South Texas Latino voters shift ahead of 2026 midterm election

TEXAS — Tano Tijerina had a confession to make.

“I want to tell you something I never thought I’d have to say from a stage like this,” Tijerina, a former minor league baseball player and a Texas GOP congressional candidate, said during a speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. 

“I used to be a Democrat.”

The line was hardly a bombshell. Tijerina had been elected three times for Webb County judge — in 2014, 2018 and 2022 — on the Democratic ticket. And he’s made his 2024 defection a key part of his campaign in the majority-Latino, South Texas border district in which he’s running.

But Tijerina’s admission elicited shouts of “No!” and boos. Just to be sure, he quickly made clear he had kicked his old Democratic habits.

“I’m a beef-eating, truck-driving, gun-slinging, … Bible-thumping, Jesus-loving, calloused-hand cowboy that’s going to fight like hell for South Texas,” Tijerina — looking like a Texas brawler in a beige cowboy hat and a tight blue suit that hugged his biceps — thundered over a hearty round of applause.

Tijerina is part of a coalition of Hispanic and Latino voters who have long leaned Democratic but have more recently shown a willingness to vote for both parties. The group could be critical in deciding control of Congress this November.

Hispanic and Latino voters nationwide moved rightward in 2024 in surprisingly large numbers and helped deliver a second presidential term to Donald Trump. In the congressional district in which Tijerina is running, Texas’ 28th, voters opted for Trump by 7 percentage points, after backing President Joe Biden four years earlier. However, they stuck with their Democratic congressman, Rep. Henry Cuellar, whom Tijerina hopes to pick off in November, reelecting Cuellar to an 11th term.

Riding high after their 2024 romp, in which Republicans won control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, there was optimism in the GOP that the rightward turn among Hispanic voters could reflect a permanent realignment. In the past two years in Texas and Florida — states with large Hispanic populations— Republicans redrew congressional maps, banking on their continued support.

But amid anxiety over high consumer prices, Trump’s persistently low approval ratings and sentiment that immigration policies have overreached — even in South Texas, where support for a secure border is strong — enthusiasm for the GOP appears to be waning with less than a month to go before the 2026 midterm election. The districts in play there are among a small number across the U.S. that could help decide control of the next Congress.

And a recent survey conducted for the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter found Democratic statewide candidates in Texas were leading their Republican opponents by a 2-to-1 margin among likely Hispanic voters. And an NBC News/Telemundo poll of Latino voters across the U.S., released Oct. 4, found 27% of those surveyed approved of…