Someone recently tagged a campaign sign for a Republican Texas senator with the graffiti message “GOP loves Pedos.”
Texas Sen. Pete Flores, who represents District 24 just north of San Antonio, called out the “vandalism and extremism of the hooligans” in a Sunday night Facebook post that included a photo of the defaced sign. He added that he “won’t be deterred.”
“We will prosecute anyone who we catch vandalizing or stealing our property,” Flores added.
Comments on the Facebook post were ruthless, mostly expressing some variation of some variation of “does the truth hurt?,” “if the shoe fits” and “no lies detected.”
“We’re mad at vandalism! We’re not going to deny the message though,” commenter Andrea Ellis fired back.
“I thought this was just the first honest campaign ad,” Andrew Hawkins remarked.
Other commenters called for the release of the Epstein files and blamed the Republican Party and the Trump administration for a “coverup.”
Flores’ district includes all of Bandera, Bell, Burnet, Coryell, Gillespie, Kerr, Kimble, Lampasas, Llano, Medina and Sutton counties as well as parts of Atascosa and Williamson counties. The biggest city in the district is Killeen, followed by Abilene.
The large banner’s vandalism could be read as a sign of District 24’s shifting political makeup. Once considered solidly Republican, the district went years without a Democrat even running in the general election. But more recently, data shows the gap between the parties narrowing in voter turnout.
Clayton Tucker, currently a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, ran to represent the district in 2020, earning 30% of the vote against Dawn Buckingham. In 2022, Democrat Kathy Jones-Hospod earned 35% of the vote against Flores.
Flores previously represented District 19, a seat he lost to Democrat Roland Gutierrez in 2020.
It’s a special form of irony for Flores to have one of his signs vandalized with a “GOP loves pedos” message, considering his signature piece of legislation in the previous session was the “Stopping AI-Generated Child Pornography Act,” which was passed unanimously in both chambers of the Texas Legislature and signed into law.
Flores is running against San Antonio-born Democrat Joe P. Herrera in November’s general election. Herrera is a graduate of Our Lady of the Lake University and a former candy-industry sales executive, having worked for Ferrara Candy and Hershey Chocolate.
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