A Hispanic outreach center that the National Republican Committee opened on San Antonio’s Southeast Side in 2021 is among numerous minority outreach offices across the country that have been shuttered for the 2024 election cycle.
Democrats say the closures are a signal the GOP no longer cares about courting Hispanic voters, while Republicans say the investments in traditionally blue territory didn’t make sense in this year’s challenging national political landscape.
The now-shuttered Hispanic outreach center in the Highlands neighborhood, which served as a gathering point for congressional candidate Cassy Garcia in 2022, offers some evidence for both perspectives.
Its closure — part of an overall scaled-back presence in South Texas this election cycle — is in stark contrast to the optimistic message national Republicans were sending here just two years ago.
After Trump made some unexpected inroads with border communities in 2020, Garcia was one of three conservative Latina congressional candidates in South Texas who national Republicans poured money behind in the 2022 midterm. The trio dubbed themselves the “triple threat” and campaigned hard on the message that Hispanic voters were trending in their direction.
But Texas’ 28th Congressional District, which stretches from south New Braunfels to the U.S.-Mexico border, was never particularly promising territory for the GOP.
After redistricting forced new congressional maps to be drawn in 2021, it became a district that President Joe Biden would have carried by 7 percentage points. Garcia’s performance on election night was so disappointing she bailed on her crowded watch party before the final votes were tallied.
Another of the 2022 targets, Texas’ 34th Congressional District, had already been redrawn to a district Biden would have carried by 16 percentage points. Democratic U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez moved over from the neighboring 15th Congressional District, which gained Republican voters under the new maps, and carried it by close to 9 percentage points.
This week the RNC, which recently changed leadership to mesh with Trump’s presidential campaign, told the San Antonio Report those races did not make the cut for the committee’s nationwide strategy in 2024.
“Since the RNC’s budget can only go through the chair’s term, all leases [for Hispanic outreach centers] ended at the end of then-Chairwoman [Ronna Romney] McDaniel’s 2022 term,” an RNC spokeswoman said in a statement. “It made sense to seek new locations for some this cycle.”
The RNC plans to maintain one South Texas Hispanic outreach center this year to support U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz in Texas’ 15th Congressional District — the only one of the 2022 targets Republicans successfully flipped last cycle.
Redistricting in 2021 turned that seat from slightly favoring Democrats to slightly favoring Republicans, but De La Cruz faces a potentially contentious rematch with Democrat Michelle Vallejo. National Democrats are targeting that race and putting big money into Latino voter outreach nationwide.
The outreach center is in Edinburg, near the southern tip of a district that stretches north through Floresville and stops just short of San Marcos. The RNC closed a McAllen Hispanic outreach center in the neighboring 34th Congressional District last summer to open the new location.
The National Republican Congressional Committee still considers the 34th a viable target and is helping former U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores wage an uphill rematch against Gonzalez.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, who survived a well-funded primary and general election challenge by Garcia in 2022, is not considered a priority by either party’s national campaign arms this year. In November he’ll face either retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. Jay Furman or businessman Lazaro Garza Jr., who are still engaged in a May 28 primary runoff.
