(The Center Square) – Accusations regarding cartels, child sex offendersand foreign election interference are at the center of a south Texas congressional race.
Of several seats Democrats have targeted to flip blue in the midterms, one is in south Texas: CD 15, held by U.S. Rep. Monica De LA Cruz, R-Edinburg.
De La Cruz was first elected in 2022 after working for years to help flip her district red. She is the first and only Republican to represent her district in Texas history. In 2024, she helped Republicans gain large margins in an historic election when nearly all border counties flipped red for the first time, The Center Square reported.
Her platform has been consistently pro-life, pro-border security, pro-oil and gas and pro-Israel to the point of her office being vandalized by Hamas supporters. She is being honored next week by the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute with its Bipartisan Leadership in Public Service Award.
Democrats have poured money into her challenger’s race: two-time Latin Grammy award winner and singer, Bobby Pulido, also from Edinburg.
So far, his campaign has been mired in controversy. Allegations include foreign interference, cartel connections, being anti-law enforcement, longtime connections to a registered sex offender, dressing like a woman and appearing to perform lewd acts in a music video.
De La Cruz has warned of election interference from Mexican officials after the mayor of General Bravo in Nuevo León, Mexico, encouraged Mexicans’ family members living in Texas to vote for Pulido. Mayor Patricia Frinee Cantú Garza said in a Facebook video, “We need to get out the vote for him. Talk to your families in the United States. Make sure they go vote. When he becomes a congressman, we want him to take care of Bravo.”
She accused Pulido of turning to a “corrupt foreign government to rig an American election because he knows he is losing. We now have a Mexican politician on tape detailing Bobby Podrido’s [(Spanish for ‘rotten’)] fears and a quid pro quo: they deliver votes through Mexico, he serves their interests in Congress.”
Pulido, whose campaign did not respond to a request from The Center Square for comment, has said he was unaware of the mayor’s initiative. Many Texans have family members who live in Mexico and many Mexicans have family members who live in Texas.
Pulido has come under fire for claiming Trump’s border security efforts are racist in a district where residents support border security and voted for Trump. Pulido said in a podcast that immigration enforcement is about “race. It’s always down to race. And I hate to say this, because I hate to inflame it, but I’m going to call it out because that is what it is. Look, when they have this theory of white replacement, they’re saying, ‘Oh, no, no, if it weren’t for this and this and crime,’ they’ll throw in all these other things to dance around the true issue, which is there’s too many brown and black people, which they’re saying they’re just going to stay the same and be poor.”
He also said he didn’t want to “demonize law enforcement” but “a lot of the people that are joining, not all of them, [federal immigration enforcement] there’s a lot of White nationalists that want to join because they want to go hunt down people.”
The majority of Hispanics polled in Texas, support border security and want illegal border crossers deported, The Center Square reported. A large number of federal immigration enforcement officers are Hispanic. The U.S. Border Patrol union has endorsed De La Cruz.
Several tabloids have alleged that because Pulido shared a music festival stage with a Mexican singer, Julión Álvarez, blacklisted by the Treasury Department for being financially connected to a Sinaloa Cartel leader, Pulido also had cartel connections. In 2023, Álvarez was cleared and later received a tourist visa and reentered the U.S., The Latin Times reported. His campaign has said he wasn’t connected to Álvarez; he was also never blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury.
Pulido’s been accused of being a “part-time Texan” stemming from public comments he’s made. In one podcast, he referred to himself as a “winter Texan,” spending three months a year in Mexico. In 2015, El Norte reported he wanted to become a naturalized Mexican citizen. After having a decades long successful career, Pulido told MS NOW he goes to Mexico for medical care because he can’t afford healthcare in the U.S. His campaign has said he’s only a U.S. citizen.
The father of four says he best represents the values of south Texas, which critics question. Mediate published some of Pulido’s social media posts going back more than 10 years alleging they are misogynistic and sexist. Pulido hasn’t deleted or retracted them.
In one music video, Pulido dresses like a woman, wears lipstick and appears to mimic masturbating. In recent years, multiple polls have found that Hispanic voters say the Democratic Party’s values don’t represent them, including transgender ideology, The Center Square reported.
Pulido’s longtime accordionist, Frankie Caballero, a convicted child sex offender, went to prison for indecent contact with an 8-year-old girl and has a lengthy criminal history, according to multiple reports. Pulido’s campaign has said he didn’t know Caballero was a registered sex offender, which others in the music industry have disputed.
