Bobby Pulido isn\u2019t great at politics. At least, not yet. He understands issues well enough\u2014he can speak passionately, knowledgeably, and extemporaneously about immigration, healthcare, and guns\u2014but his speech lacks the smooth patter of an experienced campaigner. When he answers questions from a potential voter, he has a Biden-esque tendency to gear up like he\u2019s about to blow the mind of the town hall attendee who asked it, sometimes starting a response with a condescending \u201cGuess what?\u201d He comes off like someone used to being the political buff in rooms full of musicians; that\u2019s less likely to be the case when he\u2019s taking a question from someone who has turned up at a town hall fourteen months before an election.<\/p>\n
What Pulido does have right now is a famous name, especially in Texas\u2019s Fifteenth Congressional District, which the musician-turned-Democratic-politician seeks to represent. Once a reliable Democratic stronghold<\/a> in the Rio Grande Valley, the district elected Republican Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz<\/a>, the first GOP official to hold the seat, in 2022, then went for Trump in 2024. The district extends from the border in South Texas all the way up to Gonzales, some four hours north.<\/p>\n Pulido<\/a>, the son of Tejano legend Roberto Pulido, grew up in Edinburg and began his own musical career in the nineties as a teen idol. He\u2019s still winding down the final dates of a farewell tour that\u2019s taken him to cities all over both sides of the border. He has a Latin Grammy and a stack of Tejano Music Awards; for his August farewell show in Mexico City, he headlined the iconic, 10,000-capacity Auditorio Nacional. But he was also a political science major during his stint at St. Mary\u2019s University, and his interest in politics was sincere, especially as he found himself disagreeing with national Democrats on issues like immigration.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI believe I know what it takes to win, and it\u2019s not what they\u2019ve been doing,\u201d Pulido said over a smoothie at CoffeeZone Bistro in Edinburg. For years, he considered a career shift, but it didn\u2019t become real for him until 2022. That November, he was invited to spend election day with Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, who\u2019d represented the Fifteenth since 2017 and had just jumped districts<\/a> to the Thirty-Fourth, after the first redistricting of the decade tilted it to favor De La Cruz, whom Gonzalez narrowly defeated in 2020. \u201cI was like a kid in a candy store asking him a bunch of questions about different politicians and policies. I was very curious about the whole thing, and his wife, Lorena, asked me, \u2018Have you ever considered running?\u2019\u201d That, Pulido said, was his dream\u2014but he had a good life as a musician. Still, he went home and relayed the conversation to his wife, Mariana.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShe said, \u2018You\u2019d be great at that, but would you really want to?\u2019 And I said, \u2018I\u2019ve always wanted to, but I never was arrogant enough to feel like I was the guy for that,\u2019\u201d Pulido recalled. \u201cAnd she said, \u2018Well, I haven\u2019t seen you write a song in a while.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Pulido announced his candidacy on September 17 with a bare-bones team. His campaign manager, Abel Prado, previously worked for South Texas Democrats including Congressman Henry Cuellar<\/a> and state Senator Eddie Lucio Jr.<\/a> but is running his first campaign. When Pulido held its first official event at the Cielito Lindo dance hall in Mathis, he forgot to pass out yard signs until attendees noticed them stacked in the corner of the room.\u00a0<\/p>\n That Pulido launched his campaign in a small town two hours north of the Valley helped signal what type of campaign he would be running. Mathis isn\u2019t a part of the district that suddenly flipped from blue to red; it\u2019s been reliably conservative since 2011. Voters in San Patricio County cast ballots for Donald Trump by a roughly two-to-one margin in the last three Presidential elections, and Mitt Romney and John McCain won the majority before that. Prado told me it was a natural place for the race to start, because for Pulido to win, he\u2019ll need to not only pull big numbers in his home community in the Valley but also convince some GOP voters in the beet-red northern part of the district that he\u2019s their kind of guy. Luckily for the candidate, Latino voters who cast ballots for Republicans listen to Tejano music, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe name Pulido is very well known,\u201d Patricia Avila, executive director of the Texas Conjunto Music Hall of Fame & Museum in San Benito, explained. \u201cA lot of people grew up listening to Bobby Pulido\u2019s music and especially his dad\u2019s music. His family has been in the music business for over sixty years.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Pulido doesn\u2019t think the familiarity many voters have with him because of his music career will automatically win them over, but he believes it might persuade them to give him a shot. It\u2019s a model that\u2019s been successful for Republicans in Democratic strongholds\u2014Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, and Arnold Schwarzenegger all won elections in California\u2014but hasn\u2019t been tested much by Democrats in red states. \u201cIt opens the door, but you don\u2019t get in the house,\u201d he explained. \u201cWhat\u2019s happened a lot of times to people in my party when they run, they don\u2019t even get the door open. But it\u2019s still not a guarantee.\u201d Pulido cites Trump\u2019s ability to connect with voters as an unlikely inspiration. \u201cI give Trump credit\u2014he has star power, but the guy\u2019s a hard worker, man. If he had just gone \u2018Vote for me, I\u2019m famous,\u2019 I don\u2019t think he [would have won].\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Pulido believes his experience performing lends itself to campaigning. \u201cIn music, you look for a connection. You\u2019re reading people. You don\u2019t get to know them, but you know them. You look in the crowd and you can kind of get an idea of that person,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely very similar to campaigning.\u201d It\u2019s also different, though\u2014in campaigning, the goal is persuasion, while in performing, the goal is delivering to a crowd that has already bought in. It\u2019s not clear yet if Pulido can pivot from the former to the latter.\u00a0<\/p>\n When it comes to policy, Pulido\u2019s a Democrat in the Blue Dog tradition. \u201cThey\u2019ve painted a narrative of what a Democrat is. It\u2019s not who I am,\u201d he says. \u201c\u2018No, I am not an atheist. I love God. I\u2019m a Catholic. I\u2019m not pushing to turn their kids trans.\u201d He likes talking about his\u00a0 collection of guns, his love of hunting, and the importance of the oil and gas industry to the district. When asked about abortion at the town hall in Mathis, he described Texas\u2019s ban on the procedure as \u201cdraconian;\u201d but he also described himself as pro-life and stressed personal responsibility, explaining that if his own teenage son got someone pregnant, he\u2019d urge him to \u201cman up\u201d and take care of the baby.<\/p>\n