Democrat Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) has sought to portray himself as a moderate in Texas on transgender issues and border security, despite a record of supporting transgender-related legislation and praising elements of the Biden administration’s border policies.
Gonzalez defeated former Republican Rep. Mayra Flores by less than three percentage points in 2024 while outperforming Kamala Harris, who lost every county in his district to Trump. The redrawn district is now seven points more Republican, and Trump carried it by ten points in 2024, making Gonzalez a top GOP target.
After the 2024 election, Gonzalez criticized national Democrats for failing to respond effectively to Republican messaging on transgender issues, despite his own previous statements and votes on transgender policy.
In a clip from a 2017 interview with CBS 4 Rio Grande Valley that was exclusively provided to Breitbart News, Gonzalez described Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military as a “tragedy.” Gonzalez said transgender people had historically served in the armed forces and called the policy a “step back in history.”
In 2021, Gonzalez voted for the Equality Act, which would have required businesses to allow biological males into women’s bathrooms, opened girls’ sports teams to biological males, required employers to pay for sex-change surgeries, and allowed biological males into battered women’s shelters, women’s homeless shelters, and women’s prisons.
In 2023, Gonzalez voted with Democrats in an unsuccessful attempt to block consideration of the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which sought to prevent biological males from competing in women’s athletic programs. Gonzalez did not participate in the final vote after the effort to block the bill failed.
Gonzalez also published a Pride Month message in 2022 that stated, “Y’all means all.” The post included the Progress Pride Flag, which adds white, pink, and light-blue stripes representing transgender people to the traditional rainbow flag.
Gonzalez’s immigration record is also at odds with the increasingly Republican district he is seeking to represent.
In 2019, he opposed a border wall as a “4th-century solution to a 21st-century problem” and dismissed claims that violence was streaming across the southern border as “nonsense.”
During the Biden administration, Gonzalez alternated between criticizing disorderly crossings and defending elements of the administration’s immigration policies. He supported temporarily retaining Title 42, warned that the administration lacked a detailed plan for its expiration, and later said the border was “out of control.”
However, he also praised then-President Joe Biden and then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for policies he said had reduced illegal crossings by 70 percent. Crossings later rose to record levels, with approximately 11 million border encounters occurring during Biden’s four years in office.
Gonzalez also condemned Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) border policies as “grandstanding” over his treatment of “brown people” and called Abbott and Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis “right-wing nutjob governors” over their decisions to transport migrants to Democrat-led jurisdictions.
In a separate interview, Gonzalez urged Trump to “lighten up” enforcement and allow vetted migrants to “cross freely,” while calling for a pathway to legal status for illegal immigrants who had lived in the country for decades.
Republican Eric Flores, an Army veteran and former federal prosecutor who is challenging Gonzalez, told Breitbart News, “Vicente Gonzalez votes lock-step with the most radical Democrats in support of the woke agenda. South Texas voters know he says one thing back home, but in Washington, he votes with far-left liberals like Greg Casar from Austin. South Texans are tired of the deception, tired of the lies, and voters will hold him accountable this November.”
Gonzalez has faced scrutiny over financial disclosures listing between $100,001 and $250,000 in an account with the Bank of China, a state-owned commercial bank, on his 2017, 2018, and 2019 disclosure forms. The account generated between $2,501 and $5,000 in annual interest, more than he reported receiving from some larger accounts. Gonzalez declined interview requests after Breitbart News reported on the account in 2021, and his office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. His press secretary later said the Bank of China was insured and operated under U.S. law and that Gonzalez had closed the account.
Financial disclosures filed in 2022 confirmed that he closed it in 2020. Gonzalez had previously signed a Blue Dog Coalition letter expressing concerns about the Chinese Communist Party but voted against Republican motions that sought to prevent a net loss of U.S. jobs to China resulting from reentry into the Paris Climate Accord and to restrict Export-Import Bank financing for Chinese government-controlled entities and organizations supporting Chinese government actions.
Gonzalez has also faced backlash over his support for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which Republicans characterized as defunding the police and which the Congressional Budget Office said would affect more than 18,000 law-enforcement agencies. Earlier reports cited allegations that he made demeaning remarks about local police during an early-2000s altercation. His office called the allegation “completely false” but did not specify which part it disputed. In August 2021, Gonzalez attended a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser in Napa with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other vulnerable Democrats while Americans and Afghan allies were struggling to evacuate Kabul after the Taliban took control.
