Democrat Bobby Pulido declared victory over U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz on Tuesday, reclaiming a hotly contested South Texas district for his party just two years after President Donald Trump carried it by 18 percentage points.

Pulido, a Tejano star well known in South Texas, was among Democrats’ most prized recruits in the country. The Associated Press called the race shortly after 11:30 p.m., as Pulido held an enormous lead amid a broader leftward shift in the Rio Grande Valley, the mostly Latino region that anchors the 15th Congressional District. De La Cruz’s ouster is a major blow for GOP leaders in Washington, who had hoped to gain more seats in the Valley after Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map last summer.

“For over 30 years, you played my music at your weddings, your quinceañeras, and your carne asadas, and the past year you welcomed me into those same celebrations on the campaign trail,” Pulido said in a statement. “Tonight, you trusted me with something even bigger than a song, you trusted me with your future and I will work hard everyday to honor it.”

A former insurance agent, De La Cruz made history in 2022 as the first Republican elected to a full U.S. House term in the Rio Grande Valley, winning a majority-Hispanic seat that stretched from Hidalgo County to less populated areas east of San Antonio. Her ascent was part of a Trump-era shift toward the GOP among Latino voters, most evident in South Texas, a region that had long been a Democratic stronghold.

Frustrated by high costs and the influx of migrants at the southern border, Latino voters sent De La Cruz back for a second term in 2024 and delivered Trump a majority of the vote in Hidalgo County — a first for a Republican presidential candidate in over 50 years.

But just two years later, Pulido flipped the script. 

The Democrat campaigned at concerts, rallies and even dozens of quinceañeras after a campaign barb from De La Cruz gave him the idea, allowing him to personally connect with tens of thousands of voters. Pulido, who refers to himself as a “conservative Democrat,” focused his campaign on high costs, healthcare and the humanitarian and economic impact of immigration enforcement raids in the region, as Trump’s mass deportation campaign hit families and small businesses in the Valley.

And he distanced himself from the national party on key issues, including the Biden administration’s border policy and culture war issues. He made a point of discussing the economy in aspirational terms, encouraging wealth creation and avoiding attacks on the rich because, in the economically depressed Valley, “people here want to be rich. … They want to be able to have enough money to provide for their families,” he said. His frequent refrain is that Valley residents consider themselves “broke,” a temporary circumstance, rather than a constant state of being “poor.”

Another of his go-to lines on the trail was to tell voters that he was neither “team red or team blue,” but rather “team you.” And he leaned into a nostalgic appeal to the era in which South Texas was deep blue.

“I’m the Democrat that you used to vote for,” Pulido said in an interview in October, describing his campaign pitch to Trump voters in the district.

Come January, Pulido will join a Democratic caucus in Washington that is eager for members who can speak authentically to Latino men, in particular.

De La Cruz also worked to distance herself from the most unpopular elements of her party. Her ads emphasized her defense of Social Security and Medicare, and one featured the wife of a DACA recipient who praised De La Cruz for helping secure her husband’s release from detention. In Congress, she was one of a handful of Republicans to vote with all Democrats to extend enhanced premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act enrollees. And she reiterated when asked that she had told Republican leaders their deportation strategy should be more narrowly focused on criminals. 

But she did not run away from Trump, rallying with the president in Corpus Christi last week. And she dealt with the twin struggles of major backlash against Republicans in South Texas and her name being less familiar to residents in the conservative, northern part of the district — new turf for her post-redistricting and an important source of GOP votes.

Still, the district retained its same partisan lean under the new map. Despite this, and her status as a multiterm incumbent, De La Cruz referred to herself as the “underdog” in late October. She portrayed herself as an outsider compared to Pulido, whose uncle was a former Hidalgo County district attorney, and told voters he “comes from the corrupt, compadre system that ruled South Texas for decades.”

By Election Day, most election analysts rated the race as a toss-up.

De La Cruz and Republicans also attacked Pulido hard on the trail over his previous employment of accordionist Frankie Caballero, a registered sex offender whom Pulido performed with for multiple years. Their association was the subject of millions of dollars’ worth of attack ads.

But Pulido prevailed by winning Hidalgo County, where both he and De La Cruz are from, and overperforming past Democratic candidates in many of the more rural counties.

De La Cruz conceded Tuesday night, saying she had called Pulido.

“Tonight, voters across our country have spoken, and we should listen,” she said in a statement. “Representing South Texas has been the greatest honor of my life, and I am proud of what we delivered for our community.”