Tejano singer’s candidacy in South Texas may challenge Trump’s Hispanic support
By Carlos Sanchez
The kickoff campaign rally in a renovated, historic movie theater in downtown Edinburg, Texas, the gateway to the Rio Grande Valley, saw a huge line as people waited patiently to meet with a local superstar. He is Bobby Pulido, a two-time Latin Grammy Award-winning Tejano singer whose South Texas celebrity began three decades ago when his very first album went platinum.
Pulido is now wrapping up what he calls his farewell tour to step away from a successful singing career for what some would describe as a different kind of performance: politics. Pulido, a Democrat, is taking on Republican incumbent Monica De La Cruz, who represents Texas’ 15th Congressional District, a district whose lineage traces back to former Vice President and House Speaker John Nance Garner.
Famed Tejano singer Bobby Pulido is a Democratic candidate for the 15th Congressional District in Texas. Photo by Carlos Sanchez for the Overby Center.
Some pundits are labeling this November face-off as one of the most interesting races in the country during a high-stakes congressional election.
De La Cruz is the first Republican elected to this district, once one of the few remaining Democratic strongholds in a solidly red state. The district extends from the South Texas-Mexican border three hours north to the outskirts of San Antonio.
And while her first election in 2022 was largely attributed to the wonders of gerrymandering by a Republican-controlled Texas Legislature, her re-election in 2024 aligned with a shocking win by President Trump in her district’s population center in Hidalgo County.
In fact, Trump set a new high-water mark for Hispanic support among Republicans when he captured 48% of Latino voters nationwide, according to a Pew Research poll, besting the previous record by Texan George W. Bush who captured 44% of the Latino vote in 2004.
In this election, the Texas 15th may prove to be a national barometer of whether Hispanic support for Trump two years ago was an anomaly or if the Republicans have the staying power to sustain the Hispanic vote, which was once written off as loyal to Democrats as the Black vote.
Bowing to Trump’s desires to hold a rare mid-decade redistricting to add as many as five Republican seats in Texas and bolster Trump’s chances of keeping a GOP-controlled Congress, the race in the Texas 15th may also prove to be an example of a miscalculation by the Texas Legislature when it redrew the voting maps of the state.
As Pulido, who was a political science major in St. Mary’s University in San Antonio before dropping out to join his father’s career path as a Tejano singer, points out: the Texas Legislature, in its zeal to target to two Democratically held South Texas districts adjacent to the one De La Cruz represents, carved up Republican neighborhoods from her district to strengthen the GOP presence in the adjacent districts.
That means that two-thirds of the constituents who live in the new 15th Congressional District are voters who do not know De La Cruz, forcing her to essentially run as a candidate seeking a first term with them, Pulido said.
He believes that much of this new voting bloc in the 15th district that De La Cruz must meet and convince to vote for her are already familiar with him because many of them have been fans of his Tejano music.
Pulido is a seasoned stage performer who is a natural on podcasts in contrast to De La Cruz, who speaks in a halting language filled with national talking points that don’t necessarily resonate in a bilingual region that’s over 90 percent Hispanic.
He faces a primary opponent – Harlingen-based Ada Cuellar, an emergency room doctor who actually lives outside of the 15th Congressional District. Federal law does not mandate that a person live in the congressional district in which they represent.
Pulido has not shied from criticizing the Democratic Party and has developed an especially effective schtick: “We’re very aspirational,” Pulido told The Latino Vote podcast. “The people down here do not consider themselves poor. They consider themselves broke. And there’s a big distinction. Because when they’re poor, the image is… ‘Well, we want you to help us out.’ But when you’re broke you say, ‘Tomorrow, I’m going to make it.’”
“And I think the Democratic Party kind of got too concerned with treating people like they’re poor and not like they’re broke.”
Pulido considers himself a rural Texan and believes that just as the Democratic Party has taken the Hispanic vote for granted, so too has the Republican Party in taking the rural vote for granted. Along those lines, he has held a series of Ranch Hall meetings to point out that De La Cruz has never had a single in-person town hall meeting during her tenure in Congress. It’s also an opportunity to feed potential voters good barbeque and play the Tejano music that so many of them love.
He said immigration will remain an issue in November, but he speaks in terms of border reality. “Immigration is a part of life here in the Rio Grande Valley,” he said. “If you’ve been living here in the Rio Grande Valley, at some point you had a friend, somebody that you know, that worked for you that was undocumented, and it was never a problem.”
It’s when migration patterns began to change and more Central Americans began seeking asylum that sentiment changed. Under Trump, he said, those aspirational Latinos who began businesses are suddenly having trouble finding a workforce. Suddenly, aunts and uncles are being deported.
That, combined with the deluge of social media images portraying an aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, forces De La Cruz to run a campaign in a defensive posture.
So far, Pulido has shown no hesitation about discussing culture head on. He calls it the elephant in the room and, while a percentage of his voters are Anglo, he embraces his Latino culture and speaks with a subtle dialect that locals know is homegrown.
And for those who don’t pick up on these language cues, there is always his music. “Years ago, I wrote a song that captures who we really are,” Pulido said during his campaign kickoff rally. “One day I’m going to buy the car of my dreams,” he said, translating the Spanish of his song. “I’m going to buy me the house that I always wanted. And I’ll have a little bit of money to help others,” he said as the crowd began to cheer. “That’s exactly who we are.”
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Carlos Sanchez is a freelance writer based in McAllen, Texas. He is a member of the Overby Center panel of experts.
