Every candidate for Congress has to file one document telling the public where their money comes from. It is called a financial disclosure. It exists so voters can see who might own a piece of the person asking for their vote.

Brandon Herrera filed his. It says he earned $80,000 in 2024.

Herrera also says he is a millionaire. He has said it repeatedly. He told the San Antonio Express-News earlier this year that his businesses have brought in around $2 million in revenue. And he has said that taking a seat in the U.S. House — which pays $174,000 a year — would be a "90+% pay cut."

Do that arithmetic. If $174,000 is a 90-percent-plus cut from what he makes now, he is making at least $1.74 million a year.

He told the House clerk $80,000.

He said he'd fix it. That was in July.

Punchbowl News flagged the $80,000 figure in early July. Herrera's campaign said at the time that his team was working to submit a revised report "within the coming weeks."

That was roughly six weeks ago. As the Express-News reported on August 21, the corrected filing still isn't in, with under three months to Election Day.

His campaign manager, Kimmie Gonzalez, now explains the original filing this way: it was prepared by a friend of Herrera's who "did not have the experience needed for this level of reporting." The campaign has since hired the Washington law firm Holtzman Vogel to redo it.

Asked when the fixed version arrives, Gonzalez said she has no date and no timeline. Just "soon."

What the filing does and doesn't say

The disclosure lists his earned income as coming from The AK Guy, Inc. — his Kalashnikov-style firearms company, which Herrera has described as a passion project. He has also said "ninety-nine percent of my income comes from other sources."

The form does show he was paid more than $5,000 by each of seven different entities, including Google AdSense payments for YouTube, creator payouts, and merchandise sales. His YouTube channel has 4.26 million subscribers.

And here is the part that ought to stop people: he disclosed no assets at all.

Not a house. Not a retirement account. Not a stake in any of the companies he owns — the gun manufacturer, the podcast, the streaming service Pepperbox TV, the merchandise retailer, the energy drink company.

A man who calls himself a millionaire told the federal government he owns nothing.

This is also not the first time. His 2023 filing for this same seat reported the prior year's income at about $84,000.

"Is this candidate a truth teller or not?"

Doug Spencer, a University of Colorado law professor who studies campaign finance regulation, told the Express-News that candidates do often resubmit filings after catching a mistake — but that Herrera's case looks like more than a clerical slip.

His framing of the question is the right one:

"It's really an error that highlights the very nature of who this candidate is. Is this candidate a truth teller or not? Is this candidate wealthy or not?"

Both answers can't be yes. If the filing is accurate, then the millionaire talk and the "90+% pay cut" line were not true. If the millionaire talk is accurate, then the document he filed with the House of Representatives is not.

And here is the wrinkle that makes the delay matter: Herrera is legally required to file a disclosure, but as a candidate he is not required to refile it when problems turn up. Nothing forces the corrected version out before Election Day. Voters in Texas's 23rd District may well cast their ballots with the $80,000 number as the only official statement of his finances they ever get.

This keeps happening with his money

Herrera's finances have been hard to see through all year.

We found earlier that 99.4% of his campaign's spending went to a single company — one with no website and no registration anywhere we could find. Millions of dollars, one vendor, no paper trail.

Now his personal disclosure turns out to be off by something like $1.6 million, with no assets listed, and the fix has been "coming soon" for six weeks.

The district he wants to represent stretches from San Antonio through Uvalde and across a huge piece of West Texas. It opened up when Rep. Tony Gonzales stepped down this year. Republicans nominated Herrera — and in doing so, put a district Trump won by 15 points into play.

The people of the 23rd are entitled to know who pays the man who wants to vote for them. That is the entire reason the form exists.

He's had since July. It's a form.

Source

Brandon Herrera says he's a millionaire. His filings don't show it. — San Antonio Express-News, August 21, 2026. Photo: Katina Zentz/San Antonio Express-News.