Tony Gonzales fights for his seat, and for governing in Washington (2024)

Gonzales is a conservative by any measure, voting often with his party yet unafraid to balk at House GOP leadership to make a point. But he has also worked multiple times with Democrats to pass funding bills allowing the government to function, sent $95 billion in aid to foreign allies, supported a bipartisan gun-control bill in response to a mass shooting at an elementary school in his district, and even voted to codify same-sex marriage.

In today’s dog-eat-dog Republican Party, those positions are seen by many as apostasy and a reason to kick him out of office. A runoff Republican primary election here on Tuesday will be an important test of what Republicans in this border district want from their representatives in Washington.

Gonzales, 43, faces pro-gun YouTuber Brandon Herrera, 28, who placed second among four Republicans challenging Gonzales in a March primary. Herrera held the incumbent to 45 percent of the vote, triggering a runoff between them on Tuesday.

“I knew I was going to be in this spot when I had people come into my office and say, ‘Hey, look, cut it out Tony, this is the way things are going to be.’ And I told them to go f--- themselves,” Gonzales said about lawmakers and donors who have challenged him. “It’s the fact that I won’t line up and do what other people told me to do. And I’ll never do that. I’m just not built that way.”

Herrera and his campaign declined an interview request. While Gonzales considers himself a “governing conservative,” Herrera has said he shares the viewpoint held by some in today’s GOP that the incumbent is a traitor, dubbing the two-term lawmaker “Turncoat Tony.” In a highly unusual move, Herrera is being backed by some of Gonzales’s House Republican colleagues, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus.

In some very real ways, the Gonzales-Herrera fight has brought the problems of Washington and House Republicans home to the district. It’s a clash not only between House GOP colleagues, but also for the future of the House Republican majority, already hanging by a thread. Will Republicans who join the House in January be willing to compromise — to “govern,” as Gonzales and others like him see it — or is their goal to tear things down? If Herrera wins on Tuesday, some Democrats think the somewhat red seat will be more competitive in the fall.

“I think that is the battle, if you will, [of] what is the direction of the Republican Party going to be?” Gonzales said in an interview last week while driving his truck between a Uvalde border security checkpoint and police station. “Is it going to be the governing folks … or are you going to be part of the entertaining class, where you’re there to just cause chaos and throw rocks at the system?”

Gaetz and company think Gonzales is a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only,” a label widely applied to any Republican they believe isn’t sufficiently loyal to former president Donald Trump or the kind of ideological purity that has thrown the House Republican majority into a historic level of chaos. Some of Gonzales’s Washington colleagues are backing Herrera because he agrees with their definition of governance, which is to radically cut federal spending or form a blockade until demands are met.

“I don’t believe the path we’re currently on is the pragmatic path. I don’t think $34 trillion in debt is pragmatic. I don’t think voting for more gun control is pragmatic,” Gaetz said in an interview in Washington, rebuking colleagues, like Gonzales, who consider themselves the governing class. “I think that that is faux pragmatism.”

Gonzales, meanwhile, has the backing of House Republican leadership — including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who has fundraised for him — Texas Gov. Greg Abbot (R) and the National Border Patrol Council, among many other local organizations. Trump has not personally weighed in on the race, though both candidates have endorsed his reelection efforts.

So far, Gonzales has outraised Herrera, $4.49 million to $1.2 million as of early May. Herrera, who has amassed a significant social media following, has more out-of-state donations than from Texas.

Like Gonzales, Herrera never ran for political office before seeking to represent Texas’s 23rd District, which he moved to from North Carolina a few years ago. But unlike Gonzales, Herrera is a self-described “social media personality” who has 3 million followers on YouTube, where he is known as the “AKGuy,” a reference to a type of assault rifle, for his Second Amendment advocacy.

Gonzales’s crime, according to those on the far-right, was joining all House Democrats and 13 Republicans in supporting the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to become law. The bill, which was drafted in part by Texas Sen. John Cornyn (R), was crafted in response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Tex., that left 19 children and two teachers dead two years ago.

It expanded criminal background checks for some gun buyers, barred a larger group of domestic-violence offenders from purchasing firearms and provided funds for mental health services and school initiatives, among other measures. Over 250 people have been charged with violating the law in more than a year.

Herrera said in local interview last week that if elected, he would “support repealing a lot” of the gun reform laws and push to federally codify the right to carry a loaded concealed firearm.

“That’s legislation that will actually make us safer,” he said to KSAT12 San Antonio.

But what cemented Gonzales enemies in Washington was his aggressive pushback against hard-liners who wanted to pass a bill by Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) that would have temporarily halted migrants’ legal right to asylum. Gonzales was the only Republican to vote with all Democrats against a set of rules governing the House Republican majority, in protest of then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) promising a vote on the Roy bill, which he called “un-Christian” and “un-American. He and several Hispanic Republican lawmakers used their strength in numbers to strip the provision and incorporate more changes to the proposal.

“We’ve done all these things, and not everybody wants that. Not everybody wants to see the Republican Party grow. Not everybody wants to see the Republican Party be diverse,” Gonzales said. “That’s why I’m in a runoff.”

Those votes, coupled with his support of same-sex marriage becoming federal law, earned him a censure by the Texas Republican Executive Committee in March 2023. In response, Gonzales worked to successfully oust three county chairs representing the most populated counties in his district with his preferred candidates.

Gonzales has become more emboldened this term, going after colleagues in a similar manner hard-liners attack the GOP conference. He has no regrets for taunting Gaetz and Freedom Caucus Chair Bob Good (R-Va.), who also endorsed Herrera, calling them “scumbags” in a CNN interview for often voting against the GOP majority, stressing he was purposefully direct to ensure the message “landed.”

“If somebody tries to kill you politically, you better believe them. And then your only choice is to kill them politically,” he said.

Gonzales attributes his aggressive style to challenges in his life. He has often fended for himself, growing up without a father, protecting his mother from an abusive husband and dropping out of high school to join the Navy, where he served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Surviving in politics, Gonzales said, “is very similar to war.”

It’s how he views rooting out Republicans he considers antithetical to the future of the party. He admits, however, to still learning how to best expend his political capital.

Gonzales gained praise from locals as he campaigned last week for bringing taxpayer money back to the district. Serving on the House Appropriations Committee, which decides how government funding is spent each year, he attended a groundbreaking for a $1.7 million community center in Castorville, Tex., that he helped fund. Having built partnerships with community leaders, Gonzales hopes to next fund security programs for Uvalde schools and law enforcement efforts, and establish communication centers to better connect rural cities and other training facilities.

That’s the kind of money House hard-liners often vote against for the sake of severely slashing federal spending.

As San Antonio continues to grow, many county leaders surrounding the city spent their time meeting with Gonzales asking for housing and infrastructure resources, oftentimes noting he may have to compromise with Democrats — who control the Senate and White House — to get it. Gonzales voted against the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill in 2021, citing too much spending. But in reality, he weighed whether he could support both the same same-sex marriage and infrastructure bills and still win reelection. Especially after already supporting the gun reform law, which irritated many conservatives back home.

Though he “fundamentally believes in infrastructure dollars,” Gonzales opposed the bill because he believed it was the right thing to help grow the GOP.

“Conservatism isn’t what you think it looks like. You think it’s something and it’s not,” he said. “I’m trying to push back against some of the smaller tent crowd that, once again, wants to purge people out of the Republican Party. I want to add people in and say, here’s the deal, this is the party of the future.”