South Texas congressional Democrats Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar glide to reelection

By Berenice Garcia, The Texas Tribune
November 3, 2026

EDINBURG — Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar won reelection to Congress, overcoming Republican challenges to flip traditionally Democratic districts in South Texas.

They were among a torrent of Democrats who won in Texas and across the country Tuesday evening. Tejano musician Bobby Pulido also won a Rio Grande Valley congressional seat, despite Republican state lawmakers redrawing congressional boundaries to favor Republicans.

Gonzalez, a Democrat from McAllen, will serve a sixth term in Congress, the third as the representative for the 34th District, after previously representing the neighboring 15th Congressional District from 2017 to 2023. The district stretches from Brownsville to Corpus Christi.

“From the Rio Grande Valley to the Coastal Bend, the people of South Texas have spoken,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “As their chosen voice in Washington, we will fight to lower costs for working families, put an end to an unwanted war in Iran, and rein in a rogue ICE agency tearing our communities apart and causing a labor shortage for local businesses.”

Eric Flores, a former prosecutor and National Guardsman, who challenged Gonzalez, was one of the first Republicans to concede Tuesday night.

“While this wasn’t the outcome we prayed and worked so hard for, I walk away with my head held high, my heart full of gratitude, and my faith in God’s plan stronger than ever,” Flores said in a statement.

Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, held a wide margin over his Republican opponent, Tano Tijerina, according to unofficial results. 

“First thing I’m going to do tomorrow is go to church with my family and then get back to work,” Cuellar said. With Democrats poised to take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Cuellar expects to become chair of the House Appropriations sub-committee on Homeland Security.

“We got a lot of work to do,” he said.

Tijerina said he respected the decision of District 28 voters.

“Our message reached people who hadn’t heard from a Republican in a long time, and thousands of South Texans stood up for a change after decades of the same old politics,” Tijerina said in a statement. “That doesn’t end tonight.”

The victories for the two moderate Democrats dashed Republican hopes of making further inroads with Texas Hispanics, the support from whom helped propel President Donald Trump to victory in 2024.

Texas’ 34th and 28th Congressional Districts were eyed by Republicans as potential pick-ups after the party made inroads in South Texas during the 2024 election. That year, Trump won 14 out of 18 border counties and captured 55% of statewide Latino voters who make up the majority of the population in the two districts.

Hoping to increase the GOP’s chances of winning the congressional races in the region, Texas Republicans redistricted five districts in Texas last year, including the 34th and 28th.

During the campaign, Gonzalez sought to emphasize Flores’ ties to President Donald Trump, putting up a billboard featuring the president’s endorsement that closely resembled Flores’ own campaign signs, according to a report from the Washington Sun.

The Flores campaign issued a cease and desist notice to the billboard company, alleging the Gonzalez camp was attempting to confuse voters.

But if Flores had been trying to distance himself from Trump, the campaign made a U-turn last week when Flores appeared alongside the president during a rally in Corpus Christi.

At the opposite end of the region, Tijerina, the top elected official in the county and a former Democrat, hoped to unseat Cuellar in the 28th Congressional District.

Tijerina, who joined the Republican Party a month after Trump’s historic near-sweep of the border counties in 2024, hoped to topple the so-called “King of Laredo” as Cuellar has been nicknamed.

However, most polling showed Cuellar ahead of Tijerina and, in a sign they were losing confidence at their chances at victory, national Republicans pulled $3 million in ad spending in the district.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.