Mayra Flores is accusing Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of funding racist ads

On Jul 21, 2022

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Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Tex.) is under fire after a political blogger who was paid for running ads for his campaign launched a series of racist attacks on his opponent, the first woman born in Mexico to be elected to Congress.

In numerous posts, Texas political blogger Jerry McHale called Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Tex.) “Miss Frijoles” and “Miss Enchiladas.” He also questioned claims that she worked in cotton fields with her Mexican immigrant parents as a child, calling her a “cotton pickin’ liar.”

The controversy draws attention to a contentious and Latino-heavy race for Texas’s 34th Congressional District, a majority-Hispanic seat along the border with Mexico where the GOP has made recent electoral gains in the historically blue region.

This comes as Republicans step up outreach efforts to court the Hispanic vote, with a growing number of Latino voters shifting to the right across the country, some experts say.

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“This is about Texas becoming a more electoral competitive environment,” said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. With a national spotlight on Texas ahead of the midterm elections, both political parties will try to use “explosive moments” like this to their advantage, he added.

In a statement shared Tuesday on Twitter, Flores said she was “disgusted” that Gonzalez had hired “a ‘creepy blogger’ to run hateful & racist ads against me,” and to attack her “Mexican heritage and sexually degrade” her.

Gonzalez said in a statement to The Washington Post that his team “advertises on many platforms and have no control” over their editorial content.

“We do not pay for political attacks, and we will not be advertising on this platform again,” he said, adding that he condemned “the offensive remarks” on the platform, just as he has condemned Trump’s “racist rants calling Mexican rapists and murderers.”

“If only Rep. Flores had the courage to do the same,” he said.

NBC News first reported that Gonzalez’s campaign gave the McHale Report $1,200 in June for “advertising services,” according to the Federal Election Commission, as well as $1,000 in October last year.

McHale could not be reached immediately for comment Tuesday, but he defended his inflammatory rhetoric in a post Monday, when he suggested his remarks were “political satire” and questioned “when did frijoles became the equivalent of the ‘N’ word?”

“I am a liberal Democrat. And it’s war against the Republican … I’m going to be merciless with her,” he told NBC News.

Flores became the first Latina Republican sent to Congress from Texas after winning a special election last month, flipping the congressional seat from blue to red. She was elected to serve the remaining six months of retired Democratic congressman Filemon Vela’s term, and is now running in November against Gonzalez, a popular incumbent, for a full term. Gonzalez, who has represented Texas’s 15th Congressional District since 2017, decided to shift to the 34th District this year because of redistricting.

Born in Tamaulipas, Mexico, Flores moved to Texas when she was a child. With a campaign slogan of “God, family, country,” she ran on a platform aimed at socially conservative Hispanics in the border city of Brownsville, including a tough stance on immigration, “securing the border” and lowering taxes.

A staunch supporter of former president Donald Trump, Flores has repeatedly blamed the Democratic Party for taking Hispanic voters for granted, and has gone as far as calling Democrats the “greatest threat America faces.”

She has also called for President Biden’s impeachment and has posted several tweets using the hashtag #QAnon, but she has denied ever supporting the conspiracy theory that says that the government and the media are led by Satan-worshiping elites who run a child-sex ring.

Flores fielded McHale’s attacks by drawing a comparison to first lady Jill Biden’s comments last week in which she said the Latino community of San Antonio was “unique as breakfast tacos.” The remarks prompted fierce backlash from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and others, who responded: “We are not tacos.”

Flores’s victory, along with candidacies of other right-wing Hispanic women running for Congress across the state’s four House districts that border Mexico, signals both a concerted effort by the Republican Party to make gains among Hispanic voters in this area and a growing trend of Latino voters shifting to the right in these southern districts, experts say.

“The Republicans have made an effort to change the narrative that they are not welcoming to the Hispanic vote in these districts,” said Blank.

But while the GOP has made real gains and increased its presence in the region, thanks in part to its efforts to recruit candidates like Flores, Blank argued that these voters represent a small percentage of the overall state Hispanic vote, which remains largely Democratic.

The controversy reflects the “wild and contentious” politics of Texas, said Cal Jilson, professor of political science at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas. In the 34th district, campaigns often “try to reduce their opponent to a laugh line,” he said.

“It’s all part of the serve-and-volley play of politics,” Jilson said. “The question is who serves next?”