Gonzales talks priorities, bipartisanship after congressional win
Running for public office is a grueling process in any year. In 2020, it was “absolutely brutal,” as Republican Tony Gonzales describes it.
His race for the GOP nomination in the 23rd district this year was no easy feat — it started with a hotly contested primary that spiraled into a runoff and then a recount that stretched into late August before Gonzales could finally focus entirely on his race against Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones.
Even then, he was never in one place for too long — on Election Day, he left his hometown of San Antonio to make stops in 12 of the district’s 29 counties. He didn’t return until about 7p.m., when early votes first started coming in.
Seven hours later, he was a congressman-elect.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Gonzales, a former Navy cryptologist, said in an interview Monday. “I just knew that I needed to be prepared for everything. You run hard, you work hard, you make sure you have everything in place … We were loaded for bear. To see the election night come in the way it did, it was just great. It showed that all of our hard work paid off.”
Now, Gonzales is looking forward. The next two months are a race up to his swearing-in ceremony, filled with constituent services and introductions to new colleagues.
Over the weekend, he held his first event as a member-elect: A meet-and-greet with a local Boy Scouts group. Behind the scenes, “the phone just rings off the hook,” Gonzales said.
U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullen, ROkla., has been “so helpful.” (They have connected over both having six kids.)
And then, come January, the work begins on Capitol Hill.
Veterans services, infrastructure and immigration reform are amongthe issues at the top of Gonzales’ list. Another coronavirus
stimulus package “makes a lot of sense,” he said.
But first, he said he feels a responsibility to help unify a divided nation.
“It’s bringing the country back together and healing wherever possible,” he said. “I want to be known as a member that is going to be sensible and reasonable and work with people. That’s important to me.”
Gonzales will be one of more than 200 GOP members of the House, still in the minority, albeit with more members than last term. Republicans have flipped nine House seats so far this cycle — for a net gain of at least six — in a year that Democrats expected to extend their majority by five to 15 seats but came up empty-handed.
“We’re going to have a House that’s going to be a razor thin-margin, and what that’s going to do is give a lot of influence to those mem
bers of Congress that are sensible in the way they approach it because both sides will need those votes,” Gonzales said.
He’s interested in connecting with “like-minded” colleagues — not necessarily on the political spectrum, but those with similar policy interests or the same values
of faith and family. He has begun making calls and hopes that others will return the favor.
He’s been working on his pitch: “Tony’s a guy that you can work with, and you should reach out to him.”
The 23rd district, currently represented by U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, a Republi
can, was on Democrats’ wish list for a 2020 pickup. Jones, a former Air Force intelligence officer, was the presumed favorite, running for the seat for a second time after coming within 1,000 votes of upsetting Hurd in 2018. This year, she lost by a larger margin.
Experts have cited a number of reasons for Gonzales’ decisive victory — his ground game chief among them. While Jones declined to hold in-person events amid the pandemic, the Republican visited every county in the sprawling district at least twice in the final weeks of the campaign.
The GOP also gained ground this year with Hispanic voters, a factor that could have made all the difference in the 23rd district, which covers 800 miles of Texas-mexico border.
“The messenger matters,” said Gonzales, who is Mexican American in a district that is nearly two-thirds Latino. “I think this election highlighted the role of the Latino vote — not only for Democrats, but for Republicans as well. I think there’s an opportunity for me to be able to highlight that.”
Gonzales is already building out a congressional team, starting with his chief of staff, Casey Contres, who was most recently the campaign manager for U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-colo.