Texas’ 23rd Congressional district was once one of the most competitive seats on the U.S. House of Representatives map, drawing Republican and Democratic candidates with résumés aimed at attracting the widest range of potential voters.
Since redistricting largely made the sprawling district less competitive for Democrats, however, Republicans have steadily worked to push its representation further right.
To replace retiring U.S. Rep. Will Hurd — a popular GOP moderate who became one of former President Donald Trump’s most outspoken critics in Congress — Republicans chose Trump-backed Navy cryptologist Tony Gonzales from a primary field of nine candidates in 2020.
This year, Gonzales faces four primary challengers who say he’s no longer conservative enough for the district, and point to his work with Democrats on gun safety, same-sex marriage and a recent failed border security proposal as strikes against him.
Gonzales’ campaign staff declined multiple requests to make him available for an interview. Spokesman Evan Albertson said that the congressman is campaigning across his district but declined to provide a list of events.
He currently holds a coveted seat on the House Appropriations Committee, has raised almost $2 million for his reelection race, and the National Republican Congressional Committee believes he’s well-positioned to earn a third term.
But in an election cycle where state and local GOP leaders have shown an unusual willingness to attack officeholders who step out of line, Gonzales has also become a poster child for their efforts to rid the party of its moderates — complicating Gonzales’ ability to connect with voters ahead of the March 5 primary.
Gonzales, who grew up in San Antonio’s Five Points neighborhood, was absent from a recent candidate debate hosted by the Republican Party of Bexar County and decided not to defend his record at a State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) meeting last March where members voted to censure him.
Defending a border district
Covering all or part of 29 counties, Texas’ massive 23rd Congressional District includes Northwest and Southwest San Antonio and runs all the way to El Paso, encompassing hundreds of miles of the U.S. border with Mexico. Trump carried it with 53% of the vote in 2020, and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the district “Solid Republican.”
Like Hurd before him, Gonzales appealed to party leaders in part because of his military experience in a district that includes a large number of law enforcement agents, military veterans and active-duty service members.
After winning the seat in an expensive primary runoff and general election in 2020, he received plum committee assignments that are uncommon for a freshman lawmaker, but advantageous for defending a district of great importance to party leaders.
Since Republicans took control of the U.S. House at the beginning of last year, however, connections to GOP leadership have become a double-edged sword.
Conservatives pushed out the party’s first speaker, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California), over McCarthy’s reluctance to hold the budget hostage for increased border security measures. While some members of the Texas delegation have already voiced frustration with new House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) over the same issue, Gonzales has forged a relationship with Johnson and sought to broker a border security deal with Republicans and Democrats in the Senate that would avoid a government shutdown.
The $118 billion package Gonzales helped negotiate sought to give the Department of Homeland Security authority to shut down all migration at the border, including for those seeking asylum, if the number of crossings grew too high in a single week. It paired that and other border security measures with financial support for Ukraine and Israel.
“I’m working on this thing on a daily basis,” Gonzales said in a Jan. 31 interview with NBC News. “It has to be meaningful things like deporting people that do not qualify for asylum, like surging immigration judges to the border so people can get their cases heard,” but “I think that all of us can come together.”
Despite the deal’s blessing from both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Joe Biden, Senate Republicans rejected it at Trump’s request on Feb. 7, saying the party would be better off waiting until after the 2024 presidential election to address border security issues.
The result was a loss on multiple fronts for Gonzales, whose district includes municipalities desperate for help addressing an influx of asylum-seeking migrants. At the same time, a looming government shutdown could leave the large number of border patrol agents who live in Gonzales’ district without pay if House conservatives get their way.
Aiming right of the incumbent
Throughout the fall Gonzales continued to seek compromise on divisive issues, like his plan to provide legal pathways for foreign workers. That approach has earned him allies in the business community who clash with conservatives on immigration issues and who’ve given generously to Gonzales’ campaigns.
He also helped advance a largely symbolic vote to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this month, deemed a high priority for border hawks.
Among Gonzales’ critics, however, there’s a strong desire to see the district represented by someone willing to put the border above all other issues.
Though Republicans control only the House in divided Washington, members of the House Freedom Caucus, including U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Dripping Springs), have urged leadership not to fund other parts of the government unless they can secure meaningful border security.
At the Republican Party of Bexar County’s debate this month, all four candidates running against Gonzales said they envision themselves joining that conservative cadre and support shutting down the government as a legislative tool.
Just one candidate, retired U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Victor Avila, mentioned the potential negative impact a government shutdown might have on the district’s constituents.
“I’ve gone through three government shutdowns in my career. One of them really hurt because I still had to work,” said Avila, who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination for Texas Land Commissioner in 2020. “It was a sacrifice, and I’m willing to do that sacrifice again.”
Like the other candidates on stage, Avila said he believes the biggest problem Republicans face in Washington is not pushback from Democrats but weak-willed leaders within their own party.
Brandon Herrera, a firearms retailer and gun enthusiast, vowed to be an ally to far-right U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), who he said invited him to testify at their congressional field hearing in Florida last year, aimed at building the case to abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“These are people that I’m going to be very, very happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with and fight for what I think our definition of conservatism is, not what the old heads in the Republican Party seem to think it is,” Herrera said.
Frank Lopez Jr., a former chair of the Val Verde County Republican Party who ran against Gonzales as an independent in 2022, said he had also met with House conservatives who have been consistently been at odds with Gonzales over the past two years.
“I wanted them to know who I am, where I come from and what I stand for,” Lopez said of the lawmakers. “The Freedom Caucus is growing, and I want it to grow … because they’re the ones actually making the difference of what we see today.”
In recent months Herrera, who has more than 3 million subscribers on Youtube but has lived in Texas only since 2020, appears to have posed the biggest threat to Gonzales. He’s taken heat for leaving behind an inactive explosive device at a campaign event and making insensitive jokes about veteran suicide, but his unconventional campaign has raised more than $800,000 from donors across the country.
Party animals
The Republican Party of Bexar County’s animated debate, and its embrace of Gonzales’ challengers, comes as the congressman has tried and failed to manage relationships with local party leaders within his district.
In 2022 Gonzales spent money trying to keep out Republican Party of Bexar County Chairman Jeff McManus, who has since sought to censure him and last week endorsed all four of his primary opponents.
Deep blue Bexar County accounts for about half of the votes cast in the 23rd District, and McManus’ views are not monolithic among the county’s Republicans. Members of the county executive committee voted down his resolution to censure Gonzales in 2022 out of concern the party could jeopardize one of its few incumbent Republican officeholders.
The following spring, however, a censure effort in neighboring Medina County led by party Chair Julie Clark made it all the way to the state party, where executive committee members approved it 57-5 with one abstention. The move paved the way for party officials to campaign against Gonzales in the primary, where Clark is now among the candidates running against him.
In an interview after a campaign event in Helotes last month, Clark said she knew little about party infrastructure when she first ran for a leadership position. She spent her career in medical device sales and was inspired to run for county party chair by the 2020 election, which she believes Trump won.
Clark has since drafted two successful statewide censures, of Gonzales and state House Rep. Andrew Murr (R-Junction), who led an effort to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, and provides printed copies of them to supporters at campaign events.
“We have certain platforms and priorities that come out from the Republican Party … and when you vote continuously against those, then it starts to raise a red flag,” Clark told the San Antonio Report. Pointing to a copy of Gonzales’ censure resolution, she added, “It wasn’t one vote. It wasn’t two votes. You can see it’s three pages, and that doesn’t even include all of them in there.”
Though the censures are primarily symbolic, Murr ultimately decided not to seek reelection this year. County party officials hope to keep the pressure on Gonzales, Clark said, and organized thousands of calls to his office during the House speaker election last year.
Gonzales, for his part, says he’s unfazed by his critics.
“Not everybody likes me. … It’s the way life is,” he told reporters when asked about the statewide censure. “You can’t allow these people that are detractors to prevent you from doing what you want to do.”
Clark said that approach has only stirred up his critics even more. Gonzales has again been working to replace his critics in county chair races, she said, and despite many invitations to come explain his votes, has avoided most gatherings with local party officials.
“We gave him so many chances,” she said. “And he continued to ignore us.”
