Voters in McAllen, Texas, selected the chairman of the Hidalgo County Republican Party as their next mayor.
Preliminary election results indicate Javier Villalobos, who currently serves as a city commissioner, won 51.11% of the vote in his runoff election against Veronica Whitacre. Votes will be canvassed and certified by city officials on June 14.
“Let me start by thanking the voters, my team, my family [and] everyone who helped run this campaign,” Villalobos wrote on Facebook after his victory. “Thank you McAllen for trusting [and] believing in me. I promise to not let you down.”
The election results point to a wider pattern of incremental successes for Republicans in South Texas, a heavily Hispanic region that has been politically dominated by Democrats for decades.
Former President Donald Trump flipped five Hispanic-majority Texas counties last November. In Zapata County, which is 94% Hispanic, Trump doubled the number of votes he received. The county had not been won by a Republican presidential candidate since the 1920 election. Trump also flipped Kenedy County, where he lost by 8 points in 2016. Trump won the county by 32 points four years later.
Trump’s success with engaging Hispanic voters was also seen in counties that he lost. Hillary Clinton won Starr County by 60.2 points in 2016. In the 2020 election, Trump lost by 5 points, which represents a 55.2-point swing. The former president made double-digit gains in Maverick County, which is 95.1% Hispanic, compared to his 2016 vote total.
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The race for Texas’s 15th Congressional District, which stretches from McAllen to the western suburbs of San Antonio, gave Republicans reason to celebrate quietly. Incumbent Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat, won the district by 9 points in 2016. In 2020, the margin of his win fell to just 3 points.
The pattern continued in other Texas districts. Rey Gonzalez, the Republican challenger to Democratic incumbent Rep. Filemon Vela Jr., narrowed the margin of his loss to 16 points. In the 2016 election, Gonzalez lost his race by 25 points.
Senate Republicans are working to appeal to the growing number of Hispanics in the United States. The National Republican Senatorial Committee launched a Spanish-language media outreach program in January ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, pointing to a wide-ranging poll of Hispanic voters.
“If you look at these poll numbers, Hispanics all across the county are Republicans,” NRSC Chairman Sen. Rick Scott said Thursday. “If Republicans reach out to them, we’re going to win.”
