Among the left-leaning groups taking a second look at Texas’ 23rd Congressional District: a national gun safety PAC that’s been going into some deep-red territory for several election cycles.
The massive San Antonio-to-El Paso district hasn’t been a part of Democrats’ target map since redistricting made it much tougher after the 2020 Census.
But leaders from the Giffords PAC — launched by former congresswoman and gunshot survivor Gabby Giffords (D-Arizona) — say they can’t ignore a Republican nominee who makes guns, sells them and has dedicated his career to making them more easily attainable.
“We think this is a really important race with major national implications for this issue,” said Giffords’ executive director Emma Brown. “Brandon Herrera is one of the most extreme, anti-gun-violence-prevention candidates anywhere on the map.”
Thirty-year-old Herrera is best-known for his social media platform, where millions of followers watch him shoot and talk about different kinds of guns.
He also moved his small gun manufacturing business to San Antonio several years ago, and became the GOP nominee to replace former U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio) after a scandalous affair forced the latter to drop his reelection bid and resign before the end of his term.
Since then, an array of Democratic groups have shown fresh interest in an unusually tough district. TX23 supported President Donald Trump by nearly 15 percentage points in 2024 — much more than the roughly 5-point margin party operatives typically consider to be competitive.
“The fundamentals of this district are pretty hard, and it’s important to still be real that [Democratic nominee Katy Padilla Stout] is in a very hard race,” said Brown, who previously ran U.S. Senate and House campaigns before working for the Giffords group.
“But Brandon Herrera and his self-inflicted challenges have really put this race on the map,” she continued. “Everything from mocking veteran suicide, to being a little too close to the neo-Nazis, to being way out there on the gun stuff — has really not done him any favors.”
Shifting public opinion
Gun regulation is an issue on which Democrats have lost in the past — and subsequently spent big money studying the nuances of public sentiment.
Even in a state where traditional wisdom says Democrats shouldn’t talk about restricting access, the Giffords group says its data indicates that voters from both parties increasingly consider stopping gun violence a high priority, and they’re no longer sold on that argument that politicians can’t do anything about it.
“The idea that this is a divisive issue is not actually all that borne out in public opinion research,” Brown said. “Even the majority of Ken Paxton voters in the Republican primary statewide support things like universal background checks.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Padilla Stout was ready to test their theory.
She held her first public campaign rally outside the Bexar County Courthouse, alongside leaders from the Giffords PAC, retired VA clinical psychologist Ron Farnsworth and Sheriff Javier Salazar, each of whom stressed how gun violence had rocked their professional and social circles in ways that would seem to transcend partisan politics.
Padilla Stout said that despite many years as a public school teacher, she was so struck by the 2022 shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School that she found herself among the many parents seriously considering homeschooling their children to keep them safe.
“The core of this campaign has always been about a mom on a mission,” Padilla Stout said. “I am happy to report that since we launched our campaign in November, I have had hundreds of moms join me on this journey to take our communities back, and to help our children and our neighbors.”
Salazar, meanwhile, said the challenges that law enforcement officers face from a lack of gun safety regulations in Texas is undeniable.
“I see the consequences of gun violence up-close every single day. I see what happens after a shooting, after a deadly domestic violence call, after a child gets access to an unsecured firearm, and after a family loses a loved one to suicide,” Salazar said. “… We can support law enforcement and still invest in prevention before deputies are called to yet another tragedy.”
Salazar is the rare progressive sheriff in the 29 counties that make up TX23, but he’s trying to help Padilla Stout make inroads with those who might be open to hearing her out.
A gun-centric race
So far Herrera has only run Republican primary races and says he doesn’t see the need to moderate or court a broader audience for the general election.
The leader of the National Association for Gun Rights told The New York Times he helped recruit Herrera into politics, and the candidate went on to cudgel Gonzales as insufficiently conservative after supporting narrow gun safety measures in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting.
Herrera is scheduled to speak at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Dallas in late September.
In an interview outside the Bexar County Courthouse on Wednesday, Padilla Stout said that she, too, is a Second Amendment supporter, but she wants some small changes to keep firearms out of the hands of the most dangerous.
She wants the law changed to ensure that people with a known mental health diagnosis or recent crisis can’t have access to guns.
Drawing on her experience as a child welfare attorney, she said she also wants to see “very moderate red flag laws,” so that when a protective order is put in place, people who have a history of domestic violence or who’ve been convicted of a violent crime can’t continue accessing guns without accountability.
Those are ideas that put her far more in alignment with law enforcement than her opponent, she said.
“I think at this point this race is way above red versus blue,” said Padilla Stout. “We’re talking about people who have been here, people that are part of our community — against extremism and against corporations and against being bought out — so I am hopeful that other sheriffs will come on board.”
This story first appeared in the San Antonio Report.