Tony Gonzales Is Out, So Who Is the GOP Nominee Brandon Herrera?

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) announced Thursday he will not seek re-election, dropping out of his Republican primary runoff after mounting pressure from House Speaker Mike Johnson and the entire House GOP leadership team.

The scandal centers on an admitted affair with Regina Santos-Aviles, a 35-year-old aide in his Uvalde district office, who later died by suicide. Gonzales had publicly denied the affair as recently as November before finally confessing on a radio show the morning after his primary.

Text messages obtained by the San Antonio Express-News — shared by Santos-Aviles's widower — showed Gonzales pressing her for explicit photos, with messages she reportedly described as going "too far." The story broke wide open on the eve of early voting.

Gonzales was forced into a runoff against Brandon Herrera, the YouTube gun-rights personality known as "the AK Guy," finishing roughly 42% to Herrera's 43% — a collapse driven largely by election-day voters reacting to the late-breaking scandal coverage.

The House Ethics Committee launched a formal investigation into Gonzales's conduct, adding institutional weight to the political pressure that ultimately ended his campaign.

Leadership stopped short of demanding his resignation from his congressional seat — a deliberate calculation to protect the razor-thin House Republican majority from a potentially competitive special election in the 23rd District.

The 23rd District — 27 counties stretching 800 miles of the Texas-Mexico border — is now an open seat, making it one of the most closely watched congressional battlegrounds of the 2026 cycle, with Herrera as the presumptive Republican nominee heading into the May 26 runoff.