Tomorrow is Primary Day in the Lone Star State of Texas, and I'm going to go out on what I think is a pretty sturdy limb and predict that sitting congressman Tony Gonzales is going to lose his primary fight with Brandon "The AK Guy" Herrera, and it's not going to be particularly close.
Gonzales narrowly defeated Herrera by less than 500 votes two years ago, and that was before the congressman was engulfed in a scandal over an alleged affair with a staffer who took her life through immolation last year. The primary has drawn national attention, but some of the coverage wildly misses the mark, like the Washington Post piece that makes it sound like voters are in a no-win position between a "scandal-ridden incumbent or 'The AK Guy.'"
Here in Uvalde, a community of 15,000 people that has endured more than its fair share of heartache, that episode has transformed the GOP primary into a raw, emotional contest that will leave deep wounds no matter what. The backyard where Gonzales’s aide lit herself on fire is two blocks from a memorial at what remains of Robb Elementary, where 19 children and two teachers were killed in 2022.
“These are both things that run deep,” said Carlos Lopez, the local Democratic Party chair. “People are flabbergasted.”
Herrera’s firm adherence to the Second Amendment — he has designed a rifle he calls the “AK-50” — may be an added advantage to winning over GOP primary voters here in Texas’s sprawling 23rd District, which covers an area twice the size of West Virginia.
The area stretches about 800 miles along the border from the San Antonio suburbs to El Paso, including many rural communities where guns are sacrosanct and where the Uvalde shooting did little to change that.
In fact, Herrera outpolled Gonzales in those parts of Uvalde County that don't include the city itself. And while Gonzales won roughly twice as many votes as Herrera in the original primary, he couldn't avoid a runoff, and that race came down to just a few hundred votes.
Gonzales did his best to smear Herrera as someone who made fun of veteran suicides and perhaps harbored neo-Nazi views, and that may have done enough to allow him to eke out a victory two years ago. Now, though, Gonzales is the one dealing with a scandal, and it's not just his vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that has him on defense.
None of the dozen or so Republicans who voted at Uvalde County’s one early polling location on Wednesday afternoon would acknowledge publicly that they voted for Gonzales.
But Dawn Swapp, 70, said Santos-Aviles’s death was the deciding factor to back Herrera. “I didn’t like what happened with the girl — if he had an affair with her and then she killed herself, that’s horrible,” she said.
The only Gonzales voter who agreed to answer questions — on the condition their name not be published — said Gonzales’ slightly more moderate brand of politics was a better fit for the district.
Notwithstanding the circumstances, a primary victory for Herrera would make a statement about guns.
I know that the Washington Post would love to run with that narrative. Heck, there are a lot of Second Amendment supporters who'll make that argument if Herrera does defeat Gonzales tomorrow night. I'm not so sure, though.
For one, it will depend on whether Herrera is able to significantly improve on his numbers in the city of Uvalde itself. If Gonzales still beats Herrera in town but loses by a wider margin in the rest of the county, I don't think that will be evidence of any newfound support for the Second Amendment in the city.
And without any exit polling, it's hard to know how many Herrera supporters decide to switch their vote because of his Second Amendment views or because Gonzales has become so toxic thanks to the allegations of an affair with a staffer who later set herself on fire. That's a pretty big black market on Gonzales, and there are likely some TX-23 voters who'll hold their nose and vote for Herrera despite not agreeing with him on guns because they believe Gonzales has disqualified himself.
And lest we forget, there's also a Democratic primary in TX-23 tomorrow. Two years ago, 27,893 people voted in the Democratic primary, while 57,630 voted in the Republican primary. Given what we've seen around the country in recent months, where Democrats have been able to outperform their 2024 in some races by 10, 12, or even 20 points, it's possible that tomorrow's primary will show greater participation in the Democrat primary than what we saw last time around.
There are a lot of issues at play, from border security to Gonzales's personal conduct, military action in Iran, and yes, the right to keep and bear arms. Even if Herrera beats Gonzales, that doesn't mean that the district overall has shifted even more in favor of the Second Amendment.
I certainly hope that we see that happen, but it's not as simplistic and binary as the Washington Post would have its readers believe.
