Immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros announced Friday that she’d raised $310,000 during the third quarter for her Democratic primary bid against Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar, who is one of the most conservative members of the caucus. Cisneros, who also raised an additional $149,000 in June, ended September with “nearly” $300,000 in the bank.
Cuellar has not yet revealed his third quarter totals, but he had a huge $3 million war chest at the end of June. Still, while Cisneros will almost certainly be decisively outspent in the March primary, her early fundraising totals are a sign that she’ll have what it takes to run a credible campaign against an incumbent who has not faced a serious intra-party threat since 2006.
Texas’ 28th Congressional District, which is located in the Laredo area, backed Hillary Clinton by a strong 58-38 margin, but you wouldn’t guess that by looking at Cuellar’s record. In 2014, for instance, Cuellar joined with Republicans on legislation to make it easier to deport child migrants, and he’s the extremely rare Democrat who has been endorsed by the radical anti-tax Club for Growth.
Cuellar hasn’t changed in the Trump era, either. During the last Congress, FiveThirtyEight also found that Cuellar voted with Donald Trump nearly 70% of the time, more than any other Democrat in either chamber. Last year, he was the one Democrat who held off on signing a discharge petition to force a vote on a bill to protect Dreamers until the very last day to do so. Cuellar also took the time last year to attend and invite his supporters to a fundraiser for Republican Rep. John Carter, who was facing a vigorous, and ultimately unsuccessful, challenge from Democrat MJ Hegar in another Texas seat.
Cuellar has responded to Cisneros’ challenge by arguing that she doesn’t understand the district, which is home to part of the Eagle Ford Shale and several oil and gas operations. Cuellar tweeted in August that the Green New Deal, which Cisneros supports, would “kill jobs for hard-working Texans … Policies crafted by New York PACs won’t work for Texas.” Cuellar has also taken another page from the GOP playbook and denounced Cisneros’ allies in the Justice Democrats as “socialists.”
Cuellar also isn’t running away from his longtime NRA allies. In September, he told the New York Times, “This is not New York, this is Texas,” even though he’s the one and only member of the Texas Democratic delegation with an A-rating from the NRA, and added, “So you talk about guns, you talk about God, you talk about trucks.”
Cuellar also said he had no plans to return donations from the NRA, even after a white supremacist targeting Latinos in El Paso murdered 22 people. (Cuellar’s seat is about 75% Latino.) The congressman also invoked yet another right-wing talking point when he compared himself to “justice socialists” like Cisneros and said, “I am for reasonable gun reform. But I’m not going to take guns away from people like they want to do.”
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