Henry Cuellar

Republicans have officially pulled the plug on trying to oust Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, with a super PAC tied to House Speaker Mike Johnson cutting $3 million in ad reservations it had planned to air in the race, Punchbowl News reported on Wednesday.

The Congressional Leadership Fund had already spent $4.5 million in the race trying to boost GOP nominee Tano Tijerina, who announced on Fox News that he was abandoning the Democratic Party to become a Republican.

Yet that money was for naught, with a nonpartisan poll from August showing Cuellar leading Tijerina by double digits—numbers Johnson’s super PAC must also see in their own data as they chose to move the spending against Cuellar elsewhere on the House playing field that’s rapidly deteriorating for the GOP.

The abandonment of Cuellar’s race is an embarrassing stain for Republicans, who had specifically redrawn Cuellar’s majority-Hispanic 28th District to favor the GOP.

When Texas Republicans passed their egregious gerrymander last year, they turned Cuellar’s seat from one Donald Trump carried by 7 points in 2024 to one that Trump won by more than 10.

Cuellar won reelection in 2024 by 6 points, despite being under federal indictment on bribery charges. And Republicans hoped that by redrawing Cuellar’s seat to be one Trump carried by even more points, they could finally capture their white whale.

Yet there were signs that even with the redraw, Republicans were not convinced they could oust Cuellar from the seat. In fact, Trump pardoned Cuellar in December, likely in an attempt to get him to switch parties as a thank you to give Republicans an automatic flip ahead of the midterms.

Yet Cuellar burned Trump, accepting the pardon without changing his party ID—a move that has enraged the corrupt commander in chief.

And now, Trump and his administration’s cruel immigration enforcement agenda has turned Hispanic voters away from Republicans and back to Democrats, a slide that has forced Republicans to abandon their efforts to unseat Cuellar with three weeks to go until Election Day.

Indeed, Trump’s slide with Hispanic voters is so steep that Republicans’ Texas gerrymander may net the party one seat at most—when the exercise was supposed to squeeze out as many as five seats for the GOP.

Related | Trump screwed himself when he screwed Latino voters

For example, Republicans hoped to oust Texas Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez by making his seat into one Trump carried by 10 points. Yet the Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up—which in this environment is anything but a safe bet for the GOP.

Even worse for Republicans is that Texas’ 15th District, a seat the GOP redrew into one Trump won by 18 points in 2024, is also in the toss-up column.

Ultimately, even Republicans admit that Trump’s growing unpopularity is going to cost them the House.

“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” an unnamed “senior House Republican” lawmaker told Politico. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”

The only question that remains is how big the GOP’s losses will be.

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