Rep. Tony Gonzalez advances to an election runoff after an alleged affair with his aide who set herself on fire

Rep. Tony Gonzalez is headed to another runoff with his 2024 Texas GOP primary opponent after neither broke the 50% threshold to win their party’s primary on Tuesday night.

Republican voters in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District advanced the three-term congressman to a runoff on May 26 despite his victory. Epic character drama About allegations of an affair with her assistant, who later committed suicide.

With about three-quarters of the votes counted, Gonzalez received 42.5% of the Republican primary vote. YouTuber and firearms enthusiast Brandon Herrera also received 42.5% support.

Construction executive Keith Barton and former Rep. Francisco “Kiko” Canseco scored 8.5% and 6.4% of the vote, respectively, and were eliminated from the race.

These findings come just weeks after allegations emerged of an affair between Gonzalez and an employee who set herself on fire last year.

Gonzalez’s popularity with his densely rural constituency in the West Texas borderlands between San Antonio and El Paso has waned, due to his voting record, especially on LGBT issues and gun control.

This included a vote to legalize same-sex marriage into law in 2022 and a bipartisan gun bill that spurred red flag laws across the country after… The massacre of 19 students at a school in Uvalde in the same year.

“I don’t feel like he was doing enough for the border crisis to stop that, the red flag laws, and then the final straw was his vote for all the LGBT issues,” said a former aide who worked for Gonzalez in an office in a border district from 2021 to 2023.

Gonzalez even I got booed by some in attendance when President Trump saluted him at an event promoting American energy in Corpus Christi on Friday.

Several of his Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives also called for him to resign in the weeks before the primary after text messages between him and his regional director, Regina Santos Aviles — who set herself on fire on September 13 — leaked.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said the charges are “very serious” and specifically urged Gonzalez to “address” the issue “directly and directly with his constituents.”

The Office of Congressional Conduct was initiated Investigation into alleged infidelity in Novemberwhich could be referred to the House Ethics Committee for final sanctions after the primary election.

Gonzalez claimed to reporters on Capitol Hill last week that the communications “were not all the facts,” but showed the congressman asking his staffer to “Sexy pictureOther text messages between Santos Avilés and a former colleague shared with The Post revealed a discussion “Affair“.

Her widower Adrian Aviles also broke his silence about the discovery of the alleged extramarital affair with the congressman and married father of six in May 2024.

Republicans occupied 218 seats compared to 214 seats for Democrats in the House of Representatives, after resignations and deaths that put their majority at risk before the 2026 midterm elections.

Herrera warned in an interview Sunday with The Washington Post that Democrats could easily “Flip a reliably Republican seat blue“If a three-term congressman wins the primary.

“My message was primarily, you know, let’s help President Trump legalize the things he did to secure the border,” Herrera said. “Let’s work on solving the massive financial crisis and debt crisis that we have in this country. Let’s make sure that veterans get the health care they deserve and were promised, especially in a veteran-dense district like the 23rd.”

In a primary runoff two years ago, Gonzalez got it She overtook Herrera By about 400 votes and went on to crush Democratic opponent Santos Limon by about 25 percentage points in November 2024, meaning any Republican candidate in the general election would likely control the district.

The winner of the May runoff will face the Democratic nominee in November. Katie Padilla Stout was leading with 54% of the Democratic primary vote over Limon (25%) with about half the votes counted.