GOP Army veteran announces challenge to Democrat Vicente Gonzalez in South Texas congressional district

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Eric Flores, a Republican Army veteran and lawyer from Mission, announced Monday he is running for Texas’ 34th Congressional District, targeting Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen in a swing seat carried by President Donald Trump last year.

Gonzalez won the district, situated on the Gulf Coast and stretching from Brownsville toward Corpus Christi, by nearly 3 percentage points — the closest margin of Texas’ 38 congressional districts last November. It is one of just 13 House districts nationwide that elected a Democrat while being carried by Trump, making Gonzalez a top target for Republicans as they look to maintain their slim House majority in 2026.

The prospect of Flores’ candidacy has excited Republicans in Texas and Washington, due in part to his military and law enforcement credentials. Flores is a Rio Grande Valley native and Spanish speaker in a district that is over 90% Hispanic.

He has held numerous public positions in South Texas, serving as a city attorney and municipal judge in Alton before a stint as assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Texas’ criminal division in McAllen from 2021 to the beginning of this year. There, he prosecuted transnational human smuggling along the border — an issue he hopes to raise in the election.

“I was prosecuting at a time when there were thousands and thousands of undocumented aliens coming into the U.S.,” Flores said in an interview. “They're here unlawfully, and [we were] just, quite frankly, letting them in. It's policies like that that I want to go to D.C. and change.”

But Flores is not as hardline as some members of his party. He said he wants to push for immigration policy that makes sense for a region that has struggled with labor shortages, especially as the Trump administration’s immigration raids targeting undocumented workers have ramped up.

“Something that I'm going to be championing in D.C. is to ensure — especially [for] our farmers, for our boat manufacturers, for our steel mills that we have down here — that they have the workers that they need, having an efficient legal process for that,” he said.

Though the district has shifted rightward in recent elections, Republicans have been unable to replicate their success down the ballot. Democratic Senate nominee Colin Allred won the district by 6 percentage points in 2024, and Gonzalez, a moderate who has represented South Texas since 2017, has proven difficult to beat. He defeated Republican Mayra Flores in 2022 and in 2024 by single-digit margins.

Mayra Flores, who is not related to Eric, has since announced a 2026 run in the nearby district of Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo.

The boundaries of the 34th Congressional District, and others in the Rio Grande Valley, could be changed as Texas Republicans move to redraw the state’s political lines in a special session that began Monday. South Texas — where Republicans have rapidly improved their margins with Hispanic voters — is a key area the GOP is targeting to flip seats, and the 34th District could be redrawn to include more Republican voters and become a friendlier seat for whoever captures the GOP nomination.

In a statement to The Texas Tribune, Gonzalez suggested that his old opponent could still end up running in his district — and pledged to beat either candidate.

“If Mayra comes back, she will be mopping the floor with him and every other Republican primary candidate,” Gonzalez said. “So [Eric] needs to get in line before he gets to the general election. If our district doesn’t move too much, we’ll kick his or anyone else’s ass, just as we have the 19 candidates before.”

But if Republicans push the 34th District into Republican areas near Corpus Christi, Gonzalez could end up running in a district tilted more in favor of the GOP — a prospect he acknowledged.

“The only way Republicans can beat me is by cheating and changing the district maps,” he said.

Flores lives in the neighboring 15th Congressional District, currently represented by Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz of Edinburg. Members of Congress do not need to live in the district they represent, though doing so opens them up to criticism from opponents.

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