Texas Republicans’ controversial 2025 effort to redraw the state’s congressional maps backfired spectacularly during Tuesday’s midterms, with Democrats holding onto most of the targeted seats and flipping two districts previously controlled by the GOP.
At the urging of President Donald Trump, the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature redrew congressional boundaries in a bid to flip five Democrat-held seats and protect the party’s narrow U.S. House majority.
However, Democrats held onto three of those seats Tuesday, including districts represented by South Texas incumbents Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. Meanwhile, Democrat Johnny Garcia declared victory in the redrawn 35th Congressional District, which includes part of San Antonio.
Making matters worse for Republicans in South Texas, Grammy-winning Tejano singer Bobby Pulido crushed GOP incumbent Monica De La Cruz in South Texas’ 15th Congressional District, while San Antonio attorney Katy Padilla Stout won the 23rd Congressional District seat formerly held by Republican Tony Gonzales.
The combined losses mean the Texas GOP is likely to end up with fewer congressional seats than the 25 it held before the election — precisely the opposite of what Trump had hoped to accomplish.
During his watch party at La Gloria, a Mexican street food restaurant on San Antonio’s South Side, Garcia acknowledged the Republican redistricting, saying it couldn’t hold against the votes of Texans demanding change.
“You cannot silence our gente, the people, and tonight, the people had the final say,” he said. “This victory is about something far greater than political parties. It’s about the mother standing in the grocery aisle at H-E-B, wondering what she can afford to put in the cart. It’s about the father working two jobs and still struggling to pay the mortgage. It’s about the senior choosing between their prescription medication and keeping their lights on.”
Indeed, political experts said the election’s outcome was a decisive referendum on the first two years of the Trump presidency and the higher prices brought on by rising inflation and the ongoing war in Iran.
The redistricting gamble largely hinged on Republicans retaining or expanding the gains Trump made with Latino voters. Instead, those voters swung back toward Democrats on Tuesday, helping the party overcome districts drawn to give Republicans an advantage of 10 percentage points or more.
Nationally, Democrats also captured control of both chambers of Congress, leaving Trump’s attempt to shore up his party’s congressional majority through redistricting a costly political miscalculation.
“It was a dummymander instead of a gerrymander,” University of Texas at San Antonio political scientist Jon Taylor told the Current.
“It’s interesting to note that in some of Texas’ red counties — the so-called red wall — some of those counties aren’t nearly as strong in terms of early vote that are traditional of people that identify as Republicans as we’ve seen in previous elections.”
Texas Democratic Party Chairman Kendall Scudder told the Current that Republicans’ allegiance to Trump’s policies, such as his mass deportation agenda didn’t just fail to resonate with Latino voters but ultimately motivated Tuesday night’s sweeping repudiation. One in 10 Texas Latino voters this cycle had never cast a ballot before.
“Remember that the congressional districts that were redrawn were designed for us to lose five seats,” Scudder told the Current. “So, if the Republicans do anything less than gaining five seats, they’ve had a really bad night.”
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