Our main target to flip next fall.
Bobby Pulido
Tejano musician Bobby Pulido is running for Texas’ 15th Congressional District, he announced Wednesday, giving Democrats their best — and potentially only — opportunity to flip a Republican-held seat in 2026.
Pulido, a singer and Edinburg native who has been making Tejano music for three decades, is running to take on Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, in a district that stretches from McAllen to Central Texas. It will be an uphill climb for any Democrat — the district voted for President Donald Trump by an 18% margin last year — but his musical popularity and South Texas bona fides have Democrats enthused about his prospects.
“I’ve spent decades using my voice to bring people together,” Pulido said in his launch video. “Now, I’ll use it to fight for the place we call home, because this is the only stage that really matters — and it’s worth fighting for.”
Known for hit songs from the 1990s like “Desvelado” and “Se Murió de Amor”, Pulido is a four-time Latino Grammy nominee and 22-time Tejano Music Award nominee, having won eight times early in his career.
The 15th Congressional District has been Republicans’ greatest success story with Texas Latino voters. After flipping the district in 2022, De La Cruz improved her margins last year, winning by 14 percentage points despite investment from Democrats in challenger Michelle Vallejo. The district has been on Democrats’ target list for the past two cycles, but De La Cruz has continued to win comfortably.
To meet De La Cruz in a general election, Pulido will first face a primary against Ada Cuellar, a Harlingen emergency physician unrelated to South Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.
In his launch video, Pulido lamented rising costs, corporate greed and immigration policy that rips families apart and has endangered the South Texas economy. He also downplayed partisanship, saying he was neither “Team Red or Team Blue.”
In an interview, Pulido said issues vary by community, from water rights to the cost of health care. But he said he’s heard a lot about immigration — including from an economic perspective — and wants to make a push for comprehensive immigration reform, coupled with removing criminals in the country illegally, a focus of his campaign. He cited decreased tourism from Mexico and an increased culture of fear in immigrant communities as slowing the South Texas economy.
“Lots of farmers that I know, and people in the construction industry, because of the lack of immigration reform, are very frustrated right now because they don’t have people to work,” Pulido said. “They offer people more money, they do everything they can. They still can’t field a crew.”
See here for the background. CD15 didn’t change much in the redistricting, but its partisan valence has shifted dramatically since 2018. As with the districts that the GOP is targeting for 2026, how this plays out depends in part on how Latino voters who have shifted towards Republicans vote next year. Maybe Bobby Pulido will have some secret sauce to draw them in at higher numbers, and maybe not. We’ll see how he does on the campaign trail. I wish him all the best. The Downballot has more.