Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina launched his bid to run as a Republican for South Texas’ 28th Congressional District on Tuesday, kicking off his campaign to flip a key battleground district red.
National GOP recruiters see Webb County’s top elected official as a promising candidate to unseat longtime U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, in the 2026 midterm elections. The district runs from San Antonio to the border and covers all of Webb County, which is both Tijerina’s and Cuellar’s home base.
“South Texas raised me. Every lesson I have learned about faith, family, hard work, and never giving up came from the people here,” Tijerina said in the news release announcing his campaign. “I am running for Congress because our community deserves someone who knows our struggles, shares our values, and will fight for it like family.”
Tijerina was elected as a Democrat to lead Webb County in 2014 but switched to the Republican Party last December, saying that the Democratic Party no longer aligned with his values.
If elected, Tijerina said he will focus on border security, affordability and public safety.
Cuellar has been serving in Congress since 2005. He was elected to his 11th term in 2024 by the narrowest margin of his career as the district shifted to the right and favored President Donald Trump. Republicans hope to capitalize on this shift and on Cuellar’s ongoing legal troubles in next year’s election. The congressman is set to face trial in April for charges of bribery and money laundering, which he has denied.
“For years, our district has had a member of Congress who has grown too comfortable in Washington while families here struggle, and now he is facing serious federal corruption accusations that have shaken the trust of the people he is supposed to serve,” Tijerina said about Cuellar in the release. “Congressman Cuellar has chosen himself and Washington. I choose South Texas.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — House Democrats’ campaign arm — has stood behind Cuellar and criticized Tijerina for allegedly violating federal campaign law and attempting to dodge the Texas Constitution’s resign-to-run rule. Tijerina has denied the allegations.
A complaint filed with the FEC last month alleged that Tijerina postponed his campaign announcement and improperly kept his campaign “under the guise of an exploratory committee” because he wanted to avoid triggering the state’s resign-to-run law. The law holds that certain local officials automatically resign their seat if they announce their candidacy for another position with more than one year and 30 days left in their term.
Tijerina is serving his third term as county judge, which ends on Dec. 31, 2026. That means that if he had announced his congressional bid before Tuesday, he would have had to resign his seat. But since he held off on launching until Tuesday, he can remain in his county position through the end of next year.
Tijerina had originally scheduled a campaign event for Monday — when he would have still been subject to the resign-to-run provision — to talk about the “fight for South Texas” and “celebrate the spirit of our community,” but it was postponed to Tuesday.
“An FEC complaint is not how I’d want to start off a campaign for Congress,” DCCC spokesperson Madison Andrus said in a statement Tuesday. “Tijerina is already grasping at straws and trying to pull the wool over voters’ eyes. South Texans deserve dedicated public servants, not politicians playing political games at the taxpayers’ expense.”
Tijerina has called the allegation a “political sham,” posting a statement on social media last week that he was “following every federal and state rule governing exploratory activity, and has not crossed a single legal line.”
