Texas' 23rd Congressional District is not supposed to be competitive. It runs from San Antonio out into West Texas along a long stretch of the border. Republicans have held it since 2015. Donald Trump carried it by 15 points in 2024. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report still rates it "likely Republican."

On August 5, 2026, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee added it to their "Districts in Play" list anyway — a designation that lets national Democrats spend money against the Republican nominee there.

The reasons they gave were not the economy or redistricting. They were polling showing Hispanic voters' support for Trump eroding — and the nominee.

"Brandon Herrera's disturbing history of extremism, violence, and antisemitic rhetoric puts this open Congressional district squarely in play," DCCC chair Suzan DelBene said in a statement.

Brandon Herrera is a YouTube gun influencer who has never held public office. He got the nomination without winning a runoff: he forced incumbent Rep. Tony Gonzales into one, and then Gonzales dropped out of the race after admitting an affair with a former aide.

So the question in front of voters in the 23rd isn't really about party. It's about what a party does when its own primary hands it a candidate like this one.

What "history of extremism" refers to

This isn't a Democratic talking point invented for the ad campaign. Much of it drew fire from Republicans first.

In 2024, when Herrera was challenging Gonzales in the primary, the Republican Jewish Coalition announced a $400,000 ad buy against him and called him a "goose-stepping extremist who pals around with online Nazis." That is a Republican organization, about a Republican candidate.

The underlying material:

• He has joked that a Nazi submachine gun was "the original ghetto blaster" and "Hitler's street sweeper," and played Nazi marching songs in a video about Nazi guns.
• On a 2024 podcast he talked about owning a 1939 English edition of Mein Kampf — "That's my copy at my house next to a bunch of the German stick grenades" — saying he bought it because "I thought it was wild that you couldn't buy it on Amazon but you could buy The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital."
• He made a video reenacting the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and promoted it on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 2024.
• Less than three months after 19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary, he took part in a video by Australian YouTuber Alex Apollonov featuring a submachine gun strapped to a robot dog — Apollonov drove the robot around Uvalde and stopped it in front of a Uvalde school bus, then tested the gun with Herrera at a Texas property, firing at cardboard cartoon cutouts of children.

His campaign calls the antisemitism allegations "bizarre, desperate and false," and points out that Herrera has simulated the execution of Adolf Hitler in his work as a historical firearms educator, and that the clip about Mein Kampf cut out his comments ridiculing and condemning the book. Herrera has separately called the criticism "hilarious" and said he bought the book for his historic book collection.

Voters can weigh that defense. What they can't do is pretend the record isn't there — Republicans were attacking him over much of it two years ago.

And it kept going after he won the nomination

The 2024 material would be one thing. But this is not a candidate who cleaned it up once he was the nominee.

In July 2026, a January 2023 video resurfaced in which Herrera attacked Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, and referred to a child as a "c*m trophy." When a reporter asked Texas Republicans in Congress about it, they walked away rather than answer — Rep. Chip Roy said "I gotta go" before the question was finished.

On July 23 he spent the day publicly defending two things at once: abolishing Social Security — "I'm game," he'd said on a December 2024 podcast, calling the program a "literal Ponzi scheme" — and a podcast bit in which he and his co-hosts joked about killing elderly people, mallets included. His own campaign website promises to protect seniors' benefits.

He also joked about veteran suicide on a podcast, saying he often thinks about putting a gun in his mouth so he's "basically an honorary veteran." Critics including Rep. Tony Gonzales, Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland and Texas Border Czar Mike Banks criticized it at the time.

The part nobody is talking about

Here's what gets lost when a race becomes a fight about a candidate's old videos: the people who live in the 23rd District.

More than 41,000 people in TX-23 stand to lose health coverage by 2034, by the estimate of the Joint Economic Committee's House minority — 39,000 of them losing Affordable Care Act coverage and 2,317 losing Medicaid. More than 31,000 households in the district relied on SNAP to buy groceries in 2024 — and that program took the largest cut in its history, $187 billion. Herrera has said he wants to defund the Department of Education; that department awarded the Texas Education Agency $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2024 alone.

Those are the stakes underneath the argument about old videos.

Where the race actually stands

Herrera is ahead on money, though not overwhelmingly. FEC records showed him with $309,000 in his main campaign account at the end of June, to Democrat Katy Padilla Stout's $171,000. The NRCC dismissed the DCCC's move, with a spokesperson calling Padilla Stout's campaign a "doomed campaign" and "socialist train wreck."

Republicans hold the House 218-212, and Democrats need a net gain of three seats to take it.

Democrats say they're spending here because of who Republicans nominated. We deserve better.

Source

"DCCC adds Texas' 23rd Congressional District to target list," The Texas Tribune, August 5, 2026. Photo: Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune.