The wrestling for Latino voters intensifies after mixed results in South Texas

McALLEN, Texas — Whew. That’s the sigh of relief Texas Democrats are expressing after they kept at bay some of the multimillion-dollar Republican push to scoop up once reliably Democratic-voting Latinos in South Texas and sweep three congressional races.

The congressional races were seen as tests of what has become conventional wisdom and a GOP mantra: that Latino voters are shifting to the Republican Party after President Donald Trump made inroads in the region in 2020.

But at the end of election night, just one of three Latina candidates whom the party banked on heavily had won — Monica De La Cruz defeated Michelle Vallejo in the 15th Congressional District, which the GOP-controlled Legislature redrew to help a Republican win.

And within the district that De La Cruz won, her Democratic opponent won by a significant margin in Hidalgo County, the Rio Grande Valley border county that includes McAllen. Vallejo won 55.3% of the vote to De La Cruz’s 42.7%, according to unofficial results from the Texas secretary of state.

Moderate Democrats prevailed in the two other highly contested congressional districts, showing there’s still a lot of ideological grappling and spending to come in the political wrestling match over the region’s Latino electorate.Gilbert Hinojosa, […]

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