A brand new congressional district on San Antonio’s Southeast Aspect was drawn to present Republicans a leg up of their struggle to carry onto a slender U.S. Home majority.
However days out from a main runoff election the place each events will select their nominees for November, Republicans’ best-laid plans are hitting a velocity bump.
They redrew Texas’ congressional maps final summer season at President Donald Trump’s request, putting the reshaped thirty fifth Congressional District proper over the state Home district of one in every of their social gathering’s rising stars.
But the favored state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio) is now being massively outspent by conservative newcomer Carlos De La Cruz, who scored an endorsement from the President simply earlier than the March main.
Texas Republicans have been purging their very own social gathering’s moderates with nice success lately, even in districts that aren’t overwhelmingly purple.
However to squeeze extra Republican congressional districts out of Texas like Trump wished this 12 months, they’ve needed to divide up blue city facilities like Bexar County into some riskier bets.
Democrats who’d as soon as written off the reshaped district as too purple now say backlash to Trump has made TX35 a viable goal, and so they’re reserving advertisements to compete there this fall.
“It worries me,” Lujan mentioned Thursday. “Democrats outvoted Republicans within the main for this district. If we don’t have the appropriate individual [as the nominee] … we may very simply lose this district.”
Early voting begins Monday for the Might 26 main runoff election.
Democratic runoff takes a flip
Republicans aren’t the one ones struggling to promote centrism to their social gathering’s ever-more-extreme base.
Whereas the GOP was redrawing Texas congressional districts final summer season, Democrats who fled the state to struggle the brand new maps did not land a high-profile recruit for this new district.
Since then, they’ve watched particular election after particular election the place Trump districts have swung towards Democrats, rising extra optimistic about their probabilities with longtime sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia — a first-time candidate who wooed nationwide social gathering leaders along with his “old-school” values.
“Democrats are sweeping elections throughout this nation, and the Home majority is in our grasp,” Garcia mentioned at a current discussion board at Brooks Metropolis Base. “… Our marketing campaign was simply nominated for the red-to-blue distinction by the Democratic Congressional Marketing campaign Committee, and that’s enormous information for a district that Donald Trump and Greg Abbott redrew to silence your voices.”
However Garcia completed second within the March main behind native housing activist Maureen Galindo, who spent lower than $5,000 on her TikTok-fueled marketing campaign and has railed in opposition to Garcia’s help from the average Blue Canine Coalition and a pro-Israel PAC.
A month in the past, social gathering leaders chalked up Galindo’s success to random ends in a main the place turnout was unpredictably excessive due to a marquee race between U.S. Senate candidates James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett.
However now they’re headed right into a low-turnout runoff, fueling worries about how the untested district would possibly carry out in a race the place neither candidate is well-known.
Learn extra: 43% of Bexar County residents are in a brand new congressional district after redistricting
At a discussion board hosted by the League of Ladies Voters final week, Galindo warned that even a Democrat-controlled U.S. Home wouldn’t clear up the social gathering’s lack of energy in Washington in the event that they’re not selective about their candidates.
“This might be a Democratic majority within the Home by one individual, and there are Democrats who persistently vote to fund ICE, to proceed going to struggle with Iran, to not impeach Trump,” Galindo mentioned. “Each single time that there’s a vote the place, if these Democrats didn’t vote [with Republicans] then we may have received it, it concerned Blue Canine Democrats.”
In a nod to Democratic worries, this week a PAC aligned with the Blue Canines introduced plans to spend $450,000 on advertisements selling Garcia forward of the runoff — a serious funding in a race the place neither candidate has raised a lot cash.
However the last-minute efforts appear to have additionally thrown gas on Galindo’s anti-establishment marketing campaign, which has now discovered a highlight as soon as unthinkable for a grassroots housing activist.
Nationwide information organizations jumped to level out pro-Galindo advertisements from a GOP-aligned group that’s been boosting liberal candidates who they assume will alienate the extra centrist voters wanted to win a basic election.
A few of her extra controversial feedback about Garcia’s pro-Israel supporters have additionally landed her within the social media feed of U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and on the opinion web page of The New York Instances, the place an creator urged Democrats to cease this “antisemitic intercourse therapist” from taking the nationwide stage.
Whereas native Democrats are actually dashing to endorse Garcia and even take again endorsements from Galindo, her feedback on the marketing campaign path have been much less excessive.
Galindo as soon as helped the Metropolis of San Antonio craft a housing displacement plan that she later become a grasp’s thesis on participatory authorities. And on the League of Ladies Voters discussion board, she spoke with candor about her lived experiences securing housing as a single mother and navigating the bus system when her automobile broke down within the warmth of the summer season.
All of it probably performs effectively with main voters — even when it complicates Democrats’ path to retaking the U.S. Home.
“If it’s John Lujan and Johnny Garcia, they’re the very same folks,” Galindo mentioned in a current interview. “Simply average cops who’re going to do the identical factor.”
The final of the GOP moderates
As Abbott likes to boast, Lujan is the one Republican who has ever received Texas’ 118th Home District. He flipped a seat that voted for President Joe Biden and has held onto it even by robust basic elections — the likes of which most of his social gathering’s up-and-coming expertise has by no means seen.
“It’s all that life expertise that set me up, working a small enterprise, teaching soccer, educating Sunday college,” Lujan mentioned in a Might 7 interview at his marketing campaign headquarters. “I don’t know if any Republican may win — it needed to be any individual that’s within the district that is aware of the folks and has been concerned.”
The previous San Antonio firefighter first acquired a style for politics whereas serving on the union’s legislative committee, and his private appeal would later make him a salesman — first promoting confetti for San Antonio’s celebratory cascarones after which IT companies — earlier than Republican leaders noticed a future for him within the Texas Home.
However the Texas Home will nonetheless have a Republican majority with out Lujan whereas the GOP’s razor-thin U.S. Home majority is far more precarious.
At a press convention at Lujan’s headquarters, small-town mayors described a San Antonio congressional delegation that’s already been ripped aside by scandal and retirements.
Now nationwide Republican leaders in D.C. are asking them to take an opportunity on a newcomer, however Texas GOP leaders are nonetheless supporting Lujan.
“I belief Austin greater than Washington,” mentioned Von Ormy Mayor Artwork Martinez de Vara.ng Lujan.
Republicans struggle over dwelling turf
However Lujan has by no means confronted a main like his race in opposition to De La Cruz.
A heated main runoff between U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton is dividing the social gathering, and Lujan is preventing to hold on in a district with many extra rural voters than he’s used to.
Redistricting turned TX35 from a solidly blue Austin-to-San Antonio district to a possible GOP pickup alternative, cupping San Antonio’s southeast aspect and stretching west into Karnes, Guadalupe and Wilson counties.
Whereas Lujan has represented a part of that territory, De La Cruz’s sister, U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Edinburg) presently represents a few of its extra conservative elements, which can transfer from her district to TX35 when the subsequent Congress is sworn in.
By his personal telling, De La Cruz doesn’t have a lot political expertise. The 47-year-old spent 20 years within the Air Drive, which introduced his household to San Antonio in 2012. He skilled canines to detect bombs and narcotics and later moved labored in intelligence, the place he had a number of deployments to the Center East.
However he raised greater than another candidate working for Congress on this space within the first quarterly stories of 2026, and now touts endorsements from Republican Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota), in addition to Trump, who made his endorsement simply hours earlier than the beginning of voting within the March main.
“I feel this administration realizes that me being a navy veteran, me having been a small enterprise proprietor, me not being a institution politician is what this neighborhood wants,” De La Cruz mentioned in a Might 14 interview outdoors the Bexar County Republican Ladies’s luncheon. “… I wasn’t the one one to really go up [to D.C.] and converse with [the White House] — my opponent did in order effectively. They noticed that the distinction was crystal clear.”
This month he held a fundraiser with RFK Jr., drumming up cash that’s helped his marketing campaign label Lujan as too average for the job.
“I do know that they’re each in all probability good candidates, and John Lujan has loads of expertise,” mentioned Charlotte Folson, a GOP precinct chair on the ladies’s luncheon whose precinct was moved into TX35 in the course of the summer season’s redistricting. “However loads of us are extra conservative, and I’m in all probability going to be with Carlos De La Cruz.
“Trump endorsed him, and that’s an enormous deal.”
