Years before his affair with Regina Santos-Aviles, a married staffer who later committed suicide by lighting herself on fire, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales inundated a campaign aide with text messages requesting nude photos and sex, the Express-News reports.
The previously unreported texts are among hundreds the daily said it obtained showing the Republican congressman tried to involve the political director of his 2000 campaign in a sexual affair four years before he began the relationship with Santos-Aviles. Outrage over that later affair ultimately ended his bid to serve a fourth term representing a district that includes San Antonio and large swath South Texas.
According to messages cited by the Express-News, Gonzales — a father of six — asked the campaign aide more than a dozen times over a three-day period to send nudes, continuing even after she repeatedly denied the requests. He also reportedly tried to cultivate a sexual relationship with her, asking her to “squeeze his balls” and telling her, “I know what I want and won’t stop until I get it.”
The woman, who asked not to be named over concern for her family’s privacy, said she never indulged the congressman in his request.
“We didn’t so much as touch,” she told the daily.
Neither Gonzales nor his congressional office responded to a detailed list of questions the Express-News submitted about the text messages. The paper said it verified the texts as originating from the congressman’s cell number.
The former campaign aide told the Express-News she stopped working for Gonzales in 2021 over “political differences.” However, she told the daily she came forward with the old text messages after learning of Santos-Aviles’ death.
“He obviously pursued, pursued, pursued her like he did with me,” the woman told the newspaper. “I never took him serious … It wasn’t until this poor girl died that I thought, ‘No, this guy is pure evil.’”
The report is another damaging blow for Gonzales, who dropped from his 2026 reelection bid after a separate Express-News investigation unearthed details of his affair with Santos-Aviles, who ran his Uvalde office until her death last fall.
After months of denying he any kind of inappropriate relationship with Santos-Aviles, the congressman admitted to the affair during an episode of the syndicated right-wing radio program The Joe Page Show. He did so as a growing chorus from members of his own party demanded that he own up to the affair.
“I take full responsibility for those actions,” Gonzales said on the program, adding that he’d reconciled with his wife.
Although he described the affair as a “lapse in judgement,” he denied that he’d given any favorable treatment to Santos-Aviles, who remained on his payroll until her suicide. He also said he had “absolutely nothing” to do with her death, citing a police report in which the badly injured woman told responders that her husband had an affair with her best friend.
Whatever the case, the House Ethics Committee revealed the same day as Gonzales’ radio interview that it’s assembling a panel to investigate whether he “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.”
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