Mayra Flores fights to reclaim a Rio Grande Valley seat in Congress as Trump backs a rival | National News

HARLINGEN, Texas (AP) — Only about a dozen people were in a side room of a barbeque joint in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley when Mayra Flores arrived. The former Republican congresswoman was given just one minute to say why she should be sent back to Washington, so she rushed through her stump speech in three minutes, speaking over the loud hum of an icemaker.

It was a humble scene for someone who electrified her party in 2022, when she won a special election to become the first Republican in more than 150 years to represent the Rio Grande Valley in Congress. Although Flores lost two subsequent races, her victory proved that Republicans could win over working-class Hispanic communities that had once been politically written off, and it foreshadowed President Donald Trump’s own surge in the region in 2024.

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