{"id":4698,"date":"2025-10-15T11:28:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/4698\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T11:28:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:28:12","slug":"tejano-star-and-democrat-bobby-pulido-running-for-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/4698\/","title":{"rendered":"Tejano star and Democrat Bobby Pulido running for Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sign up for The Brief<\/a>, The Texas Tribune\u2019s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.\n<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Tejano musician Bobby Pulido is running for Texas\u2019 15th Congressional District, he announced Wednesday, giving Democrats their best \u2014 and potentially only \u2014 opportunity to flip a Republican-held seat in 2026.<\/p>\n

Pulido, a singer and Edinburg native who has been making Tejano music for three decades, is running to take on Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, in a district that stretches from McAllen to Central Texas. It will be an uphill climb for any Democrat \u2014 the district voted for President Donald Trump by an 18% margin last year \u2014 but his musical popularity and South Texas bona fides have Democrats enthused about his prospects.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve spent decades using my voice to bring people together,\u201d Pulido said in his launch video. \u201cNow, I\u2019ll use it to fight for the place we call home, because this is the only stage that really matters \u2014 and it\u2019s worth fighting for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Known for hit songs from the 1990s like \u201cDesvelado\u201d and \u201cSe Muri\u00f3 de Amor\u201d, Pulido is a five-time Latin Grammy nominee and 22-time Tejano Music Award nominee, having won eight times early in his career.<\/p>\n

The 15th Congressional District has been Republicans\u2019 greatest success story with Texas Latino voters. After flipping the district in 2022, De La Cruz improved her margins last year, winning by 14 percentage points despite investment from Democrats in challenger Michelle Vallejo. The district has been on Democrats\u2019 target list for the past two cycles, but De La Cruz has continued to win comfortably.<\/p>\n

To meet De La Cruz in a general election, Pulido will first face a primary<\/a> against Ada Cuellar, a Harlingen emergency physician unrelated to South Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.<\/p>\n

In a statement, De La Cruz said she was focused on legislating rather than next year’s midterms.<\/p>\n

“There will be plenty of time for politics next year,” she said. “Right now, I\u2019m delivering on what South Texans just elected me to do: securing millions of dollars to grow our local economy, strengthening our police and border security, saving our farms, and protecting Social Security and Medicare. These are my priorities, and I\u2019m proud of the results we\u2019ve achieved for our community through common-sense leadership.”<\/p>\n

In his launch video, Pulido lamented rising costs, corporate greed and immigration policy that rips families apart and has endangered the South Texas economy. He also downplayed partisanship, saying he was neither \u201cTeam Red or Team Blue.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview, Pulido said issues vary by community, from water rights to the cost of health care. But he said he\u2019s heard a lot about immigration \u2014 including from an economic perspective \u2014 and wants to make a push for comprehensive immigration reform, coupled with removing criminals in the country illegally, a focus of his campaign. He cited decreased tourism from Mexico and an increased culture of fear in immigrant communities as slowing the South Texas economy.<\/p>\n

\u201cLots of farmers that I know, and people in the construction industry, because of the lack of immigration reform, are very frustrated right now because they don’t have people to work,\u201d Pulido said. \u201cThey offer people more money, they do everything they can. They still can’t field a crew.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Texas Legislature\u2019s mid-cycle redistricting changed the shape of the district somewhat. The 15th District now contains the southeastern part of Hidalgo County \u2014 including about half of McAllen and cities like Weslaco and Mercedes \u2014 instead of the southwestern portion. The redraw also took De La Cruz out of the San Antonio suburbs, instead adding smaller Central Texas counties and areas closer to the Gulf including San Patricio County and parts of Refugio County.<\/p>\n

The district\u2019s partisanship is similar \u2014 Trump\u2019s vote share increased by 1% \u2014 but Democrats believe its heavily-Latino makeup and weightedness towards South Texas could give the right Democrat a chance. De La Cruz lost the counties that she performed best in \u2014 Guadalupe, Karnes and Wilson \u2014 and added the portion of Hidalgo County where McAllen Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a neighboring Democrat, did best last year.<\/p>\n

To offset those areas, the rural Central Texas counties that the 15th Congressional District now includes routinely vote for Republicans by enormous margins.<\/p>\n

In an interview, Pulido said he had spent the summer, since forming an exploratory committee<\/a>, traveling throughout the district, including to nine of its 11 counties. He said he found people in Central Texas to be more open to his message than he expected, and that their shared values outweighed partisan differences \u2014 including in small communities like Yorktown, in DeWitt County, where his great-grandmother is from and where 83% of voters chose Trump in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can gerrymander the district or the people, but you can’t gerrymander Tejano culture,\u201d Pulido said. \u201cTejano culture is where my district really is, and I feel like I have a lot in common with the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

A poll of the district, conducted by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling for the Democratic super PAC House Majority PAC and shared with The Texas Tribune, found De La Cruz leading Pulido by 3 percentage points, with 21% of voters undecided. Conducted last week, the poll\u2019s sample of 533 voters was made up of 42% Republicans, 32% Democrats and 26% independents.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez, a friend of Pulido, said he believes Hispanic voters \u2014 who make up 75% of the district\u2019s citizen voting age population \u2014 across the district will be attracted to the Democrat.<\/p>\n

\u201c[De La Cruz] always loses the Valley,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cHe\u2019s gonna win big\u2026and then all those rural counties that are like Tejano, Latino \u2014 but more country, more conservative \u2014 are going to love him. He\u2019s one of those candidates that you get once every 50 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three featured TribFest speakers confirmed! You don\u2019t want to miss \u200b\u200bDeb Haaland, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior and 2026 Democratic candidate for New Mexico governor; state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston and 2026 Republican candidate for Texas Attorney General; and Jake Tapper, anchor of CNN\u2019s \u201cThe Lead\u201d and \u201cState of the Union\u201d at the 15th annual Texas Tribune Festival, Nov. 13\u201315 in downtown Austin. Get your tickets today!<\/a><\/p>\n

TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2671,5023,287,27,1561,29,28,1560,292],"class_list":["post-4698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-congress","tag-monica-de-la-cruz","tag-politics","tag-texas","tag-texas-government","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-policy","tag-texas-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4698","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=4698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}