Cuellar and Tijerina spar over who delivers for a South Texas district redrawn to favor the GOP
By Gabby Birenbaum, The Texas Tribune
September 9, 2026
WASHINGTON — While Congress was on break this August, Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, popped up at over 60 events in his district, many of them to announce funding for local projects he secured from his longtime perch on the House Appropriations Committee.
Cuellar has used this time-tested style of retail politicking throughout his nearly 22 years in Congress, making himself a fixture at ribbon cuttings, high school graduation ceremonies and other community events across his South Texas district. Staring down another competitive race this fall, the “King of Laredo,” as he’s known to some constituents, is back at it touting dollars brought home for Title I public schools, health clinics and water line improvements.
“I don’t wait til election year,” he said in an interview. “I’m out there month after month throughout the year — election year [and] non-election year, we’re going out there. I always say I’m a member of Congress, but I run as a mayor. And by that I mean, I look at what are the issues that affect people locally.”
His Republican challenger, Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, says Cuellar’s crown is slipping.
Tijerina, who has served as the county executive since 2015, is a former Democrat who joined the GOP shortly after the 2024 election. On the campaign trail, the two have sparred over who gets to take credit for federal dollars brought back to the district. And Tijerina says Cuellar’s record does not match his reputation for delivering the goods.
“In Webb County, we’re $1.5 billion behind on infrastructure,” Tijerina said. “If he is the kind of man that brings in the money, why doesn’t he bring in the $1.5 billion of infrastructure?”
These are the hyper-local concerns both men are running on in a race with national implications, both for control of the U.S. House and insights into one of the most politically fluid regions of the country. Texas’ 28th Congressional District, which has an eligible voting population that is nearly 87 percent Hispanic, runs along the border from Maverick County to McAllen, covering a historically Democratic area that has swung rapidly to the right in recent years.
The 28th District, under its latest boundaries, voted for Trump by a 10-point margin in 2024 while being functionally tied in the U.S. Senate race. Joe Biden won it by 9 percentage points in 2020 and Beto O’Rourke carried the district by a 32-point margin in 2018.
Republicans redrew the district last year to be slightly more Trump-leaning. But under the old lines, even while running under the cloud of an indictment for bribery and money laundering charges, Cuellar outran Trump, winning by nearly 6 percentage points even as Trump carried the district by a 7-point margin.
This year, the race between Cuellar and Tijerina will be a test of how much crossover appeal each man can generate — Cuellar to the district’s Trump voters, and Tijerina to voters who, even if they cast their ballot for Trump, have stayed loyal to Cuellar.
Both are pitching their case to members of the opposite party — in a region where a critical chunk of voters have not shown strong adherence to either the Democratic or Republican label.
Cuellar, arguably the most conservative Democrat in the U.S. House, can point to his seniority, earmarking skills and public break with Democrats on border policy during the Biden era. Tijerina, as a former Democrat himself, has an in with fellow party switchers, and has emphasized his record cutting tax rates as Webb County judge. He has also criticized Cuellar over the incumbent’s bribery indictment. Cuellar, who denied wrongdoing, was cleared of the charges when he received a pardon from Trump late last year.
A recent poll from Texas Southern University found Cuellar was making inroads in his crossover appeals, winning nearly a quarter of likely midterm voters who backed Trump in 2024. That fueled Cuellar’s 45% to 34% lead in the poll, which showed him with a bigger lead and more Trump support than the Democratic candidates in neighboring South Texas districts.
It would not be the first time Cuellar has successfully capitalized on his crossover support to win. He routinely runs ahead of Democratic statewide candidates in the district, a history he attributes to his willingness to break from the party on the border in particular, along with his support for the oil and gas industry that employs thousands of his constituents. Cuellar won Webb County in 2024, for example, by about 21 percentage points, while Trump narrowly carried it. In neighboring Starr County, Cuellar outran Kamala Harris by over 27 percentage points.
He also believes Republicans unwittingly helped him out when they redrew his district, one of five Democratic seats targeted in the GOP’s mid-decade redistricting last summer. In moving the 28th District deeper into the Rio Grande Valley, Republican mapmakers increased the percentage that went to Trump in 2024. But the unusual amount of ticket-splitting in South Texas meant that the percentage of voters in the new district who voted for a House Democrat also increased, Cuellar said.
And the district became more Latino, with its eligible voting population jumping from about 69% Hispanic to 87% — meaning a leftward swing in the Latino vote would have a heavier impact on the seat.
Cuellar emphasized that he was not taking anything for granted, but he expressed confidence in his ability to win over former Trump voters.
“We’ve had that historically, and we’ll get that again,” he said.
But Tijerina said he hears from voters of all political stripes that are ready to move on from Cuellar in the wake of his indictment saga. He believes he can make inroads among Cuellar’s Democratic base especially over the alleged corruption.
Tijerina is also considered a much stronger opponent than Cuellar’s 2024 challenger, a white veteran who had never held office before and who struggled to raise the money needed for a competitive run.
With Cuellar up against a fellow elected official this time, Tijerina said the race will turn on local issues rather than national ones — a claim he says is backed up by his campaign’s polling.
“It’s not about Republican, it’s not about Democrat. It’s about doing the right thing, especially when we have a record to run on,” Tijerina said. “That’s what people are seeing, and I think that’s what’s being exposed right now.”
The fight to claim credit
Cuellar has sought to tie Tijerina to a handful of key issues that he believes have caused Trump voters in the district to turn on the GOP — tariffs among them.
The Port of Laredo does the most land-based trade in the country, accounting for 40% of all U.S.-Mexico commerce exchange, making tariff policy and ongoing negotiations over the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement more important in this district than nearly any other in the country.
When asked about Trump’s tariff policy, Tijerina said the president “is doing an incredible job” attempting to rebalance the country’s trade deficit. He argued that, as important as U.S.-Mexico trade is in the district, voters will realize that changes to the tariff rate will benefit them in the long run.
“The tariff situation needs to be balanced,” Tijerina said. “And I think once it becomes balanced, people will be making more. The capitalism will happen even stronger and better, and people will be making more money.”
Trump last year set a 10% tariff on potash from Mexico and 25% for products not covered by the countries’ existing trade deal, though the policy was overturned earlier this year by the U.S. Supreme Court. The president then used other authorities to issue a new tariff on non-covered products from Mexico.
Cuellar said Trump’s tariffs have hurt the district and provided him with an opening to engage with the president’s voters. Support for the trade war, he said, is a nonstarter, referencing Tijerina’s 2025 comments supporting the president’s increase in tariff rates.
“You don’t say that in Laredo, the largest port of entry in the country,” Cuellar said. “That’s not good.”
The two have also gone back and forth over data centers, an issue of much debate in the city of Laredo. There are no operating or proposed data centers in the city limits, but a 50,000-acre project called “Data City” has been discussed nearby in Webb County.
Tijerina touted his commitment to a ratepayer protection pledge to keep households and businesses from absorbing the energy costs created by data centers, and he said the facilities should be generating their own water and electricity. But he also emphasized that the U.S. needs to beat China in the artificial intelligence race.
As Webb County judge, Tijerina said he hasn’t been approached about any data centers — but noted that if AI companies are pursuing data centers on “private property, that’s their prerogative.” And he said data center companies should do more to educate communities about their value.
“I think this will all get resolved,” Tijerina said. “Once upon a time, when you had the windmills and the farms and solar panels, everybody was up in arms about that too for awhile. And then they realize, hey, it’s not as bad as maybe China is pushing this [opposition].”
Cuellar, meanwhile, filed a bill in August entitled the “Ratepayer Bill of Rights Act”, which would require data center companies to disclose their projected and actual electricity and water usage and pay all project-driven costs. Independent assessments would also have to confirm that sufficient water remains for households and businesses during a drought — a subject that Cuellar believes is especially top of mind for voters after the district’s efforts to conduct long-term water planning.
“Data centers [are] going to be a big issue in my district, especially in the Laredo area, because we are looking for secondary sources of water,” Cuellar said.
Both candidates believe they can make hay of one another’s records.
In Tijerina’s first campaign ad, he said he delivered an expansion of the Meals on Wheels program for seniors in Webb County and the delivery of $20 million in utility assistance. But Cuellar says the money for those programs came from federal grants that he secured on the Appropriations Committee or through federal programs he voted for, including Meals on Wheels and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.
“We vote on that on appropriations every year,” Cuellar said. “It’s interesting that my opponent[‘s] ads are on programs that are brought in by the federal government and by members of the Appropriations [Committee].”
Tijerina said the credit goes to the cities and counties that apply for the grant funding — and that the earmarks that Cuellar does secure take too long to materialize. Plus, Tijerina said, there are plenty of districts that lack senior appropriators but still get earmarked funds.
“The number one thing that I”m hearing the most is how neglected our district has been — hearing it from the ground and hearing it from all these elected officials and the people,” Tijerina said. “Henry goes around and parades himself as a money man and as the appropriations committee guy, and unfortunately, I think he has failed all of us all in that aspect.”
In his tenure leading county government, Tijerina said, Cuellar has “never even stepped into my office in 12 years and asked me how and what can he help me with.”
If he does win a seat in Congress, Tijerina said he would lobby for a perch on the Appropriations Committee and work to “bring real money into my district.”
Cuellar is currently the top Democrat on the appropriations subcommittee that oversees funding for the Department of Homeland Security. If he wins and Democrats take the House, he will sit atop the panel that sets the budget for agencies including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“I’m going to try to bring balance to this issue when it comes to ICE,” Cuellar said. “ICE should be focusing on criminals — not on families, Dreamers, construction workers.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.