YouTuber Brandon Herrera is once again seeking to oust Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) from his House seat after narrowly losing the 2024 GOP primary.
Herrera, an entrepreneur known for his pro-gun YouTube channel, challenged Gonzales for the Republican nomination last year due to concerns about the incumbent lawmaker’s bipartisan positioning and moderate policy views.
In a video announcing his plans to seek a primary rematch in Texas’s 23rd Congressional District with Gonzales ahead of the 2026 election, Herrera pledged to run as a “real conservative” who will “actually put America First.” Referencing the Texas Republican Party’s move to censure Gonzales in 2023 after he voted for legislation codifying same-sex marriage and a Biden-era bipartisan gun control law in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting in his district, Herrera attacked the Texas lawmaker as “a Republican [who] kept making bad votes that just made no sense to me.”
“I’m a serial entrepreneur, Second Amendment activist, content creator, firearm manufacturer,” Herrera said. “I’m officially throwing my hat back into the ring to finish what I started and get a turncoat Republican out of office. … As much as it’s more comfortable to just look the other way. I can’t bow out of a fight if I know I can make a difference.”
“Texas District 23 deserves … somebody who actually understands and respects the Constitution, not just as like a cheap line, but actually respects it, someone who will vote not just to protect but to enhance your gun rights, not vote to throw them away when it gets inconvenient. Someone who will actually put America first, not talk about being America First while giving billions of dollars to foreign countries, while America goes trillions deeper into debt. Someone who will actually vote to protect America’s borders, not just claim that they will on TV during election season,” he added. “Texas deserves better than Tony.”
Herrera was one of several Republicans who challenged Gonzales from the right in 2024, expressing disappointment in his centrist worldview. During the March primary, none of the candidates captured the required 50% of the votes needed to stave off a runoff, with Gonzales securing 45% of the vote and Herrera with just under 25%.
Despite being outspent by a massive margin, Herrera came within 400 votes of ousting Gonzales during the primary runoff.
“We may not have won, but we went all 12 rounds in a fight that nobody expected to even be close, and we staggered the current champ. We made history,” Herrera said in a post to social media, touting the results of his underfunded operation seeking to oust Gonzales. “This is something I’ll be proud of until the day I die.”
Gonzales has helped shift his seat in what was once known as a swing district from “likely Republican” to “safe Republican” to “solid Republican” since first taking office following the 2020 election.
Gonzales won his last election against Democratic challenger Santos Limon by nearly 25% after surviving the primary challenge from Herrera, dubbed “the A-K Guy” on his YouTube channel, boasting over 4.4 million subscribers.
Despite attacks from anti-establishment figures such as Herrera, Gonzales has stood by his bipartisan approach to Washington politics in recent days, eschewing hard-line positions on matters involving ICE, while making overtures to Hispanics, who make up a large portion of his district’s population.
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Some Republicans have worried that Gonzales’s seat could be threatened by a Democratic takeover due to a redistricting effort backed by President Donald Trump being examined by the Texas legislature. While the GOP hopes redrawing the political maps could boost up to five seats for Republicans, some in the party expressed concern that the move could backfire, putting Gonzales and Rep. Monica De La Cruz’s seats in jeopardy.