As Republicans make gains in the Rio Grande Valley, Democrats are fighting among themselves

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SAN JUAN — Dozens of people crammed inside a burger joint here on a Saturday morning in late July, buzzing with energy. They fed on free breakfast tacos and drank coffee as they waited for the quarterly meeting of the Hidalgo County Democratic Party to begin.

On the agenda for the party's county executive committee was the appointment of about 55 precinct chairs, loyal party members who organize at the neighborhood level. It would be a significant addition to the 70 already on the roster.

The addition was meant to be a celebration for a party that has lost ground in recent elections. But the meeting quickly devolved into a verbal brawl between factions over how to move the party forward.

Stacy Solis, one of the precinct chairs upset with how the party has been run, objected to the order of the agenda. Party leaders had hoped to approve most of the 55 new members in one swoop. Solis said there were people she could not support. With time running out and the restaurant about to open to the public, another member suggested the party approve many of those candidates. Solis stood up and read a list of about 20 people she and her colleagues approved of.

The crowd erupted.

Party Chair Richard Gonzales pushed for order to no avail.

“We need to vote,” a person yelled.

“I’m out,” a woman said as she left the restaurant.

The meeting ended without a vote on new precinct chairs.

It was the latest instance of gridlock inside the Hidalgo County Democratic Party.

A group of about 30 members — led by Solis and Melissa Jalomo — is upset over how the party has spent money.

The faction has come to challenge Gonzales at nearly every turn for the last seven months. They saw the effort to name dozens of new precinct chairs, who they believe are sympathetic to him, and the continual spending of thousands of dollars on consultants, as a losing strategy. They're demanding transparency on how firms spend the money to ensure they deliver Democratic wins.

The infighting comes at a perilous time for Democrats across the state. State Republican lawmakers just approved new congressional boundaries meant to give their members an edge in elections for the U.S. House.

Republicans have made no secret that they plan to conquer the Rio Grande Valley, once a reliably Democratic region. Two districts represented by Democrats were redrawn to give the GOP an edge.

"We just need to keep our eyes on the ultimate goal, and that's to make sure that we fight the Republicans,” Gonzales said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. “We can all disagree, and we can have differences of opinion, but we all need to agree on what needs to be done next year."

Spending at the center of conflict

The internal conflict among Hidalgo County Democrats stems from a disagreement over how the county party has spent money since at least the 2024 election. Solis and other frustrated precinct chairs have accused Gonzales of spending thousands of dollars without their approval.

“The Texas Democratic Party rules clearly state that all expenditures, any expenditure, has to be approved by the precinct chairs,” Solis said. “We don’t know what happened to that money.”

Too much money has been spent on paid staff and other consultants who have not delivered results, Solis and others said. In 2024, the party reported spending approximately $248,000, according to campaign finance reports. Consultants were paid more than $100,000, records show.

Gonzales’ critics are demanding more details about what those consultants did and why their approval was not sought.

Those political contributions didn’t require committee approval, Gonzales said, because donors earmarked that money for specific purposes.

Jonathan Neerman, a campaign finance attorney and former chair of the Dallas County Republican Party, said it’s not unusual for donors to ask that funds be spent on specific things. He also suggested it’s normal for local parties to spend large sums on consultants.

“In my experience, donors are much more willing to fund something if it’s specifically identified,” Neerman said.

Solis and Jalomo are also concerned that too much money has been funneled through political committees, over which the party no direct oversight. Much of that money is being used to pay staff. And in one instance this year, the wife of a committee director was paid $7,500 for work.

The Hidalgo County Democrats PAC was created by Saul Garcia and Desiderio Romero, former county party employees, in July 2024. The local PAC was largely funded by a statewide political committee, the Texas Majority PAC, that aims to flip Texas over to the Democratic Party by 2032.

The Hidalgo County PAC was created alongside several other local PACs throughout the state during the same time period, following a shift in rules in March 2024 regarding how political committees can operate, said Katherine Fischer, executive director of Texas Majority PAC. Many were started by former staff of county parties. These autonomous groups, which face fewer financial rules than political parties, can help mobilize voters and advertise for candidates and issues.

Solis and Jalomo have questioned the thousands of dollars on consulting services and staff salaries, including those of Garcia and Romero. They received a total of $37,657 and $35,766 from the PAC, respectively.

Daniel Weiner, director of the Brennan Center’s Elections and Government Program, a Washington-based think tank, said there was nothing inappropriate about a PAC spending money to pay its staff.

“That’s very normal,” Weiner said. “If a PAC that is running a campaign has no employees, that’s actually quite suspicious.”

On the other hand, a well-run PAC would not spend all of its money on staff or consultants, Weiner said.

Among the consultants that the local PAC hired was Saora LLC, a firm owned by Garcia’s wife, Laura Garcia Aviles. The PAC paid her $7,500 for political strategy consulting. Garcia said his wife’s hiring was cleared by the PAC’s compliance team and said nothing out of the ordinary was done.

“We’ve always worked together in tandem,” he said about hiring his wife.

Garcia Aviles previously worked for the county party, performing social media work, and has worked on other local campaigns.

“She has experience,” he said. “When you’re in a campaign, you want people that you can trust.”

The vast majority of the local PAC’s spending went to Longhorn Organizing Strategies, a voter-mobilization firm that provides canvassing and voter registration services, to which the PAC paid $350,000. They also hired MBA Consulting Group, a Washington-based firm. The PAC paid that firm more than $17,000 for compliance services.

Fischer, the state PAC’s executive director, commended the work done in the Rio Grande Valley.

“I think the program that was run in Hidalgo County was quite good, actually, and was certainly the largest that has ever happened in that county, and we had a good working relationship with Richard and the staff and still do,” Fischer said.

While President Donald Trump made historic inroads, winning every county in the Valley in 2024, Democratic congressional incumbents held their seats.

Gonzales has met with Solis, Jalomo and others to discuss their concerns about spending, and he explained that he has no control over the local PAC. Solis and Jalomo requested another private meeting with a quorum of the executive committee, which Gonzales said would be illegal.

“I have done all I can, but this group has essentially become a cancer to our local party and I'm just afraid of where things may go from this point forward,” Gonzales said, referring to Solis, Jalomo and those aligned with them as obstructionists.

But the group says they just want answers and transparency.

“Anything that we've obstructed has been in an attempt to get this chairman, and this county party, to be transparent because they are not,” Solis said.

New recruits may help county chair

On Aug. 7, a dozen days after the tense meeting at the San Juan burger shop, Solis and Jalomo received an email at 5:55 p.m. notifying them that an emergency meeting of the county executive committee would start in five minutes.

The meeting details, including the internet link to the virtual meeting room, were sent as a photo attachment.

The women attempted to type the 60-plus-character link into their browser. Solis and Jalomo said the link was bad, sending them to a waiting room for a different event scheduled to start at 8 p.m. They never made it to the actual meeting.

Later that evening, the county party issued a news release announcing the executive committee had replaced Jalomo as party secretary, made changes to their subcommittees, confirmed more than two dozen precinct chairs, and adopted a budget.

At a party one week later, Gonzales celebrated, telling the new precinct chairs that their confirmation into the party ranks marked a new chapter for the party.

“I’m happy to tell you that today, this meeting here, is hopefully the first step forward in a new, better, more united, more transparent Hidalgo County Democratic Party,” Gonzales said.

Gonzales noted that the additional precinct chairs marked the first time that Hidalgo County had more than 100 Democratic precinct chairs since 2016, making progress toward a goal set by the state party of increasing ground troops.

But precinct chairs also make up the governing body of a county executive committee, so adding an influx of new members could tip the scales of power away from the faction led by Solis and Jalomo.

The women cried foul on the emergency meeting and confirmation of the precinct chairs. They also filed a complaint with the state party asking leaders to intervene.

“These egregious and improper actions were designed to intentionally silence and exclude a number of duly elected precinct chairs from participating in official party business,” their complaint stated.

State party rules state that precinct chairs and the party secretary must be notified five days in advance of all meetings, the complaint said. The rules make no mention of county executive committees’ authority to call special or emergency meetings.

Gonzales said he cleared the meeting by the state party and was told that because emergency meetings are a gray area, calling one was at his discretion. The Texas Democratic Party did not return the Tribune’s request for comment.

Republicans are making inroads in South Texas

The infighting within the Hidalgo County Democratic Party has frustrated many on both sides of the squabble. They fear that people who hoped to volunteer with the party will be disillusioned by the intraparty drama.

It’s already difficult to recruit people to serve as precinct chairs without the fighting, Gonzales said.

A party struggling to recruit people is indicative of an ailing party, said Alvaro Corral, a political science professor at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

“Having precinct chairs and having a strong party locally is the number one thing that parties should do,” he said.

Precinct chairs establish and maintain good connections between the party and its voters, Corral said. In doing so, they can learn what the party can do better, what it's doing wrong, and communicate that up the ladder.

The Valley is of special significance to Democrats. It has long been considered their foothold in the state alongside major cities like Houston, San Antonio and Dallas. Kendall Scudder, the state party chair, made the Valley his first official stop as the new party leader as a nod to the Democrats’ priority of reclaiming ground here.

Republican operative Wayne Hamilton said his party is ready to seize on Democrats’ missteps.

"Anything dealing with the Republican Party, in South Texas right now, is much more positive than Democrats, just for the fact that everybody's seen the writing on the wall, and the up-and-coming party is the Republican Party," Hamilton said.

The Republican Party is positioning itself to make further inroads.

State Republican lawmakers just approved a plan to redraw the congressional districts in Texas. If successful, Republicans could gain five new seats in Congress. Two of those seats targeted by the GOP are in the Rio Grande Valley and held by Democratic U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen. The new map makes those districts more favorable to Republicans.

South Texas Democrats have a lot of soul-searching to do — and quick, Corral said. It is not unlike Republicans’ own malaise after their defeat in the 2012 presidential election.

“I think the Democratic Party is just simply in that phase right now of grief,” Corral said.

There’s been no official word from the Texas Democratic Party on the complaint filed by Solis and Jalomo but they await the complaint process to play out, which includes an initial review to determine whether an investigation is needed.

Gonzales is plowing ahead with party business. A budget workshop is scheduled for September and the group is holding an event to coincide with a visit from Beto O’Rourke.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” he said.

The local party is about to embark on a big fundraising push, so they’re holding phone-banking weekly in conjunction with Blue Texas, an initiative jointly launched by the Texas Majority PAC and the Texas Democratic Party, Gonzales said. The county party also intends to launch a countywide tour in which they visit every city in Hidalgo County to reconnect with voters, share their vision for the future, and hopefully recruit more volunteers.

"For the last seven months, we were really, really just hamstrung and prevented from doing anything meaningful, and since this last meeting that we had, we've actually been able to do real party work with real party infrastructure, getting real results," Gonzales said.

"We just really want to move forward, and I intend to move forward."

Solis said she and others will continue to speak out publicly about the goings-on of the party to increase public pressure.

“We represent the people in our precinct, the Democrats in our precinct,” Solis said. “And we are trying to do things that are right for the party.”

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.

Disclosure: The University of Texas - Rio Grande Valley has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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