• TX-28: Federal prosecutors announced Friday that they had indicted Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar and his wife for allegedly accepting close to $600,000 in bribes from an oil company controlled by the government of Azerbaijan and from a bank based in Mexico.
The Texas congressman responded to NBC's initial report about the charges by proclaiming his innocence and insisting he would remain on the ballot.
"I'm running for re-election and will win this November," Cuellar said in a statement.
Cuellar secured renomination in March without opposition, and until Friday, it didn't appear to matter which of his underfunded Republican foes might win the May 28 runoff to take on the seemingly secure incumbent.
Following his indictment, though, the GOP is almost certain to take a fresh look at targeting the 28th District, a constituency in the Laredo and eastern San Antonio suburbs that favored Joe Biden 53-46 in 2020 but has been trending to the right.
Navy veteran Jay Furman led businessman Lazaro Garza 45-27 in the first round of the GOP primary, which put Furman a few points below the majority he needed to win outright.
Neither candidate had appeared capable of putting up a strong fight against Cueller, who won each of his 10 terms by double digits. Garza self-funded virtually all of the $300,000 he brought in through the end of March but had just $24,000 left at the end of that month, while Furman hasn't even filed a first-quarter fundraising report even though the deadline to do so was weeks ago.
Cuellar, meanwhile, seemed to be on a glide path to victory after a couple of difficult cycles. The congressman, who has long been one of the most conservative Democrats in the House, held off attorney Jessica Cisneros by a small 52-48 margin in the 2020 primary after she challenged him from the left. Republicans failed to field a candidate, though, and Cuellar went on to crush a Libertarian.
Cisneros sought a rematch the following cycle and this time was able to deploy a new line of attack after the FBI raided Cuellar's home and campaign headquarters as part of a probe related to government and business ties with Azerbaijan.
But while Cisneros forced Cuellar into a runoff, the scandal wasn't quite enough to topple the longtime incumbent. An attorney for Cuellar claimed that he'd been informed by federal authorities that the congressman "is not a target of this investigation," a statement that came the month before the incumbent fended off Cisneros in a 50.3-49.7 squeaker.
That fall, Republicans made their first serious effort to unseat Cuellar, with the NRCC unsurprisingly airing ads focusing on the FBI raid. No new information surfaced during the general election about that probe, however, and Cuellar went on to score an unexpectedly wide 57-43 victory over his Republican foe, former Ted Cruz staffer Cassy Garcia.
Cuellar's troubles, legal and electoral, appeared to be over after that, especially after Cisneros decided not to challenge him for a third time. All that changed Friday, though, when the first public development about the incumbent's ties to Azerbaijan in two years came in the form of a federal indictment.