Democrat Johnny Garcia has won his party’s primary in Texas’ 35th Congressional District, NBC News projects, defeating a rival who had been condemned by party leaders for antisemitic comments as Democrats look to compete in a district Republicans redrew to their benefit.
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The district stretches from Austin to San Antonio, the result of Texas Republican efforts to combine two Democratic seats into one and create a new district leaning their way. President Donald Trump carried this district by approximately 10.5 points in 2024.
But despite that result, there are signs the district could be competitive in the general election, including $1 million in spending from an opaque outside group aimed at boosting Garcia’s opponent, sex therapist Maureen Galindo, despite the controversies dogging her. Punchbowl News reported that the super PAC, Lead Left PAC, had links to a GOP fundraising platform.
One TV ad from Lead Left framed Galindo as a fresh face compared to “weak Democrats,” highlighting her calls to eliminate Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Meanwhile, in a recent Instagram post, she wrote that she wanted to turn an ICE detention center “into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking,” among other things.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and a slew of other national Democratic leaders disavowed Galindo’s “antisemitic” and “dangerous” statements and castigated Republicans, whom they accused of being behind the effort to boost her.
The outcome in the Republican runoff is not yet clear. There, Air Force veteran Carlos De La Cruz is facing off against state Rep. John Lujan in a test of two competing GOP power centers. Trump is supporting De La Cruz, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is supporting Lujan.
The big spending to boost Galindo suggests an implicit acknowledgment that the district, drawn by Republicans in the hopes of flipping this fall, could be competitive unless she won the primary.
Brandon Steinhauser, a longtime Texas Republican strategist who previously served a top aide to Sen. John Cornyn, told NBC News that he’s long thought Republican lawmakers’ decision to draw the congressional map the way they did was “making some big assumptions that President Trump’s support among Hispanics in Texas would translate in the future” to the rest of the party.
This new district’s voting-age population is about 52% Hispanic, according to data from the Texas Legislative Council. Despite Trump’s margin in the district in 2024, it’s been more competitive in recent elections: Trump beat Joe Biden by about 2 points there in 2020. In 2018, Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz fought to a near-draw in this territory.
Meanwhile, since 2024, “Polling has shown [Trump]’s probably lost a bit of that support both nationwide and in Texas,” Steinhauser said about the president’s standing with Hispanic voters. “It’s probably fair to look at this and say it was a little aggressive or overconfident. It may not be, but the concerns could be real that doing it this way may actually not work out as well as they hoped.”
Steinhauser added that he doesn’t think that assumption should cost Republicans the seat. And he said the spending for Galindo was likely partly an attempt to “invest now” in the hopes of being able to prevent an expensive general election, but also an attempt to elevate Galindo and “tie a narrative together to say that Democrats are the party of antisemitism and radical politics.”
Galindo’s presence in the runoff was a surprise: She finished first in the March 3 Democratic primary with 29% support despite raising less than $10,000 for her bid. Both Galindo and Garcia finished well below the 50% threshold to win the primary outright, triggering a runoff under Texas law.
Republicans say the new congressional map can net them five more congressional seats from the state. Two of those new districts, in the Houston and Fort Worth areas, should be no problem given their heavy Republican lean. The remaining two districts along the Rio Grande Valley, currently held by Democratic incumbents, were made more Republican-leaning but will feature hard-fought battleground races in the fall.
This is not the first time Texas Democrats’ preferred candidate was pulled into a runoff against a controversial candidate in a key race. The frontrunner for the Senate nomination in 2012 had to overcome a runoff against an activist who supported impeaching then-President Barack Obama and who campaigned with a picture of Obama sporting a Hitler mustache. And as Republican-aligned groups appear to be boosting candidates in a handful of competitive Democratic primaries across the country, Democrats were doing the same four years ago to boost candidates they thought they could beat in key general elections.