Rep. Tony Gonzales is headed to another runoff with his 2024 Texas GOP primary opponent after neither broke the 50% threshold to win their party’s primary Tuesday night.
Republican voters in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District advanced the three-term congressman to a May 26 runoff election despite a dramatic personal saga about allegations of an affair with an aide who later killed herself.
With about three-fourths of the vote counted, Gonzales had 42.5% of the GOP primary vote. YouTuber and firearms enthusiast Brandon Herrera also had 42.5% support.
Construction executive Keith Barton and former Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco registered 8.5% and 6.4% of votes, respectively, and were eliminated from the race.
The results come just weeks after allegations surfaced of an affair Gonzales had with a staffer who fatally set herself on fire last year.
Gonzales’ popularity had waned with his heavily rural constituency in the border regions of West Texas between San Antonio and El Paso, a former district aide noted, due to his voting record particularly on LGBT issues and gun control.
That included votes on codifying same-sex marriage into law in 2022 and a bipartisan gun bill that incentivized red flag laws nationwide following the massacre of 19 students at a school in Uvalde the same year.
“I don’t feel he was doing enough for the border crisis to stop that, the red-flag laws, and then the last straw was him voting for all the LGBT stuff,” said a former aide who worked for Gonzales at an office in a border county from 2021 to 2023.
Gonzales even got booed by some attendees when President Trump gave him a shout-out at an event touting US energy in Corpus Christi on Friday.
Several of his fellow House Republicans had also been calling on him to resign in the weeks leading up to the primary after text messages leaked between himself and his regional director Regina Santos-Aviles — who fatally lit herself on fire Sept. 13.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the accusations were “very serious” and urged Gonzales privately “to address” the issue “directly and head on with his constituents.”
The Office of Congressional Conduct began investigating the alleged infidelity in November, which could be referred to the House Ethics Committee for eventual punishments following the primary election.
Gonzales claimed to reporters on Capitol Hill last week that the communications were “not all the facts,” but they showed the congressman asking his staffer for “a sexy pic.” Other texts between Santos-Aviles and a former colleague shared with The Post revealed her discussing the “affair.”
Her widower Adrian Aviles also broke his silence about discovering the alleged extramarital affair with the congressman and married father of six in May 2024.
Republicans held 218 seats to Democrats’ 214 seats in the House, following resignations and deaths that put their majority at risk before the 2026 midterms.
Herrera warned in a Sunday interview with The Post that Democrats could easily “flip a reliable Republican seat blue” if the three-term congressman won the primary.
“My message has been primarily, you know, let’s help President Trump codify the things that he’s done to secure the border,” Herrera said. “Let’s work on the massive financial crisis, the debt crisis we’re in in this country. Let’s make sure that veterans get the health care that they deserve and that they were promised, especially in such a veteran dense district like District 23.”
In their primary runoff two years ago, Gonzales had bested Herrera by around 400 votes and gone on to crush Democratic opponent Santos Limon by nearly 25 percentage points in November 2024, meaning the district will likely be taken by any Republican candidate in the general election.
The May runoff winner will face the Democratic nominee in November. Katy Padilla Stout was leading with 54% of the Democratic primary vote over Limon (25%) with about half of the ballots counted.
