GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales will head into a Texas primary runoff after Tuesday’s election set up a rematch with Brandon Herrera, an outcome driven in part by the continuing fallout from allegations that Gonzales had an affair with a former aide, the Associated Press reported.
Gonzales entered the state’s first major GOP primary of 2026 under pressure from fellow House Republicans, who urged him to resign over the allegations. He has said he would not step down, and he has also pointed to statements about “coordinated political attacks” in posts on social media, while describing the situation in other posts as blackmail, according to the AP’s account.
Tuesday’s results forced Gonzales into another matchup with Herrera, setting up the May 26 runoff. Neither Gonzales nor Herrera—and no other candidate—reached more than 50% in the four-way primary, according to the AP, which said the vote created the runoff requirement.
Herrera, a gun manufacturer and YouTube gun-rights influencer, narrowly lost to Gonzales in the 2024 primary by less than 400 votes. In this runoff, both men will again be competing for the GOP nomination in a district that stretches along the U.S.-Mexico border, from the area around western San Antonio to El Paso, the AP said.
The allegations at the center of the political pressure trace back to reports last month alleging explicit text messages between Gonzales and the late former staffer Regina Ann Santos-Aviles. The San Antonio Express-News reported it obtained messages in which Santos-Aviles wrote to a colleague that she had an affair with Gonzales; the AP reported it had not independently obtained copies of the messages.
A lawyer for Adrian Aviles, Santos-Aviles’ husband, told the AP that her husband found out about the affair before her death. Santos-Aviles, 35, died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire in the backyard of her Uvalde home, and the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled the death a suicide, the AP reported.
Despite the public controversy, Gonzales has continued to argue for his position. The AP reported that Gonzales said last week in Washington, “There will be opportunities for all of the details and facts to come out,” and added, “What you’ve seen is not all the facts.”
The AP also reported that President Donald Trump endorsed Gonzales in December and that Gonzales was among the Texas Republicans who attended Trump’s visit along the Texas coast last week.
In addition to the current runoff, the allegations have rekindled scrutiny of Gonzales’s political standing within the party. The Associated Press noted that Gonzales, a three-term congressman and a father of six, first won his seat in 2020 after retiring from a 20-year career in the U.S. Navy, including service in Iraq and Afghanistan.