The GOP’s effort to redraw the Lone Star State’s congressional map and expand its House majority has created an unexpected problem in South Texas, where Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-TX) is suddenly locked in a competitive reelection fight in a district President Donald Trump carried by nearly 18 percentage points.
De La Cruz was left with roughly 80% new territory under the Republican-drawn map and is now facing Democratic nominee Bobby Pulido, a Latin Grammy-winning Tejano singer who has posted strong fundraising numbers and gained ground in recent polling.
The race, once expected to be a relatively comfortable Republican hold, was moved to “toss-up” last month by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report as Republicans seek to flip five Democratic-held seats under Texas’s new congressional map.
De La Cruz herself acknowledged the challenge months ago. At a meet-and-greet earlier this year, she told supporters that most voters in her newly configured district did not yet know her and stressed the importance of raising money to introduce herself to them.
“It’s not that people don’t like me, it’s that people don’t know me yet,” the congresswoman said. “Because how new is my district? What percentage? Eighty percent. So people don’t know me. And this is where fundraising has become so critical.”
Since then, Pulido has set fundraising records and posted gains in multiple polls despite a barrage of Republican attacks. Pulido raised $3.4 million in the third quarter and has more than $1 million in cash on hand, according to Federal Election Commission filings. De La Cruz entered the third quarter with significantly more cash on hand, nearly $2.5 million.
“On paper, this district should favor Republicans — it voted for Trump by 18 points in 2024 and three points in 2020, and GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz won reelection by 14 points,” Cook wrote when labeling the seat a toss-up. “But public and private polling still shows this race is tied — or even Democrat Bobby Pulido, the Tejano singer-songwriter, with a lead.”
A recent poll released Thursday by House Majority PAC, the Democratic group aligned with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), showed Pulido leading De La Cruz 54% to 41%. Other polls have shown a much closer race.
“The latest TX-15 polling shows just how badly Republicans miscalculated their Texas gerrymander. They rigged the Texas maps to make this seat safer, only to find themselves spending millions defending a district Trump carried by 18 points in 2024,” a Democratic campaign operative told the Washington Examiner.
“Republicans thought they were locking down a ruby-red seat,” the strategist continued. “Instead, they’re on defense in a Trump district they redrew to protect themselves — and that’s emblematic of this cycle: Democrats are playing offense in places Republicans never expected to have to defend.”
An August poll by the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University showed Pulido with 50% support and De La Cruz with 45%. Other polls conducted earlier in the campaign showed the candidates within a few points of each other.
“In their cynical quest to subvert the will of Texas voters and insulate themselves from their failing agenda of higher costs, Texas Republicans put Monica De La Cruz on the dummymander chopping block,” said Madison Andrus, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Bobby Pulido is a once-in-a-generation candidate that has energized South Texas voters like never before. This November the RGV is going to send one of their own to Congress in Bobby Pulido.”
But Pulido’s campaign has not been without setbacks.
Pulido faced backlash after reports surfaced that he had performed and toured alongside registered sex offender Frankie Caballero. Caballero was convicted of sexual contact with an 8-year-old girl in 2014 and sentenced to four years in prison. Pulido’s campaign said he was unaware of the charges at the time they appeared together.
Republicans have sought to make Pulido’s history a central part of their campaign against him, but with recent polling showing a competitive race, it remains to be seen how much the attacks will resonate with voters.
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“Creepy Bobby Pulido is a depraved pig who solicited explicit photos from women, promoted pornography, used racist and homophobic slurs, downplayed child molestation, and kept a convicted child predator on his payroll,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Christian Martinez said earlier this year. “He can scrub posts, invent excuses, and blame Mexican culture all he wants, but South Texans see a morally rotten fraud who belongs nowhere near Congress.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the NRCC, DCCC, and De La Cruz’s campaign for comment.