The GOP challenger to Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales is demanding he step down after a bombshell report of an affair with a staffer.
Gonzales is running for reelection in Texas’ 23rd congressional district, but he is being challenged in the primary by gun rights advocate and social media influencer Brandon Herrera.
“Tony Gonzales must resign,” Herrera said in a statement. “He not only broke House ethics rules by having an adulterous affair with a member of his congressional staff and by using taxpayer money to fund the affair, but he also broke trust with the public by insisting that the initial reporting of the affair was false.”
On Tuesday, the San Antonio Express-News reported it had reviewed a text message sent by the GOP lawmaker’s former district director, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, to a fellow staffer months before her death.
She wrote: “I had [sic] affair with our boss and I’m fine. You will be fine.” In September, Santos-Aviles took her own life by setting herself on fire outside her Uvalde home.
The 35-year-old mother of an 8-year-old boy went into a deep depression when her husband found out about the affair, and then Gonzales cut her off, according to the report.
The 45-year-old congressman is married with six children. He has represented the district since 2021.
A former district staffer who worked closely with Santos-Aviles shared the text messages with the newspaper. He said that he told Gonzales he was concerned about Santos-Aviles’s mental state before her death, but the lawmaker failed to act.
Herrera is running against Gonzales in the purple district from the right. It’s his second attempt to unseat the Texas Republican after he also ran against him in the 2024 election cycle and forced the primary to a runoff.
His demand for Gonzales to resign comes as Republicans are barely holding onto the majority in the House with just 218 seats, the bare minimum to pass any legislation.
They are also facing major headwinds heading into the midterms. Gonzales’ district is one of the biggest battlegrounds that Democrats are trying to flip on their path to retake the majority.
The Republicans’ precarious situation was not lost on Herrera, who warned Gonzales’ behavior creates a “tremendous potential catastrophe.”
“If he prevails in the primary and becomes our party’s nominee in the General Election, Democrats will seize the opportunity to flip a reliable Republican seat blue,” Herrera said.
“Handing control to Democrats, who would spend the final two years of President Trump’s term obstructing, investigating, and impeaching him and members of his administration, is a risk we as a party cannot afford to take,” he continued.
However, Herrera as a MAGA candidate running on a platform that Gonzales was not conservative enough and bowed to Democrats would also face a tough general election bid should he secure the GOP nomination.
Gonzales’ challenger is not the only Republican calling for the congressman’s resignation.
“If this is true, and it does appear credible, Tony should step down,” wrote Texas state Rep. Wes Virdell on X.
He continued: “The family deserves to heal and get past this terrible tragedy. That will be impossible to do if they have to see the person who did it show no remorse for the situation and get re-elected to represent them in Congress.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Gonzales for comment.
