for the changes Trump has made.
“From what I have been hearing here on the ground, from your day-to-day constituent, is they did not appreciate going to the store, knowing a lot of the folks in there with one or two carts of groceries who are here illegally, taking advantage of a lot of these local and governmental programs that we have here,” Eric Flores said.
The midterms are happening against the backdrop of a broader coalitional battle in the GOP over the future of immigration policy, and whether mass deporting immigrants — including those with no criminal record — is compatible with maintaining a big-tent party that can keep Hispanic voters in the fold.
In Congress, that debate has played out through a bipartisan immigration reform bill championed by Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican, and El Paso Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar.
The bill would fund more border personnel and surveillance technology, increase penalties for illegal crossings and require employers to eventually use E-Verify, the electronic service that checks employees’ immigration status. It would also create a seven-year pathway to legal status — not citizenship — for undocumented immigrants who have lived in the country continuously since the end of 2020 and can pass a criminal background check. Eligible immigrants would have to pay restitution and would not be eligible for federal benefits.
The bill has 20 Republican and 20 Democratic co-sponsors, but no buy-in from House leadership. Several business coalitions, including many traditionally associated with Republicans, are backers. But MAGA hardliners have erupted in recent months over their colleagues’ support of the legislation as the party debates its path forward on immigration policy.
Half of the Congressional Hispanic Conference backs the Dignity Act, including De La Cruz. But other Hispanic Republican candidates in South Texas were more hesitant. Flores, for one, declined to say where he stands on the bill as written.
“Here in South Texas, there is a need for this workforce labor — our farmers, our ranchers, our steel mills, our home manufacturers,” he said. “But I want to ensure that our American citizens have that first opportunity for that job, and then we can figure out some sort of system [for] how we can fulfill that.”
Flores added, “I certainly don’t want folks cutting the line to be getting to these jobs. I certainly don’t want to be discussing any sort of path to citizenship for these folks. I certainly don’t want to be discussing amnesty.”
Lujan was blunt in his opposition.
“I oppose amnesty for any individuals who have broken our immigration laws,” he said. “And I researched the Dignity Act, and I think at the big scale, it’s allowing amnesty.”
