This article was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom dedicated to high-quality coverage from the U.S.-Mexico border.<\/p>\n
EDINBURG – Sitting inside the taquer\u00eda El Port\u00f3n here in Edinburg, Texas, tuba-tinged banda music wafting through the speakers, Bobby Pulido could easily pass for one of the many South Texas Latinos who drifted toward Donald Trump in the past two presidential races. He\u2019s a rancher who spends time at the shooting range. Clad in a plaid shirt, cowboy boots and khaki baseball cap that reads \u201cTexican,\u201d Pulido talks easily about faith, family and personal responsibility.<\/p>\n
But, he insists, the Democratic Party is still his party.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey shouldn\u2019t own the flag,\u201d Pulido said of Republicans. \u201cI love my country, and I\u2019d die for it. And I love God, and I embrace my faith. That\u2019s who I am. But I\u2019m also empathetic, and I also want to help people. And I believe that the little guy sometimes needs \u2014 like my dad did \u2014 needs a helping hand to get their family out of poverty. That\u2019s our spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the country heads into another volatile election season, Texas\u2019 15th Congressional District \u2014 stretching nearly 250 miles from the Rio Grande Valley north toward Central Texas \u2014 has become a testing ground for one of the biggest questions facing the Democratic Party: Can it win back Latino voters who swung right in recent elections?<\/p>\n
Pulido, 52, the high-profile Tejano singer best known for his 1990s hit \u201cDesvelado,\u201d is widely viewed as the frontrunner in Tuesday\u2019s Democratic Party primary in a district redrawn in 2022 to favor Republicans \u2014 but one of the few in Texas that Democrats hope they can flip.<\/p>\n
The race has attracted national attention as a case study in how the party might reconnect with disaffected, hard-to-pin working-class Mexican American voters.<\/p>\n
Pulido is not the only charismatic product of the Valley\u2019s working class in this race, however. His opponent, emergency room physician Ada Cuellar, 44, argues she is also capable of appealing beyond party lines. While she doesn\u2019t like to label herself ideologically, some of her positions place her further left than Pulido\u2019s self-declared Democratic conservatism.<\/p>\n
Cuellar has an equally inspiring personal story that reflects the dreams many of the Valley\u2019s working families hold for their children. Originally from Weslaco, she recently earned a law degree while tending to patients and raising her 12-year-old daughter as a single mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a kid who grew up low-income and relied on public education,\u201d she said. \u201cI was a WIC program recipient, and then growing up, I was a Pell grant recipient. I see that now these things are being attacked by the Trump administration. Benefits that would have helped a kid like me, right now they\u2019re being cut.\u201d<\/p>\n
She describes herself as anti-corruption and anti-establishment and takes firmer stances than Pulido on issues such as codifying abortion rights. She favors dismantling ICE, leaving immigration enforcement to other agencies with greater trust.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemocrats are excited about me because I\u2019m a fighter,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd interestingly, when talking to Republicans, they also are excited about the same thing, even if they don\u2019t align with every single position that I take.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite her political attributes, a poll shared with Politico in January showed Cuellar running a solid second, facing an uphill battle against Pulido\u2019s celebrity status and high media profile.<\/p>\n
The son of famed conjunto musician Roberto Pulido \u2014a former migrant farmworker who worked his way through college \u2014Bobby Pulido grew up in a political family reflective of the Democratic Party establishment that has long dominated the Valley.<\/p>\n
His uncle, Eloy Pulido, was a county judge. In high school, Bobby Pulido was selected by his teachers to attend Texas Boys State, a prestigious civic leadership program, and later studied political science at St. Mary\u2019s University in San Antonio.<\/p>\n
With these deep roots in politics, he assumed he might one day run for office.<\/p>\n
But in the mid-1990s, major record labels were searching for the next Selena-type sensation. When Pulido\u2019s father invited him to record a duet, executives heard him and offered a deal he couldn\u2019t resist. He left college a year shy of graduating and became one of Tejano music\u2019s biggest stars, producing 18 albums, winning two Latin Grammy awards, and touring the U.S. and Mexico.<\/p>\n
Now, three decades later, the father of four hopes to translate his cultural capital into political momentum.<\/p>\n
On the campaign trail, Pulido has hosted what he calls \u201cranch halls\u201d instead of town halls. He appears in his signature cowboy hat and boots, sometimes breaking into song at the end of his speeches. His campaign ads emphasize that he\u2019s \u201cnot team red, not team blue, team you.\u201d<\/p>\n
He argues that Latino voters in the Valley defy easy partisan labels.<\/p>\n
An in-depth study in 2020 by the Texas Organizing Project Education Fund found that many Latino voters hold weak partisan attachment, even when they regularly vote for one party. Rather than aligning wholesale with a platform, respondents often described weighing issues individually \u2014 immigration, healthcare, taxes, education \u2014 and basing votes on who is running at any given moment.<\/p>\n
Equis Research, a national firm that studies Latino voters, has similarly argued that Latinos should be understood less as a guaranteed Democratic block and more as persuadable swing voters.<\/p>\n
That pattern is visible in South Texas. In 2024, some Valley voters supported Trump at the top of the ticket while backing Democrats in local and congressional races.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate this narrative that South Texas is red,\u201d Pulido said. \u201cI don\u2019t think the people are red. I think they care about the candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The four counties that make up the Valley, which has more than 1.3 million mostly Latino residents, had not voted Republican in a presidential race since the late 1800s. That shifted dramatically when Trump made moderate gains in 2020 \u2014then markedly larger ones four years later.<\/p>\n
In Hidalgo County, where District 15 is anchored, he went from drawing 28% of the vote in 2016 to 51% in 2024.<\/p>\n
Political pundits and the media often oversimplify the Latino electorate, and Pulido rejects the argument that the shift was mostly about the economy and immigration.<\/p>\n
He believes cultural conservatism \u2014 including debates over gender identity \u2014 resonated with many Valley voters deeply rooted in church, family and a Tejano identity, while shielding them from the overt discrimination that Latinos face in other communities where they are the minority.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t feel the racism because we\u2019re all Hispanics, predominantly,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you just think, \u2018It\u2019s conservatism. I go to church, I love God. I want tax cuts, have the government staying out of my business.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cYou don\u2019t understand how many people down here would tell me stuff about biological men playing in women\u2019s sports, and none of them had ever experienced that, or even known of any situation where it happened.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a region where many Mexican American families like Pulido\u2019s go back generations \u2014 in some cases to before the land was part of the United States \u2014 cultural identity and party affiliation do not always move together.<\/p>\n
Pulido sees himself in that middle space. He\u2019s confident he can bring some Trump supporters back to the political center with a focus on working-class concerns like healthcare access and cost of living.<\/p>\n
He said programs that focus solely on people living in poverty create resentment among people who earn just enough to disqualify them, yet still struggle to make ends meet.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we have to do something about catering our message more to the middle class and the working class,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause they feel like they have to work two jobs just to make it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pulido believes his advantage is his friendships across party lines, including with Border Patrol agents and Trump voters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most important thing for me as a Democrat that did not vote for Donald Trump is I\u2019ve learned how to talk to people that did,\u201d he said. \u201cThey feel I don\u2019t disrespect them, and I don\u2019t look down on them. And I don\u2019t think I\u2019m better than they are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pulido\u2019s celebrity status and his ability to code-switch politically are formidable. Yet Cuellar has mounted a serious campaign, self-funding television and radio ads while criticizing his establishment endorsements and old social media posts in which he made sexist remarks and boasted that a family friend who was a judge dismissed a speeding ticket.<\/p>\n
She argues that longtime Democratic power brokers in the Valley who are backing Pulido are the same ones who contributed to voter disillusionment that helped Republicans flip the district.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a mistake to think that he\u2019s the only candidate that can win this district,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This week\u2019s winner will face Republican U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz in November. She flipped the district in 2022 after Texas Republicans redrew its boundaries, and won again in 2024 by 14 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is absolutely winnable,\u201d Pulido said. \u201cBut I\u2019m the underdog, I get it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cecilia Ball\u00ed is a journalist and cultural anthropologist based in San Antonio. She has written about the border for 30 years, and is writing a narrative nonfiction book about high school mariachis in Starr County, Texas.<\/p>\n
Story was edited by Ricardo Sandoval<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article was co-published with Puente News Collaborative, a bilingual nonprofit newsroom dedicated to high-quality coverage from the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[13909,18830,74859,138,140,139,74857,287,74858,74860,27,464],"class_list":{"0":"post-187570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-el-paso","8":"tag-bobby-pulido","9":"tag-cost-of-living","10":"tag-democratic-party-united-states","11":"tag-el-paso","12":"tag-el-paso-headlines","13":"tag-el-paso-news","14":"tag-hispanic-and-latino-americans","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-republican-party-united-states","17":"tag-tejanos","18":"tag-texas","19":"tag-united-states"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}