The Democratic candidate for CD23 is Katy Padilla Stout, who is now running against an unhinged gun-humping wacko and not the scandal-plagued moderate-ish incumbent.
Katy Padilla Stout
The massive 23rd Congressional District hasn’t been competitive for Democrats since it was redrawn after the 2020 census.
Under its new boundaries, it would have supported President Donald Trump by roughly 14.8% in 2024, according to a Texas Tribune analysis.
Yet Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder was once again pointing to it as a “real opportunity” after the party flipped a deep-red Texas Senate seat that swung 31 points in a Jan. 30 special election — and even some Republicans believe Gonzales’ moderate politics have been key to keeping the district red.
“All of a sudden, for Democrats, that seat has moved from low third-tier to top second-tier [race]. They’re on the hunt for marginal seats that they can take back,” said San Antonio political strategist Kelton Morgan.
After spending big on losing races in both 2018 and 2020, Democrats struggled to field strong candidates in more recent years.
They’ll now be turning to Katy Padilla Stout, a 40-year-old attorney who grew up in San Antonio, taught primary school at Northside ISD, and current works at a family legal practice representing children in the foster care system.
Perhaps more important for an uphill race, Padilla Stout also has a background in national fundraising, having worked for one of San Antonio’s most prolific Democratic fundraisers, Henry Muñoz, while she was in law school. Muñoz, at the time, was the finance chair for the Democratic National Committee.
Padilla Stout said that in recent weeks she’s had a long list of outside groups, including Emily’s List, which helps Democratic women, and Bold PAC, which helps Hispanic candidates, offering to help if she got the party’s nomination.
On Tuesday the first-time candidate crossed that threshold, beating out three other Democrats with 52% of the vote.
“I know we have a lot of big donors that are ready to go as soon as the primary is over,” she told KSAT at her election night watch party at Elsewhere Too.
That’s good to hear, because as I noted before, she didn’t have much money raised as of January; she wasn’t in the race before Q4 last year, so she hadn’t had much time as of then to raise funds. I haven’t thought of CD23 as a competitive seat since the 2021 redistricting, and we did not seriously contest it in 2024. But this year, between the scandals, the Trump nosedive, the abhorrence of Brandon Herrera, primary turnout, and the drift back of Latino voters towards Dems, well, who knows. I’ll be very interested in the April finance reports, but for now at least I feel good about us having a chance.