Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she is optimistic that progressive Democrats will send a strong message in the primary in Texas’s 28th district.
Ms Ocasio Cortez has endorsed Jessica Cisneros, who is running against Rep Henry Cuellar, who has held the district since 2005. Ms Cuellar is the last anti-abortion Democrat in the House and was the only Democrat to vote against legislation that would have codified the protections in Roe v Wade last year. On Monday, the legislation died in the Senate, with no Republicans voting for it and Sen Joe Manchin of West Virginia voting against it. Sens Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico, who is recovering from a stroke, and Dianne Feinstein of California, whose husband died of cancer, did not vote on the legislation.
In the past, Mr Cuellar also received money from the National Rifle Association.
Ms Cuellar narrowly beat Ms Cisneros in 2020. Now the two are engaged in a rematch. Ms Ocasio-Cortez, who beat incumbent Democratic Rep Joe Crowley in 2018, campaigned in San Antonio for Ms Cisneros and fellow progressive House candidate Greg Casar last month in Texas and sounded an optimistic note about the campaign.
“I was just kind of having a back and forth with her team today and we’re pulling for them,” she told The Independent. “We hope that they that they make it through here and that South Texas and a place like Laredo can show rather from Laredo to San Antonio, that they can show that this could be really a source of profound, hopeful change that they’re setting to come.”
Ms Ocasio-Cortez is not the only progressive to endorse Ms Cisneros. Fellow Squad members Reps Jamaal Bowman of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts have also endorsed her, as have former presidential candidates Sens Bernie Sanders of Vermont and and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Mr Cuellar also earned the scorn of progressive Democrats when last year, he and a group of other moderate Democrats pushed for the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill without passing President Joe Biden’s proposed Build Back Better legislation.
Texas’s 28th district is right on the US-Mexico border and is heavily Latino and includes not only rural Laredo but also parts of San Antonio.
For his part, Mr Cuellar has hit Ms Cisneros for her pledge to split Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which employs many on the border including many Latinos, in half and her support for defunding the police, which polling has shown is radioactive among Hispanic voters.
Mr Cuellar won his general election race in 2020 by double digits. But the contest comes as many of the counties moved rightward last election. Starr County moved 56 percentage points rightward despite staying in the Democratic column. But Zapata County flipped to the Republicans in a rightward shift of 39 percentage points.
But the campaign also received a curve ball when Rep Cuellar after the FBI raided Mr Cuellar’s home. Mr Cuellar has said “There is an ongoing investigation that will show that there was no wrongdoing on my part.”
Polls in Texas close on Tuesday evening.