HARLINGEN, Texas — An unusual race in South Texas pits two sitting members of the U.S. House of Representatives against each other. One is a Republican and the other a Democrat. It’s a consequence of redistricting and an extraordinary special election. This rare battle of incumbents is one reason this race in Texas’s 34th Congressional District may be an indicator of what happens nationally on Election Day. Here, as in other races along the border, immigration has emerged as a major issue.
Touring farms in her district near the Mexico border, Republican Rep. Mayra Flores was met with concerns about how immigration policies and the economy are putting a strain on business.
“Labor shortages, it’s hurting them tremendously. But how the humanitarian crisis in the border is also hurting them tremendously, and how they’re asking us to focus on border security and help them also focusing on legal immigration, which is what we all support,” Flores told Spectrum News.
Flores entered Congress after winning a special election in June to finish out a term in a seat that Democrats had held. She immigrated to the U.S. from Tamaulipas, Mexico, when she was 6 years old, a background she and national Republicans are not shy about trumpeting.
“I want to bring economic opportunities here in South Texas. For a very long time, our children leave South Texas for better opportunities, and of course, secure the border. This is something that is very important for me as someone who immigrated to this country,” Flores said.
National Republicans spent heavily on her behalf in the June election and are putting money behind her again, hoping to build on the gains they have made with Hispanic voters there.
Prominent Republicans such as former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley have campaigned for her, reflecting the GOP’s push to win this seat and in two other highly competitive districts races along the border.
“I can’t wait to see what these three strong women do. They are going to really give a hard time to the squad when they get to D.C. But they understand the families here on the ground, they understand what they want,” Haley, who was also the former ambassador to the United Nations, said.
But the 34th Congressional District became more Democratic through redistricting. The new district stretches from Kleberg County on the Gulf Coast to Cameron County and includes more of Hidalgo County on the border.
Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez is running there after the state legislature put his home in the newly drawn 34th Congressional District. His current district was redrawn to favor Republicans.
Gonzalez entered Congress in 2017 and leads the Congressional Oil and Gas Caucus. He acknowledges the border is a big issue and proposes that the U.S. work with Latin American countries to process asylum seekers before they set out for the border.
“We have a labor shortage in this country, and we need the labor. They need the jobs. We just need to do it in an orderly way. What’s happened on our southern border, not under just the Biden administration, under the Trump administration and administrations before has been disgraceful,” Gonzalez told Spectrum News. “It’s an American problem that we need to resolve together.”
President Joe Biden would have won the redrawn 34th Congressional District by 15 points in 2020. Gonzalez said some voters are telling him the GOP has become too extreme, especially after the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. He also criticizes Flores for voting against the bipartisan gun safety legislation in the wake of the Uvalde mass school shooting.
But he said he is not taking anything for granted.
“I believe my doors, tens of thousands of doors that we knock on and we talk to, rallies like this that we’ve held across the district, and those types of conversations to me, those are the real polls — talking to the people. I want to trust the people of South Texas and the feeling that I get here on the ground, not somebody from Washington D.C.,” Gonzalez said.
Sara Parsons attended Gonzalez’s campaign event in Harlingen. Parsons, an LGBTQ advocate and former educator, said she believes the future of democracy is on the ballot.
“This is one of the most important races, as Vicente had said, that we’re ever going to see in our lifetimes because at the national level we’ve seen what the previous administration did to the democracy, did to the division of this country and we at the lower level are suffering because of it,” Parsons said.
Whether many voters share that belief or are more worried about conditions at the border could determine whether Republicans can make more inroads in a border region that has long supported Democrats. At least one poll shows the race between Flores and Gonzalez is a tossup.