Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) will face Jessica Cisneros in a runoff for the Democrats’ nomination to Texas’ 28th congressional district after the first primary battle proved inconclusive.
Texas’ 28th district, which includes San Antonio and runs parallel to the Rio Grande, is heavily Democrat-leaning. The district is dominated by Hispanic voters, who comprise around 80 percent of its population.
Cuellar, who has broken with his party over issues like spending and abortion, has been the target of a great deal of criticism by progressives—particularly members of the “Squad,” like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).
Hoping to unseat Cuellar, who has represented the district for nearly 20 years, Ocasio-Cortez backed primary challenger and progressive Democrat Jessica Cisneros.
In a primary battle on Tuesday, Cuellar won a plurality of the vote, and nearly defended his seat from Cisneros. However, a third candidate, community organizer Tannya Benavides, siphoned off enough of the vote to deny the majority to either Cuellar or Cisneros.
Cuellar won 48.5 percent of the vote compared to Cisneros’ 46.8 percent; Benavides won 4.7 percent. Because a candidate must receive 50 percent of the vote to receive the primary nomination for the district, Cuellar and Cisneros will now head to a runoff election for the nomination.
“Cuellar is an anti-choice Democrat in a state where women and LGBTQ+ reproductive rights are under attack,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote, referencing a Texas abortion law that imposes civil penalties for performing abortions after a heartbeat is detectable.
“This district has only gotten bluer, too,” Ocasio-Cortez added. “It’s 2022. We really don’t have to settle for rock bottom. Vote [Jessica Cisneros].”
The endorsement, coming from a figure that many progressives see as an icon, apparently carried weight with many voters in the district.
Perhaps also contributing to Cisneros’ narrow survival in the primary was the FBI’s decision to raid Cuellar’s home as part of a larger investigation involving the former Soviet state of Azerbaijan. However, as the investigation is ongoing details on the exact reasons for the raid remain unclear.
The FBI raid raised some eyebrows for its potential impact on the outcome of an election.
In the past, the Justice Department has generally avoided carrying out such raids on candidates in advance of an election, making exceptions only for situations where they believe crime is ongoing or that the candidate will continue to break the law if they are not intercepted.
“Let me be clear: I’m running for reelection and I intend to win,” Cuellar said.
Cuellar was originally sent to Congress by the district in 2004, and he has kept toward the center of the political aisle since first taking office.
In August 2021, Cuellar joined a group of nine other moderate and centrist Democrats in opposition to the $3.5 trillion draft of the now-defunct Build Back Better (BBB) spending package. The group demanded that the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which was far preferred by centrists, be passed on its own rather than being linked to the BBB, as House leadership planned to do and progressives demanded.
Nevertheless, Cuellar did join his party in voting for the final draft of the bill, which had been reduced to $1.85 trillion.
Cuellar is also one of the few congressional Democrats who still opposes abortion.
In 2010, he expressed concerns that the Senate’s draft of the Affordable Care Act—known as Obamacare—would provide funding for abortions. On one occasion, he voted for legislation that would ban abortion after 20 weeks; while this falls far short of an outright ban on abortion, Cuellar is distinct in his opposition to a practice that has come to be ubiquitously supported by most of his party.
Though progressives have bristled at Cuellar’s opposition to abortion, the attitude is largely in line with the views of his Hispanic constituents—many of whom are members of the Catholic Church, which unilaterally opposes abortion.
“We don’t have his lobbyists or his machine,” Cisneros said. “We have faith ... that our people deserve better. ... I’m running for Congress because I believe in Medicare for all, reproductive rights, and good-paying union jobs.
“They put faith in their money. We put faith in our dreams,” the progressive concluded.
Cuellar, for his part, has attempted to portray Cisneros as an extremist for her heavily-progressive policy goals.
“We cannot have leaders that are uncompromising and extreme,” Cuellar said in an ad countering Cisneros. “I will always vote in the best interest of our constituents.”
Since the district’s creation in the early 1990s, it has never sent a Republican to Congress.
The district voted for Democrat presidential contenders in five out of its six most recent elections; the exception came in 2004 when a plurality of the district’s voters chose to reelect President George W. Bush.
In this blue stronghold, winning Democrats’ nomination all but guarantees victory in the general election.
The May 24 runoff is shaping up to be a tight, hard-won nomination for either of the candidates: Cuellar will have to prove to his constituents that he’s still the best fit for the job if he wants to keep his seat while Cisneros will have to convince the district’s voters that a sharp leftward turn is needed.
