Brandon Herrera is asking voters in Texas' 23rd District to send him to Congress. He won't sit down with the public radio station that covers the district to answer for what he's said online — and at a campaign event in a public shopping center, his campaign told the reporter to leave.
"I'm going to ask you to leave"
Texas Public Radio reported on October 2 that it went to a Saturday morning Herrera campaign event at a busy San Antonio shopping center, where volunteers were waving signs at passing cars and offering them to potential supporters.
When TPR asked to interview Herrera, campaign manager Kimmie Gonzalez said he wasn't available. Asked how an interview could be set up, she repeated: "No, he is not available."
The reporter explained that an interview would give Herrera a chance to respond to questions about his public statements — and that without one, the story would rely on his online videos.
"Go do what you need to do, and we'll do what we need to do," Gonzalez said. "Thank you. I'm going to ask you to leave now, please, from our event."
TPR refused, because the event was in a public space. The station says it has asked for an interview with Herrera repeatedly, without success.
He's done this before
This isn't the first time Herrera has ducked TPR. In March, he was booked for a live interview on the station's show The Source. At the last minute, his campaign pulled him out, citing a scheduling conflict. That cancellation came three days after an old clip surfaced of Herrera promoting a Sons of Confederate Veterans chapter, wearing a shirt with the Confederate battle flag on it and describing an "Annual Yankee Shoot."
What he doesn't want to be asked about
Herrera has more than 4 million YouTube subscribers and years of videos. TPR's story — the one he wouldn't be interviewed for — lays out some of what's in them, including his 2023 attack on Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts, in which he called the gun-safety group "f***ing stupid" and used a sexually explicit description of pregnancy to dismiss her.
We've covered a lot of the rest:
- He called a child a "c*m trophy" to insult moms fighting gun violence.
- He compared women's weight to whales, elephants and nuclear bombs.
- He filmed himself holding up his copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf and said he'd read "a good chunk" of it.
He knows reporters are looking. In a recent video, TPR reports, he complained that news outlets were going through hundreds of hours of his content "trying to find anything they can latch onto to try to make me seem like a piece of s***."
Why it matters
The 23rd District stretches from San Antonio across much of the Texas–Mexico border, and it has had no member of Congress since Tony Gonzales resigned after a sex scandal. Herrera is running against Democrat Katy Padilla Stout, a former teacher and attorney who represents children in Texas' foster care system.
What the record shows
Texas Public Radio has repeatedly asked Brandon Herrera for an interview about his past online remarks. His campaign pulled him from a scheduled live TPR interview in March, and on a recent Saturday his campaign manager told a TPR reporter to leave a campaign event being held in a public shopping center.
