Tony Gonzales, a moderate Texas Republican congressman, has narrowly beaten an insurgent primary challenge from an opponent he branded a neo-Nazi and was endorsed by the GOP’s far-right Freedom caucus.
Gonzales, 43, scraped home by a wafer-thin margin of 50.7% to 49.3% in a runoff election against Brandon Herrera after a huge fundraising effort and the explicit backing of the Republican establishment, including the House speaker, Mike Johnson.
The victory in a congressional district stretching from El Paso to San Antonio and spanning 800 miles of the US-Mexico border means Gonzales will be the party’s candidate in November’s general election against the Democrat Santos Limon, a contest the Republicans are expected to win comfortably following redistricting.
It came after a vicious bout of infighting that saw Gonzales label some of his own party “scum” who he implied sympathised with the racist views of the Ku Klux Klan.
He also condemned the often provocative public statements of Herrera, a gun rights advocate and social media star with 3.4 million followers on his YouTube channel.
Herrera, who called himself “the AK guy” and acquired a reputation for making jokes about the Holocaust, autism and women, earned the support of the high-profile rightwing Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, as well as Bob Good, chair of the House Freedom caucus.
Gonzales’s rightwing critics assailed him over moderate stances on the border and government spending. He was also censured by his own Texas Republican party for taking what they saw as excessively centrist positions.
Gonzales, for his part, was scathing of his party opponents’ backing for Herrera, telling CNN: “It’s my absolute honour to be in Congress, but I serve with some real scumbags.
“Bob Good endorsed my opponent, a known neo-Nazi. These people used to walk around with white hoods at night; now they are walking around with white hoods in the daytime.”
Gonzales, a military veteran, also took offence to Herrera’s jibes about those who served in the armed forces after he joked: “I often think about putting a gun in my mouth, so I’m basically an honorary veteran.”
Herrera justified his humour on his YouTube channel, saying he would show greater decorum in appropriate settings.
“I do have a higher standard of demeanour when it comes to actual political discourse on things like, you know, Twitter. It’s all about knowing the time and place,” Herrera said. “It’s like you’ll swear in front of your drinking buddies, but not in front of your grandma. Unless your grandma is rad as shit.”
