Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) — who has recently been accused by multiple people of having an affair with a former staffer and pressing her for sexually explicit photos — and YouTuber and pro-gun influencer Brandon Herrera — AKA TheAKGuy — will face off in a runoff after neither candidate won a majority of the votes in the GOP primary for the 23rd Congressional District.
The three-time congressman Gonzales got 43.4 percent of the votes while Herrera secured 41.7 percent. Other candidates got single-digit percentages of the vote.
The runoff is scheduled for May 26 and will be a rematch of the 2024 primary. Gonzales defeated Herrera in a close runoff two years ago by just a few hundred votes. Tuesday night’s contest was similarly close.
Herrera, 30, started off his career as a gun influencer. For a while, he tried to develop an even bigger Kalashnikov called an “AK-50,” and used his YouTube following to support Kyle Rittenhouse, the Wisconsin teen who shot three people during a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest. As an influencer, he’s fired Nazi-made guns while yelling “for the Fatherland,” and once called himself an “honorary veteran” for occasionally musing about “putting a gun in my mouth.”
He argued to TPM in an interview on Monday that successive waves of redistricting had made Texas’ 23rd Congressional District far more conservative.
“It used to be a very moderate district,” Herrera said. “We are more conservative than we’ve ever been.”
The winner of the runoff will likely be set to represent the Lone Star state’s largest congressional district in the U.S. House. Attorney and teacher Katy Padilla Stout won the Democratic primary Tuesday, which saw as many voters as the Republican contest.
Gonzales, who is married with six children, has been accused of having an affair with a former staffer, who later died by suicide. Though the allegations of the affair are not new, the scandal has resurfaced with new details over the past month — right before the GOP primary.
An ex Gonzales staffer provided a Texas news outlet with an alleged text message from Regina Santos-Aviles — the woman the congressman is accused of having an affair with — in which she said she “had an affair with our boss.”
Later, a set of new allegations revealed text messages from May 2024 between Gonzales and Santos-Aviles allegedly showing the congressman asking his then-aide to send him a “sexy pic.”
Those text messages were reportedly how Santos-Aviles’ husband found out about the affair between his wife and Gonzales.
Santos-Aviles died in September 2025 after setting herself on fire in front of her house.
Gonzales has denied the allegations of an affair on several occasions and blamed the accusations on Herrera, who he said was trying to attack him ahead of the GOP primary.
The text messages, seemingly the last straw for some lawmakers, led a group of House Republicans to call on Gonzales to resign from office or end his re-election campaign.
Despite the mounting allegations, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and GOP leadership were not a part of the group of Republicans who called on the Texas congressman to resign from office.
Though Johnson called the allegations “very serious” and “alarming and detestable,” he did not not pull his endorsement of the Texas congressman. President Donald Trump, who made his endorsement months before the allegations resurfaced, also did not pull his endorsement from Gonzales.
“You have to allow the investigations to play out and all the facts to come out,” Johnson said last week. “You have to let the system play out … If the accusation of something is going to be the litmus test for someone being able to continue to serve in the House, we’ll have a lot of people who would have to resign or be removed or expelled from Congress.”
Other House Republicans were not so subtle in their refusal to call on Gonzales to resign, pointing to the fact that Republicans are barely holding onto their majority in the House.
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) told reporters last week that Gonzales should in “no way” resign, adding that doing so would be “the stupidest thing he could ever do.”
“Accusations are not enough,” Nehls said. “If he does that then you gotta give the gavel to Hakeem Jeffries. I’m sure the Democrats would love that.”
