U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, appearing on “The Joe Pags Show” in March, acknowledged having an affair in 2024 with then-congressional staffer Regina Santos-Aviles. Four years earlier, Gonzales pursued a sexual relationship with a campaign staffer, text messages obtained by the San Antonio Express-News show.
Joe Pags Show
U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio, abandoned his re-election campaign in March after acknowledging an affair with a married congressional staffer who later committed suicide. Gonzales had dodged questions about the affair for months.
Blaine Young/Contributor
U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales and staffer Regina Santos-Aviles in an undated selfie. Santos-Aviles ran Gonzales’ regional district office in Uvalde. She had an affair with the married congressman in 2024. She committed suicide last year at age 35. She was married and had an eight-year-old son.
Bobby Barrera
Late on a June night in 2020, amid a nail-biter of a GOP primary runoff, then-congressional candidate Tony Gonzales quickly turned a conversation with his campaign’s political director from casual to intimate.
Gonzales texted that she was a “smart girl” in response to frustrations she had expressed about dating. He used a diamond emoji to convey that she was special and shouldn’t “settle.”
Then, he asked when she normally went to sleep. Next, he asked what she would wear to bed.
Soon, it was “What kind of panties do you wear?”
Within hours, the married Navy veteran from San Antonio was asking for nude photos and describing how he wanted to have sex with her and have her “squeeze my balls.”
At the end of the night, after she replied “Nope” to yet another request for a photo, he replied, “47 nos is about my limit.”
The next day, the father of six again asked for a picture. And again the day after.
“I know what I want and won’t stop until I get it,” he said in a text on June 15, 2020.
She responded with a facepalm emoji. “You better do that in Congress,” she said. “And take me with you.”
The previously-unreported messages — and hundreds of others obtained by the San Antonio Express-News — show the congressman pursued a sexual relationship with a subordinate years before his 2024 affair with a married congressional staffer who later died by suicide.
In these text messages from June 2020, then-congressional candidate Tony Gonzales engaged in sexual banter with the political director of his campaign. Messages sent by Gonzales are in gray. Her replies are in blue.
Staff graphic by Monte Bach
READ MORE: Tony Gonzales admits affair with aide Regina Ann Santos-Aviles
That later liaison, with Regina Santos-Aviles – along with lewd texts that Gonzales sent to her – was made public this year by the San Antonio Express-News, provoking a furor that led House Republican leaders to disown Gonzales and force him to abandon his campaign for a fourth term. He will serve out the remainder of his term through January.
In the texts Gonzales sent Santos-Aviles in 2024, he repeatedly pushed her to send “sexy pics” and described his favorite sexual positions, then asked for an in-person meetup. He acknowledged the affair in a March 4 interview on “The Joe Pags Show,” a conservative talk show, calling the relationship a “mistake” and “a lapse in judgment.”
In the texts from 2020, Gonzales asked his campaign’s political director more than a dozen times to send nude photos over a period of three days, and persisted each time she declined. He pushed her to reveal more of herself after she sent two images that concealed most of her body.
Gonzales also attempted to initiate a sexual relationship over several weeks, the messages show. Though he twice met with the staffer at her home to discuss work, their relationship never became physical, according to the texts and an interview she gave to the Express-News.
“We didn’t so much as touch,” said the staffer, who asked not to be named, citing concerns about her and her family’s privacy. The Express-News verified that the texts were sent from Gonzales’ cell phone number, and campaign finance filings show the staffer worked on his campaign.
Neither Gonzales nor his congressional office responded to a detailed list of questions submitted by the newspaper.
Like Gonzales, his 2020 political director had risen through the ranks in the military, serving as an officer in the Army and later working as a defense contractor. She had worked on one congressional campaign before Gonzales’. She identifies as a staunch conservative, with views to the right of the San Antonio Republican’s comparatively moderate brand. She was single at the time of the exchanges and a decade older than Gonzales.
READ MORE: Tony Gonzales is out. Here’s what to know about Brandon Herrera and his bid for Congress.
She said Gonzales’ messages made her uncomfortable, but not enough to prompt her to resign from the campaign. She stayed on through Election Day of that year, but she and Gonzales parted ways over political differences after he took office in January 2021. She now volunteers for Brandon Herrera, the conservative YouTube influencer and gun activist who challenged Gonzales in the March 2026 primary election and became the party’s nominee when he dropped out.
She said she decided to come forward with her own account after learning that Santos-Aviles, who ran Gonzales’ regional district office in Uvalde, had died last September after setting herself on fire. (Gonzales has insisted his affair with Santos-Aviles played no role in her suicide, and police records show she told responding officers she did it because her husband had been unfaithful.)
“He obviously pursued, pursued, pursued her like he did with me,” the former campaign staffer told the Express-News. “I never took him serious… It wasn’t until this poor girl died that I thought, ‘No, this guy is pure evil.’”
She added, “This behavior needs to stop.”
The text messages
In text conversations from June 13 and June 15, 2020, Tony Gonzales probed whether the political director of his congressional campaign would be interested in having sex or sharing nude photos of herself. “I know what I want and won’t stop until I get it!” he wrote at one point. Gonzales’ messages are in gray. Hers are in blue.
Staff graphic by Monte Bach
In 2020, Gonzales was a first-time candidate running for a toss-up congressional seat long held by moderate Republican Will Hurd, who was retiring. Gonzales sunk his savings into the effort, loaning $65,000 to his campaign.
The staffer joined Gonzales’ campaign as a volunteer around April 2020, she said, and Gonzales hired her as his political director in June. She received her first paycheck in mid-July, according to Gonzales’ campaign finance filings.
Their explicit conversations began in June, when the texts indicate Gonzales first proposed that they sleep together, and ended a month later, when he seems to have made a final overture for sex.
On June 13, 2020, he asked what she wore to bed and whether he could come over for a drink late at night “without doing anything.”
“Yes!!!” she responded.
He pressed her for details about her underwear and asked her to “show” him her body.
He went to her home around 11:00 p.m., according to the messages, then texted her a hypothetical after leaving:
“Okay you have two options… I left (as I did) and we continue the mystery
“I stayed and we f—ed like rabbits
“Which one would you choose?”
She replied, “Leave. And let the mystery build,” she said. He agreed.
Later, Gonzales asked if she wanted him to come over a second time that night.
“If I come over though your panties are coming off,” he wrote.
She did not answer directly, instead saying “lol. I never wear panties with leggings!” At the end of the exchange, she said, “We need to sleep,” and added, “nite nite chief.”
The two met again at her home the next night, but in the texts, both indicated nothing physical happened. After their June 14 meetup, Gonzales texted her that he was upset.
“You didn’t want me there,” he wrote on June 15, alluding to their meetup the night before. “More focused on me leaving than staying… Just protecting me. I get it.”
“Yes,” she said, but added, “I don’t invite anybody over that I don’t want over.”
She also told him he “got weird last night.”
“I don’t do well not being wanted,” he replied before again asking her for a picture. She didn’t send one.
At one point, he asked her age, and she said, “When I tell you, it will make it easy for you to stop doing this!!!!!”
After that night, he largely stopped texting her about anything besides work. She sent a sad emoji on June 20 and said, “You broke up with me,” to which he responded, “Haha.”
President Donald Trump endorsed Gonzales in the GOP runoff on July 3, 2020, just before the start of the early voting period. On July 15, Gonzales declared that he won the primary by seven votes, but his opponent, Raul Reyes, called for a recount, which ultimately confirmed Gonzales as the victor.
A few days after his runoff win, Gonzales propositioned his political director again, according to text messages and her interview with the Express-News.
“Wow,” he texted her. “Still in shock…You turned me down.”
Their work relationship soured by October of that year, the staffer said, and although she continued working for him, she didn’t attend his watch party on Election Night, Nov. 3, 2020. She was not offered a job in Gonzales’ congressional office, which she attributed to their differing political views and other work-related disagreements.
Gonzales eventually cut ties with her after she criticized him online for voting to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“Damn! You unfriended me!” she wrote on Jan. 12, 2021. “I guess I saw that coming!”
He replied, “It’s all good. I don’t take it well to anyone who speaks ill of me.”
She joined Herrera’s campaign as a volunteer in 2024, the first time he challenged Gonzales and nearly beat him. Herrera’s politics align more closely with hers, she said.
‘I feel very alone’
The staffer said she never told anyone on the campaign about her text exchanges with Gonzales.
“I got used to just having to blow off things guys say,” she said, recalling her experiences as an Army officer and defense contractor. “Because every single time you say something, you end up the bitch, you end up the problem, you can’t work with others.”
The texts show she often responded to Gonzales’ advances with humor or deflection, but also repeatedly engaged with him and traded explicit messages.
“I’m not totally innocent in all this,” she told the Express-News, adding that she regretted having “played” him.
At one point in June 2020, she asked Gonzales why he was pursuing her.
He said things changed after he went into cardiac arrest in 2019, landing in the hospital for nearly a month.
“Lots of people love me and care about me. Yet I feel very alone,” he replied. “I used to be able to bury my personal feelings better. Sacrifice my wants/needs for what needed to be done. Things changed when I died last year.”
U.S. House Ethics rules prohibit elected members of Congress from having sexual relationships with their House subordinates. In March, a congressional ethics committee began investigating Gonzales for sexual misconduct and preferential treatment related to his relationship with Santos-Aviles. The panel could release its findings and recommend sanctions before the end of the year.
But those rules don’t apply to campaign staff, who are often hired on contract and paid through campaign donations.
The former political director believes Gonzales wasted his potential, noting that “you can’t outwork Tony.”
He sits on the House Appropriations Committee, which sets the federal budget, and the Homeland Security Committee, plum assignments that will vanish when he leaves office in January.
“He had all the great committee assignments, and he let it go to his head,” she said. “And now he’s done.”