Bobby Pulido, a native of the Rio Grande Valley and Grammy Award-winning artist will be joining Congress in Washington D.C. after he comfortably defeated his opponent Monica De La Cruz earlier this month in the TX-15 race.
Pulido was recruited by Democratic Party insiders to run for this seat, all the way back in 2025. Pulido at the time was concerned about the state of the economy, his family’s lack of healthcare, and the direction the country was going. So, he decided to make a major career change and run for office.
The journey to Congress was not an easy one for Pulido, even with his name recognition. Just prior to announcing his exploratory committee, Texas Republicans had begun to redistrict in the middle of the decade to comply with Donald Trump’s request that Republican states “find more” seats. In essence, he demanded members of his party redistrict their states to give Republicans more control, a practice known as gerrymandering.
Pulido was faced with a difficult choice: bow-out now and try again another year, or run in a congressional district that was explicitly drawn to keep his opponent Monica De La Cruz in office. Pulido chose the former and with the benefit hindsight, became one of the most important decisions he had ever made.
Despite Republicans trying their best to control the outcome of the midterms, there was one major problem: Back in 2025, Texas Republicans simply could not fathom just how lopsided turnout would be for them during this year’s midterms. As a result of the high turnout among Democrats and low turnout for Republicans, Pulido and his fellow Democrats not only won in their South Texas races comfortably, but they flipped every statewide office from Republican to Democrat — an achievement more than 30 years in the making.
“You believed in me. You gave this campaign everything you had and I’ll never forget it.”
Bobby pulido
Pulido defeated De La Cruz with 62% of the vote to her measly 37%, in other words, it was a landslide for the Democrat in the race. Donald Trump had won Pulido’s congressional district by 17 points in 2024, which means Pulido pulled off a 42 point swing towards Democrats in this race.
Since winning his race, Pulido has not yet decided which caucus to join in Congress. Caucuses are formal groups or factions inside of Congress. For example, the two major caucuses in the House of Representatives are the House Republican Caucus and House Democratic Caucus. In addition to the two major caucuses, the House also has several ideological caucuses, such as the left-wing Congressional Progressive Caucus and the right-wing Freedom Caucus, however these are just two of many lawmakers are able to join. will be an indicator of the type of Democrat he will be in Congress. His fellow South Texas House Democrats, Vicente Gonzales and Henry Cuellar, are both members of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition caucus, making that a potential home for Pulido.
The iconic Tejano artist will now spend the following weeks and months transitioning from his longtime role as cultural icon to a United States Congressman.
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