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 reason they gave was not the economy, or redistricting, or a retirement. It was 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. Most of it came from Republicans first.

In 2024, when Herrera was challenging Gonzales in the primary, the Republican Jewish Coalition ran ads calling him a "goose-stepping extremist." That is a Republican organization, about a Republican candidate.

The underlying material:

• He has joked that a Nazi machine gun was "the original ghetto blaster" and a "Hitler 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.
• Three months after 19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary, he went to Uvalde to film a video featuring an assault weapon strapped to a robot dog — including footage of the robot walking in front of a Uvalde school bus, and testing it on 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 put most of it on television 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.

Days later he spent a 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." Texas Republicans including 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 were at risk of losing health coverage under the law Herrera campaigns on supporting. More than 31,000 people in the district rely on SNAP to buy groceries — and that program took the largest cut in its history, $186 billion. Herrera has said he wants to defund the Department of Education and get the country out of funding public education entirely; that department sent Texas more than $3.9 billion in 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. A seat Trump won by 15 points is not one either party planned to spend money on this fall.

They're spending it 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.