South Texas voters who embraced President Donald Trump two years ago have largely soured on the two-term president, and many of them are now smiling on a Tejano music star who\u2019s running for Congress as a Democrat, according to a new poll.<\/p>\n
Less than two weeks before a pivotal midterm election, Bobby Pulido appears poised to flip the 15th Congressional District seat in this heavily Latino district where Trump dominated in 2024.<\/p>\n
The poll\u2014commissioned by the San Antonio Express-News, El Pais and the nonprofit Puente News Collaborative\u2014found that likely voters favor Pulido 51% to 44% over Republican U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz.<\/p>\n
Among Latino likely voters, the gap widens, with about 57% for Pulido, compared with 40% for De La Cruz. The Latino population accounts for about 82% of 15th District residents and 65% of its likely voters.<\/p>\n
Pulido is also pulling ahead among independents, 55% to 33%.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz<\/p>\n
Congressional Office of Monica de la Cruz<\/p>\n
The poll, conducted in Spanish and English, was carried out Oct. 13-16 by Texas Southern University\u2019s Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center. The survey has a margin of error of 3.8%, with 5% of voters still undecided.<\/p>\n
The Cook Political Report rates the 15th District race in the Rio Grande Valley as a toss-up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the economy was booming then Republicans would be doing much better in South Texas,\u201d said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University and co-director of the poll. \u201cBut the economy is not booming.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moreover, Jones added, the 15th\u2019s new district map, part of the president\u2019s gerrymandering plan to add more Republicans in the U.S. House, may not be working out as envisioned.<\/p>\n
Redrawn in the summer of 2025 by the Texas Legislature, the 15th District now cuts north from a smaller swath of the Borderland to the growing and conservative counties east of San Antonio.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe false assumption that Republicans made was that Latinos would vote the same way they voted for Trump in 2024, but that was very unrealistic. Latinos remain a swing vote,\u201d Jones said. \u201cTrump is underwater in the Valley, by 10 points. His bubble is bursting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the poll\u2019s key findings:<\/p>\n
52% of likely voters in the 15th District report being worse off economically than a year ago, while 21% report being better off and 27% report being about the same.<\/p>\n
57% of likely voters disapprove of Trump\u2019s handling of the economy. Just 37% approved.<\/p>\n
51% of likely voters disapprove of the president\u2019s handling of immigration and border security, while 47% approved.<\/p>\n
Separately, in the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races\u2014and among the district\u2019s likely voters\u2014Gov. Greg Abbott leads Democrat Gina Hinojosa 49% to 46% and Democrat James Talarico is favored over Republican Ken Paxton 48% to 46%, according to a poll by the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs.<\/p>\n
If Pulido wins, he will have surfed a wave-like, nationwide retreat of the Latino vote from Trump and the Republican Party, analysts say. That swing has upended Republican plans and underscored the growing importance of the fickle\u2014or persuadable\u2014Mexican American voter.<\/p>\n
Many of these voters don\u2019t have strong ties to either major party.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, Pulido has been running less as a Democrat and more on his personal popularity and a rejection of Trump, who won the district by 18 percentage points in 2024.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to Washington to serve a political party. I\u2019m going to serve you,\u201d the two-time Latin Grammy Award winner told some 9,000 rambunctious fans at an Oct. 17 concert in his hometown of Edinburg, which he said was the last one of his 31-year music career. \u201cI made music for me. I\u2019m running for Congress for you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much of Trump\u2019s appeal two years ago may have been in his vows to fix what many here and nationwide saw as a broken border. This year, with undocumented border crossings reduced to a trickle, voters\u2019 focus appears to have shifted from border security to the high cost of gas and groceries, according to the El Pais-Express News-Puente News poll.<\/p>\n
The fear factor\u2014a sense of chaos and conflict at the border\u2014isn\u2019t dominating the election cycle. Instead, ICE raids are increasingly seen as a drag on the economy, Jones said, pointing to the construction and trade sectors.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of industries that depend on undocumented immigrants have simply stopped functioning,\u201d Jones said. \u201cHouses aren\u2019t being built, and therefore construction supplies aren\u2019t being purchased.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Promises turned out to be lies\u2019<\/p>\n
Pulido is hugely popular across South Texas. Nearly everyone seems to have a personal connection with the singer or claims to. That\u2019s why he\u2019s largely built his campaign around singing at dozens of quince\u00f1eras\u2014coming-out parties for 15-year-old girls that are cultural touchstones.<\/p>\n
Though De La Cruz is also from the Valley, her support is stronger in counties farther upstate and ranchlands away from the border, according to the poll results. Her campaign did not respond to interview requests.<\/p>\n
Looking like a jigsaw puzzle piece, the 15th District runs north from the border through sparsely populated, brush-choked oil and cattle country. The Stars and Stripes dominate among the few flags flying on ranch gates and along urban streets. Deeply proud of their Mexican heritage, many district residents also are resolutely American.<\/p>\n
Lourdes Trevino-Cantu, 73, a retired high school librarian and lifelong resident of Falfurrias, now runs the town\u2019s small but intriguing Heritage Museum, which focuses heavily on ranch life, the Texas Rangers and Mexican American culture.<\/p>\n
With the decline of ranching and the local oil industry, many Anglos who once held sway here\u2014in politics and business\u2014have moved away, Trevino-Cantu said. The Mexican Americans who remain feel their political allegiances pulled left and right.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I wasn\u2019t personally connected to Bobby Pulido, I would probably be confused,\u201d she said. \u201cThose who voted for Trump last time are going to vote for Trump again because they don\u2019t want to admit they were wrong. They believed in his promises that turned out to be lies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A terrible policy\u2019<\/p>\n
Ads on televisions in restaurants in Falfurrias, George West and other district towns warn that Pulido, Talarico and other Democrats are \u201cradical\u201d and \u201cdangerous\u201d Texans. One ad advises South Texans and Texans in general to vote Republican to get Trump\u2019s agenda \u201cacross the line.\u201d<\/p>\n
Valley businessman Abad Morales, 36, said he\u2019s done with fear-mongering. Though he supports tightening enforcement on the border, Morales has been outraged by detention and deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement of undocumented migrants who are otherwise law-abiding.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to lie, I did vote for Trump,\u201d said Morales, who\u2019s running as a Democrat for city commission in Weslaco, a border city in the 15th District. \u201cI am not against controlling the border, but what they are doing with deporting people is different.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an interview, Pulido said he supports tougher border enforcement. But he is also calling for immigration reform to help border families as well as farmers, builders and other businesses that depend on migrant labor.<\/p>\n
\u201cCatch and release,\u201d the Biden-era policy that allowed entry to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, \u201cwas a terrible policy, terrible,\u201d Pulido has said. Apart from attracting millions of poor migrants to the border, the policy resulted in log-jammed immigration courts and delayed or derailed residency claims by residents or their relatives.<\/p>\n
\u2018A rejection of both parties\u2019<\/p>\n
Pulido\u2019s bid to unseat De La Cruz, an ally of Trump, is among the most watched races in the country because it might be indicating another shift in the Latino vote. Long a bastion of the Democratic Party, the Mexican American vote shifted dramatically in favor of Trump and the GOP in the past decade.<\/p>\n
Latino voters are becoming even more crucial as they look for a political home.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat appears to be happening is more of a de-alignment than a re-alignment,\u201d said Mike Madrid, a Republican political analyst and expert on the Latino vote. He co-founded the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really more rejection of both parties,\u201d Madrid said.<\/p>\n
African American voters are largely sticking with the Democrats, Madrid said. The Republican base\u2014working class, white and non-college voters\u2014are sticking with the party, despite economic pain, the Iran war and other worries, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only group that\u2019s moving are Latinos, and that swing you\u2019re going to see a full display in the San Joaquin Valley, Allentown (Pennsylvania) and Rio Grande Valley,\u201d Madrid said. \u201cIn many ways, the valleys in Pennsylvania, California and Texas represent the future of this country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018Almost at the finish line\u2019<\/p>\n
Inside Bert Ogden Arena, Tejano music fan Martha Garcia, 54, anxiously waited for Pulido\u2019s \u201cLa Ultima Desvelada\u201d\u2014the last all night party\u2014to begin. She had mixed emotions.<\/p>\n
A lifelong fan of Pulido, she said she felt \u201csad that he won\u2019t sing again,\u201d but \u201cI don\u2019t know him as a politician. I don\u2019t know how or what he will do.\u201d<\/p>\n
She remains unsure if she\u2019ll vote this time around. \u201cThe Democrats ignored us, but the Republicans are killing us\u201d with high prices, tariffs and those \u201cugly ICE raids,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope if Bobby wins he can turn the page,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Pulido\u2019s chances may rest on getting people like Garcia to cast a ballot. About half of registered voters didn\u2019t bother in the 2024 presidential election.<\/p>\n
While he\u2019s popular in the borderlands, turnout in the northern parts of the 15th District could overwhelm his support.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re almost at the finish line,\u201d Pulido said at a recent event for other local candidates. \u201cBut if you don\u2019t vote, we can lose this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Texas voters who embraced President Donald Trump two years ago have largely soured on the two-term president,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472625,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139,160158],"class_list":["post-472624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-puente_collaborative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472624","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=472624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}