WASHINGTON — For years, Texas Republicans tried to win the Hispanic vote utilizing a Bush-era model of compassionate conservatism. The thought was {that a} reasonable’s contact and a softer rhetoric on immigration had been key to creating inroads with Hispanic voters, significantly in Democratic strongholds alongside the southern border.
Such was the Texas of previous. The Trump age has given rise to a brand new model of Texas Republicans, one among whom is already strolling the halls of Congress: the far-right Latina.
Consultant Mayra Flores grew to become the primary Republican to symbolize the Rio Grande Valley in additional than a century after she received a particular election final month and flipped the congressional seat from blue to pink. She additionally grew to become the primary Latina Republican ever despatched by Texas to Congress. Her abbreviated time period lasts solely by the top of the yr, and he or she is seen as a protracted shot to win re-election to a full one.
However what’s most putting is that Ms. Flores received by shunning moderates, embracing the far proper and sporting her assist for Donald J. Trump on her sleeve — extra Marjorie Taylor Greene than Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Her marketing campaign slogan — “God, household, nation” — was meant to enchantment to what she calls the “conventional values” of her majority-Hispanic district within the border metropolis of Brownsville. She known as for President Biden’s impeachment. She tweeted QAnon hashtags. And he or she known as the Democratic Occasion the “biggest menace America faces.”
In an interview in her still-barren workplace the day after her swearing-in ceremony, Ms. Flores was requested whether or not she thought of Mr. Biden the legitimately elected president.
“He’s the worst president of america,” she stated.
When requested three extra instances whether or not Mr. Biden had been legitimately elected, she repeated the identical nonanswer.
Two different Latina Republicans, Monica De La Cruz in McAllen and Cassy Garcia in Laredo, are additionally on the poll in congressional races alongside the Mexican border. All three — G.O.P. officers have taken to calling them a “triple menace” — share right-wing views on immigration, the 2020 election and abortion, amongst different points.
They share the identical advisers, have held marketing campaign rallies and fund-raisers collectively and have knocked on doorways facet by facet. They accuse the Democratic Occasion of taking Hispanic voters with no consideration and examine themselves, as do their supporters, because the embodiment of the American dream: Ms. Flores usually speaks of working alongside her mother and father as a youngster within the cotton fields of the Texas Panhandle.
Ms. Flores, Ms. De La Cruz and Ms. Garcia grew up within the Rio Grande Valley, a working-class four-county area on the southernmost tip of Texas the place Hispanics make up 93 % of the inhabitants. All three are bilingual; Ms. Flores was born in Tamaulipas, Mexico, and the opposite two in South Texas. Solely Ms. De La Cruz has been endorsed by Mr. Trump, but all of them stay outspoken advocates for him, his motion and his robust speak on limiting immigration and constructing the border wall.
The Rio Grande Valley has lengthy been a politically liberal but culturally conservative place. Church pews are packed on Sundays, American flags wave from their poles on entrance lawns and regulation enforcement is revered. Ms. Flores’s husband is a Border Patrol agent, a be aware she usually emphasised on the marketing campaign path.
In 2020, the Valley’s conservative tradition began to exert a larger affect on its politics. Mr. Trump flipped rural Zapata County and narrowed the Democratic margin of victory within the 4 Valley counties and in different border cities.
“Rising up down there, you all the time have closeted Republicans,” stated Ms. Garcia, a former aide to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. “Now, the will to embrace Republicans is actually spreading. They really feel a real sense of belonging.”
Different pro-Trump Latinas are operating for Home seats in Virginia, Florida and New Mexico, amongst different locations.
Republican leaders and strategists say Ms. Flores’s win and the candidacies of different right-wing Hispanic ladies are proof that Latino voters are more and more shifting to the precise. Greater than 100 Republican Home candidates are Hispanic, a report quantity, in response to the Nationwide Republican Congressional Committee.
Democrats view the state of affairs a lot otherwise. Some Democratic leaders dismiss Ms. Flores’s victory as a fluke — the product of a low-turnout particular election by which 28,990 folks solid ballots — and a fleeting one.
Ms. Flores, who was elected to serve the final six months of a retiring Democratic congressman’s time period, is operating in November for a full time period. She faces a preferred Democratic incumbent who’s switching districts, Consultant Vicente Gonzalez.
Democratic leaders are optimistic that Mr. Gonzalez will defeat Ms. Flores, and that Ms. Garcia will lose her race towards Consultant Henry Cuellar, the conservative Democrat who narrowly beat a progressive challenger in a main runoff.
Ms. De La Cruz, nonetheless, is operating in essentially the most aggressive Home race in Texas and can face Michelle Vallejo, a progressive Democrat.
Consultant Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat who heads the marketing campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, dismissed Ms. Flores’s win as a “public relations coup” for Republicans.
“It doesn’t imply she represents mainstream Hispanic voters,” Mr. Gallego stated.
Mr. Gonzalez, the Democratic congressman, practically misplaced to Ms. De La Cruz two years in the past when she challenged him in Texas’ fifteenth Congressional District. He received by 6,588 votes. Now, he’s difficult Ms. Flores within the thirty fourth District.
“This was a profound message to the occasion,” he stated of Ms. Flores’s victory. “It’s actually woken up the Democratic base. I’ve by no means had so many individuals volunteer without spending a dime in all my years.”
As she moved into her congressional workplace throughout from the Capitol, Ms. Flores, an evangelical Christian, eyed the naked partitions. She deliberate to place up a big picture of the SpaceX launch website in her district in addition to photographs of Jesus.
She had campaigned with the assist of evangelical church buildings; her pastor carried out a “Make America Godly Once more” outreach effort and traveled to Washington for her swearing-in. “I do imagine that pastors ought to be getting concerned in politics and in guiding their congressmen,” Ms. Flores stated. “Our pastors know our folks higher than we do.”
Ms. Flores wasted no time displaying a combative fashion with Democrats. Minutes after her swearing-in, Speaker Nancy Pelosi posed with Ms. Flores and her household for a photograph. What occurred subsequent is a matter of debate. To Democrats, it seemed as if Ms. Pelosi had brushed her arm towards Ms. Flores’s 8-year-old daughter as the 2 stood facet by facet. To Republicans, it seemed as if Ms. Pelosi had shoved her apart.
“No youngster ought to be pushed to the facet for a photograph op. PERIOD!!” Ms. Flores later wrote on Twitter.
To listen to Ms. Flores inform it, her swap to the G.O.P. was inevitable.
Early on, she stated, she had voted Democratic, primarily as a result of everybody she knew did the identical. The primary time she solid a poll for a Republican for president, she stated, was for Mitt Romney in 2012.
After attending a Republican occasion for the spouses of Border Patrol brokers, Ms. Flores started to volunteer for the Hidalgo County Republican Occasion in McAllen. By 2020, she was organizing pro-Trump caravans by the Rio Grande Valley.
She was additionally posting tweets utilizing the hashtag #QAnon.
When requested about QAnon, Ms. Flores denied ever having supported the conspiracy idea, which claims {that a} group of Devil-worshiping elites who run a baby intercourse ring is attempting to manage the federal government and the media. Hashtags have lengthy been thought of social media shorthand for expressing assist for a trigger or an thought, however Ms. Flores insisted her intention was to specific opposition to QAnon.
“It’s simply to achieve extra folks so extra folks can see like, hey, this must cease,” she stated of utilizing the QAnon hashtag. “That is solely hurting our nation.”
Ms. Flores deleted the tweets about QAnon, however she didn’t chorus from expressing different right-wing views. After the 2020 election, she insisted on Twitter that Mr. Trump had received, writing in a single publish, “Ganamos y lo vamos a demostrar!” or “We received, and we’ll show it!” Following the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, she retweeted a publish falsely calling it a “setup” by antifa. She has known as Mr. Biden “president in identify solely” and has demanded his impeachment. And as her personal oath of workplace coincided with the hearings by the Home committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault, Ms. Flores largely dismissed the proceedings.
“Truthfully, my district doesn’t care about that,” she stated of the hearings. “My district is struggling to pay their payments. That’s what we’re purported to be specializing in.”
Like Ms. Flores, Ms. De La Cruz describes herself as a former Democrat who “walked away” from the occasion. She stated she solid her first vote in a Republican main for Mr. Trump in 2016.
“I imagine that the president was bringing to mild the horrible issues that we had been doing to our nation,” Ms. De La Cruz stated.
After she narrowly misplaced her problem to Mr. Gonzalez in 2020, Ms. De La Cruz suggested, without evidence, that each she and Mr. Trump had been victims of voter fraud within the district.
Ms. Garcia, against this, stated she has been a Republican her complete life. Raised conservative, she went to church thrice per week and entered politics quickly after faculty, working because the outreach director for Mr. Cruz in McAllen.
As a candidate, she has targeted on spiritual liberty, faculty selection and abortion bans — points on which she stated the area’s Hispanic voters had been more and more like-minded.
“The pink wave is right here,” Ms. Garcia stated.
