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In 2022, U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar narrowly defeated a progressive challenger after the FBI raided his home and office weeks before the primary election. Nearly four years later, the Laredo Democrat remains embroiled in the same bribery controversy tied to the raid — yet things are looking up for him in Texas’ 28th Congressional District.
Ahead of his bid for a 12th term, Cuellar has no strong primary challengers, and his trial has been pushed until after the primary.
Cuellar and his wife are set to stand trial in April for a dozen charges of bribery, money laundering and conspiracy. But despite the legal cloud and Cuellar’s frequent defections from his party, many Democrats see the durable congressman as the only candidate who can withstand a Republican challenger in his district, which President Donald Trump won by 7 percentage points in 2024. Ahead of next week’s filing deadline, Cuellar is looking at a second straight election without viable primary competition — a byproduct not only of the institutional support Cuellar has built over decades in Laredo Democratic politics, but also his party’s fear about holding onto the seat in a region that has shifted dramatically to the right.
For some Democrats, Cuellar’s voting record — which includes votes opposing abortion access and restricting transgender athletes — is a positive, as is his seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
“He’s done very well in keeping both sides happy,” said Webb County Democratic Party Chair Sylvia Bruni. “He’s done a great deal for the district.”
Still, the National Republican Congressional Committee is targeting Cuellar’s seat as a top pickup opportunity in 2026, viewing his indictment as an opportunity to flip the seat red. GOP leaders in Washington also hope Cuellar will be weakened by the new makeup of his district, which was redrawn as part of redistricting approved earlier this year. The district’s new map would eliminate about half of Cuellar’s current constituents, give Trump a 10-point edge and make Cuellar’s path to reelection harder.
The boundaries of Cuellar’s district during the midterms are still up in the air. A federal court blocked Texas from using the new congressional maps last month, but the Supreme Court temporarily restored the new boundaries days later. The high court is expected to rule any day now on what maps will be used for the midterms.
Perhaps the biggest threat to Cuellar’s bid for a 12th term is Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, a Republican who announced his congressional candidacy Tuesday. National Democrats have already started taking aim at Tijerina, promoting a complaint filed with federal election officials last month that alleges Tijerina improperly kept his campaign “under the guise of an exploratory committee” because he wanted to avoid triggering the Texas Constitution’s resign-to-run provision. Tijerina has denied the charge.
A decade after he was elected as a Democrat to lead Webb County, Tijerina switched to the Republican Party last December, weeks after Trump narrowly carried the county — the first GOP presidential nominee to do so since 1912. In an interview on Fox & Friends announcing the switch, Tijerina said the Democratic Party had shifted too far to the left.
Cuellar, for his part, did not seem threatened by the prospect of Webb County’s top elected official jumping into the race.
“He’s just another Republican,” Cuellar said last month. “A lot of Republicans run against me.”
As the GOP has gained traction in South Texas, Cuellar has been able to maintain his political dominance in the region. Last year, Cuellar’s District 28 was one of just 13 congressional seats nationwide that elected a Democrat to the U.S. House while also being carried by Trump. Cuellar secured 53% of the vote in his race, running several points ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ 46% in the district.
Cuellar said he is able to win over independent voters and even some Republicans because they know he goes to Congress to “bring practical results,” rather than chase headlines or engage in partisan mudslinging.
“Once I get elected, I represent everybody,” Cuellar said. “People vote against me. I still support them.”
Widely viewed as one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, Cuellar frequently splits from his party to vote with the GOP. He is the sole anti-abortion Democrat in Congress and has voted with the GOP on bills restricting reproductive rights and tightening border security, among others.
He was one of only six House Democrats to vote for the funding package to end the government shutdown last month, writing on social media that the deal funds essential services that families in South Texas rely on and gives Congress time to negotiate a deal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies.
University of Texas Rio Grande Valley political science professor Mark Kaswan said Cuellar has long been a thorn in the side of Democratic leadership, yet has demonstrated his ability to win reelection time and time again. Since the district leans conservative, Kaswan said, Democrats generally prefer a candidate who sometimes breaks with the party but is able to win, over one who toes the party line but might struggle to get elected.
“He gets reelected because he does align fairly well with his district,” Kaswan said, noting that many voters there consider themselves “conservative Democrats.”
District 28 currently covers a strip of South Texas that stretches from San Antonio to the U.S.-Mexico border, including Cuellar’s home base of Webb County. About 75% of the district is Hispanic, according to U.S. Census data. Under the redrawn congressional map Texas lawmakers approved earlier this year, the district adds voters in Hidalgo County and loses voters in the San Antonio area, bolstering its Republican base.
Some of Cuellar’s electoral durability comes from his status as a political institution in Laredo and Webb County, an area he began representing in the Texas House in 1987. Two of Cuellar’s siblings have held public office there, including his brother, Martin Cuellar, who has been Webb County sheriff for nearly as long as Cuellar has served in Congress. The Laredo City Council considered naming the city’s airport after him in 2022, settling instead for a terminal.
Still, Republicans are hopeful that Cuellar’s impending trial will give them their best shot yet to break through. Though Cuellar already faced an indictment on charges of bribery and money laundering ahead of his 2024 reelection, national Republicans spent little on his race; Cuellar won by just 5.6 percentage points over a self-funded candidate who he outspent more than 3-to-1.
The Department of Justice indicted Cuellar in May 2024, accusing him of accepting $600,000 in bribes from an Azerbaijan-run oil-and-gas company and a Mexican bank. Prosecutors alleged that Cuellar worked to advance U.S. policy favorable to the Azerbaijan government in exchange for payments laundered through consulting contracts. And they accused him of coordinating with a subsidiary of the Mexican bank to push through legislation beneficial to the payday-lending industry.
Two of Cuellar’s political advisors pleaded guilty last year on charges that they conspired to launder $200,000 in bribes from the Mexican bank.
At the request of prosecutors, a federal judge dismissed two charges that alleged Cuellar and his wife were acting as agents of a foreign entity. The judge also rescheduled the couple’s trial for April, when both will face 12 remaining charges.
Cuellar and his wife have denied any wrongdoing. He told The Texas Tribune that he is confident the facts will clear him in court, and insisted his constituents are more focused on what he is doing for District 28 than on his legal troubles.
“Voters don’t ask me about the trial,” he said. “They will judge me on results. Not on rumors, not on politics, but on results.”
Cuellar acknowledged, though, that he expects Republicans to spend a lot of money to try to beat him this time. The NRCC — House Republicans’ campaign arm — has been sure to highlight the Laredo Democrat’s legal woes when talking about the race.
“Cuellar is broke, indicted, and completely out of touch with South Texans’ values,” NRCC spokesperson Reilly Richardson said in a statement. “Cuellar is spending his time fighting off corruption charges and his own political headaches. Voters in South Texas are done with the excuses, and they’ll send him packing next November.”
Jen Ramos, a State Democratic Executive Committee member, is among the progressives in the party who worry that Cuellar’s legal troubles could jeopardize control of his seat. She said his support has been slipping for several years and that she hopes a strong primary challenger will jump into the race.
Last spring, the Texas Democratic Party had planned to vote on a resolution authored by Ramos that would have condemned Cuellar for voting against the interests of the party and for his federal charges. While Ramos ended up pulling the resolution because of legal concerns, she said she stands by the resolution’s contents.
“If we don’t put a good challenger now, we could lose this district,” Ramos said. “I don’t think Henry is that challenger anymore.”
In the shadow of the 2022 FBI raid, Cuellar defeated a progressive primary challenger, Jessica Cisneros, by just a few hundred votes, after defeating her the cycle before by a 2-point margin.
This cycle, less than a week out from the Dec. 8 filing deadline for primary candidates, a few other Democrats have stepped forward to run against Cuellar, including doctor and Army veteran Ricardo Villarreal, businessman Andrew Vantine and mental health professional Ryan Treviño. Another potential challenger, software developer and philanthropist Adriel Ventura López, has also been campaigning online.
“People have tried and failed to defeat Henry Cuellar for over two decades. He has faced down challenge after challenge and come out on top by a comfortable margin every time,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Madison Andrus said in a statement. “He’s not going anywhere.”
But experts say elections in South Texas have become more competitive in recent years and that defeating Cuellar is in reach for the Republican Party.
“Republicans would be wise to run a strong candidate because they definitely have a shot,” said Álvaro Corral, an assistant professor of political science at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
While Cuellar insists voters do not care about his looming trial, Corral said that constituents in District 28 do. The congressman is in legal limbo, Corral said, and a lot could still change before the primary and general elections.
“Just because they haven’t necessarily had an effect yet, that doesn’t mean they won’t have an effect,” Corral said. “I actually think that the legal troubles long term probably are quite the cause for concern.”
Disclosure: University of Texas – Rio Grande Valley has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.