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For years, Texas Republicans have tried to win over Hispanic voters with the Bush-era brand of compassionate conservatism. The idea is that moderate engagement and moderate immigration rhetoric are key to winning over Hispanic voters, especially in Democratic strongholds on the southern border.
This is the old Texas. The Trump era has spawned a new brand of Texas Republicans, and one of them is already walking the halls of Congress: far-right Latinos.
Rep. Mela Flores became the first Republican to represent the Rio Grande Valley in more than a century after winning a special election last month and turning her congressional seat from blue to red. She also became the first Latino Republican sent to Congress from Texas. Her abbreviated term will run until the end of the year and she is seen as having a long chance of winning re-election.
But most strikingly, Flores endorsed Donald Trump by eschewing moderates, embracing the far-right and sitting on the sidelines — more like Marjorie Taylor Green than Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Her campaign slogan — “God, Family, Country” — was designed to appeal to what she described as “traditional values” in the Hispanic-majority district of the border city of Brownsville. She called for the impeachment of President Joe Biden. She tweeted the hashtag QAnon. She called the Democratic Party “the greatest threat facing America.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) walks down the Capitol steps with Rep. Meera Flores (R-Texas) on June 21, 2022. (Huang Shulan/The New York Times)
In an interview in her still-barren office the day after her swearing-in ceremony, Flores was asked whether she considered Biden the legitimately elected president.
“He’s the worst president in America,” she said.
When asked if Biden was legally elected three times, she repeated the same non-answer.
Two other Latino Republicans, Monica de la Cruz of McCarran and Cassie Garcia of Laredo, also voted in congressional races on the Mexican border. All three — who Republican officials have dubbed a “triple threat” — hold right-wing views on issues such as immigration, the 2020 election and abortion.
They share the same advisors, hold campaign rallies and fundraisers together, and knock on doors side by side.
They accuse Democrats of taking Hispanic voters for granted and viewing themselves and their supporters as the embodiment of the American dream: Flores often talks about spending time with his parents in cotton fields in the Texas Panhandle as a teenager Work.
Flores, De La Cruz and Garcia grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, the southernmost working-class four-county area in Texas, where Hispanics 93% of the population. All three are bilingual; Flores was born in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and the other two were born in South Texas. Only Dela Cruz has Trump’s backing, but they’ve all been vocal in their support of him, his campaign and his tough rhetoric about limiting immigration and building a border wall.
Monica De La Cruz, a candidate for the 15th House Congressional District, at a rally in McAllen, Texas, on June 20, 2022. (Verónica G. Cárdenas/The New York Times)
The Rio Grande Valley has long been a politically liberal but culturally conservative place. Church pews were full on Sunday, American flags flew from poles on the front lawn, and law enforcement was respected. Flores’ husband is a Border Patrol agent, a point she has often emphasized on the campaign trail.
In 2020, the Valley’s conservative culture began to have a greater impact on its politics. Trump toppled rural Zapata County and narrowed the Democratic victory gap in four Valley counties and other border towns.
“Growing up there, you always had closed Republicans,” said Garcia, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. “Right now, the desire to embrace the Republican Party is really spreading. They have a real sense of belonging.”
Other Latinos who support Trump are running for House seats in places like Virginia, Florida and New Mexico.
Republican leaders and strategists say Flores’ victory and the candidacy of other right-wing Hispanic women are evidence that Latino voters are increasingly turning to the right. More than 100 Republican House candidates are Hispanic, a record number, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Democrats see the situation very differently. Some Democratic leaders viewed Flores’ victory as a fluke — the product of a low-turnout special election that was voted by 28,990 people — and fleeting.
Flores, who was elected to serve the last six months of a retiring Democratic congressman’s term, is running in November for a full term. She faces a popular Democratic incumbent who is changing districts, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez .
Democratic leaders are optimistic that Gonzalez will beat Flores and Garcia will lose his race against Rep. Henry Cuellar, a leader who narrowly defeated a progressive challenger in the primary runoff. conservative Democrats.
Dela Cruz, however, is in the most competitive House race in Texas and will face progressive Democrat Michelle Vallejo.
Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., the campaign chief of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called Flores’ victory a “PR coup” for Republicans.
“It doesn’t mean she represents mainstream Hispanic voters,” Gallego said.
Two years ago, Democratic congressman Gonzalez nearly lost to Dela Cruz when he challenged Dela Cruz in Texas’ 15th Congressional District. He won with 6,588 votes. Now, he’s taking on Flores in District 34.
“This is a profound message for the party,” he said of Flores’ victory. “It’s really woken up the Democratic base. I’ve never had so many people volunteer for free in all these years.”
Evangelical Christian Flores stared at the bare walls as she moved into the congressional office across from the Capitol. She plans to put up a large photo of a SpaceX launch site in her area along with a photo of Jesus.
She ran with the backing of the evangelical church; her pastor ran the “Make America Godly Again” outreach and traveled to Washington to be sworn in. “I do believe that pastors should get involved in politics and mentor their members of Congress,” Flores said. “Our pastors know our people better than we do.”
Flores wasted no time showing a combative style with Democrats. Minutes after she was sworn in, Speaker Nancy Pelosi posed for a photo with Flores and her family. What happened next is a matter of debate. To Democrats, Pelosi’s arm appeared to brush past Flores’ 8-year-old daughter as the two stood side by side. In the eyes of Republicans, Pelosi appears to have pushed her aside.
“No kid should be pushed aside for a photo. Period!!” Flores later tweeted.
Listening to Flores, her switch to the Republican Party was inevitable.
In the early days, she said, she voted Democrat mostly because everyone she knew did. She said she first voted for a Republican presidential nominee in 2012 for Mitt Romney.
After attending Republican events for the spouses of Border Patrol agents, Flores began volunteering for the Hidalgo County Republican Party in McCarran. In 2020, she is organizing a pro-Trump caravan across the Rio Grande Valley.
She also tweets using the hashtag #QAnon.
When asked about QAnon, Flores denied ever supporting a conspiracy theory that claims a group of Satanist elites running child pornography circles are trying to control the government and the media. Hashtags have long been considered social media shorthand for expressing support for a cause or idea, but Flores insists her intention was to express disapproval of QAnon.
“It’s just about reaching more people, getting more people to see, hey, this needs to stop,” she said of using the QAnon hashtag. “It will only hurt our country.”
Flores deleted her tweet about QAnon, but she did not avoid expressing other right-wing views. After the 2020 election, she insisted on Twitter that Trump won, writing in a post: “Ganamos y lo vamos a demostrar!” or “We won and we’ll prove it!” in 2021 After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, she retweeted a post falsely calling it an antifa “setup”. She called Biden a “president in name” and called for his impeachment. Flores largely dismissed the proceedings as her own oath of office coincided with a House committee hearing into the Jan. 6 attack.
“Honestly, my district doesn’t care about that,” she said of the hearing. “My area is struggling to pay their bills. That’s what we should be focusing on.”
Like Flores, De la Cruz describes himself as a former Democrat who “leaves” the party. She said she voted first for Trump in the 2016 Republican primary.
“I believe the president is exposing the terrible things we’ve done to our country,” De la Cruz said.
After her narrow loss to Gonzalez in 2020, Dela Cruz suggested without evidence that she and Trump were victims of voter fraud in the region.
By contrast, Garcia said she was a Republican all her life. She was conservative from an early age, went to church three times a week, and entered politics soon after college as McCarran Cruz’s outreach director.
As a candidate, she has focused on religious freedom, school choice and abortion bans — issues she says are increasingly like-minded among Hispanic voters in the region.
“The red wave is coming,” Garcia said.
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