Republicans Flipped South Texas. Can a Moderate Tejano Singer Take It Back?

Wearing jeans and cowboy boots, Bobby Pulido insisted he was feeling a little rusty at a skeet shooting competition this month in the border city of Weslaco, Texas. But when the clay pigeon thrower hurled the targets into the air, he steeled his nerves, pointed his shotgun and blasted six out of six.

“It’s precision and calculation,” Mr. Pulido, a Tejano singer and Latin Grammy Award winner, said, explaining how he anticipates where the target is headed before pulling the trigger.

A household name in the Rio Grande Valley and beyond with a career in show business spanning three decades, Mr. Pulido, 52, knows that he will need that level of precision to translate his celebrity into a political career. He is trying to take back Texas’ 15th congressional district from a Republican who flipped it in 2022 after 118 years of Democratic control.

The wider Rio Grande Valley moved sharply toward President Trump in 2024, sending shock waves to the nation as the Democrats lost their grip on the Hispanic vote.

But in the early days of the 2026 midterm season, so much is uncertain. The district, a narrow strip that loosely stretches from the border with Mexico to an area east of San Antonio, was redrawn by the Republican-controlled State Legislature over the summer to be more G.O.P.-friendly, only to have a lower court throw the maps out as illegal. Then on Friday, the Supreme Court temporarily reinstated the new boundaries, with a longer-term decision possible within a few days.

Hispanic voters will dominate the district, regardless of where its borders wind up. Republicans in Austin drew their new maps on the assumption that their party’s gains with Latinos would be durable, only to see recent polls move sharply the other way. Democratic victories earlier this month in New Jersey and Virginia were powered in part by Hispanic voters returning to the Democrats.