As reported by the San Antonio Current, Brandon Herrera, the Republican candidate for Texas’ Congressional District 23, abruptly cancelled an appearance on Texas Public Radio scheduled for March 16th.
Although Herrera’s campaign manager explained that the candidate was suddenly unavailable due to a “scheduling” conflict, the last-minute cancellation, as noted by the Current, came “just three days after media outlets including MeidasTouch News and Courier Texas” began circulating an old clip of Herrera promoting a Confederate heritage group.
In the resurfaced clip, Herrera, also commonly known as “The AK Guy,” can be seen praising “the Confederate heritage group Fayetteville Arsenal Camp 168, a chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a hereditary group set up to honor Confederate soldiers and preserve Confederate memorials.”
After forcing a runoff against scandal-ridden incumbent Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, Herrera would become the presumptive GOP nominee when Gonzales “abandoned his reelection campaign in the wake of mounting pressure from GOP leaders and a congressional inquiry into his affair with a staffer.”
The controversy that eventually led to Gonzales’ downfall intensified after revelations surfaced that he had engaged in an extramarital relationship with Regina Santos-Aviles, the director of his regional district office in Uvalde, who committed suicide by setting herself on fire in September of 2025.
Gonzales denied having an affair with Santos-Aviles for months, and then, in what appears to have been a crass political calculation, he promptly confessed to the relationship the day after the Republican primary claiming that God had forgiven him.
And then, despite having apparently been granted divine absolution, Gonzales unexpectedly announced, on March 5th, that he would withdraw from the race altogether leaving Herrera as the Republican nominee.
In the aftermath of this development, some political observers appeared to celebrate the prospect of running against a candidate like Herrera.
Even before the Confederate promotional video had resurfaced, Herrera had already gained notoriety for engaging in what he conveniently dismissed as “edgy” humor in a San Antonio Express-News article.
In one video, discussed in the article, Herrera can be seen “goose-stepping” to a battle hymn favored by the Nazis and firing an MP-40, a submachine gun that Herrera refers to in the video as “the original ghetto blaster.” At one point in the video, another person in the video seems poised to perform a Nazi salute before Herrera interrupts him and gestures at the camera.
In another video, Herrera and a masked man affecting a German accent shoot up a case of White Claws being used “to represent Jewish people in hiding during the Holocaust.” Most recently, a clip of Herrera on his podcast emerged in which he brags about his 1939 English edition copy of “Mein Kampf.”
In saner times, these abhorrent displays would have been an obvious and insurmountable political liability that would have rendered Herrera completely unelectable in any election. Unfortunately, this assumption rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the current political landscape in Texas. In many parts of Texas, these types of displays do not necessarily disqualify a candidate from political contention. In fact, in this particular case, they might even serve to signal ideological alignment and mobilize voters on Herrera’s behalf.
In other words, these displays are not the albatross many Democrats think they are, and neither is Herrera’s affinity for the Confederacy. In many parts of the country, including Texas, openly embracing the Confederacy is not necessarily problematic. In fact, Herrera’s support of the Confederacy is more likely to function as a political asset in a deep red, pro-MAGA state like Texas that prides itself on its Confederate heritage. After all, Texas observes Confederate Heroes Day on January 19th, and April has been officially designated as Confederate History Month in Texas.
There are, of course, tangible reasons for Democrats to be cautiously optimistic about the race for Congressional District 23. In the March 3rd primary, Democrats actually outvoted Republicans in the expansive and severely gerrymandered district, which borders Mexico and runs west from San Antonio to a section of far east El Paso County. According to a San Antonio Current analysis, Democrats cast 58,950 votes in the March 3rd primary as they selected “Katy Padilla Stout, a lawyer and former public school teacher, as their nominee.” Republicans cast 55,062 votes.
Despite these positive signs, the Padilla Stout Campaign and both the state and national infrastructure of the Democratic Party would be wise to recognize that Herrera is still politically viable.
To begin with, Herrera operates a YouTube channel with more than four million subscribers, and, as noted in a recent New York Times article, he is one of the leading exponents of “a new gun culture that has grown in prominence over the past decade, centered around younger generations and fueled by social media, video games and a booming consumer market for military-style firearms.” Herrera fits the profile, according to Casey Burgat, a professor at the George Washington University, of the type of internet personality that could potentially convert online engagement into political traction.
Herrera has also managed to secure the endorsements of several House Republicans including top congressional Republicans like Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, and House Majority Whip Tom Emmer. And, perhaps most importantly, he has also managed to secure Trump’s endorsement which still counts for a lot in Texas.
The Democrats are right to sense an opportunity in Congressional District 23, but the forces that have elevated and continue to sustain figures like Herrera are real, especially in Texas. Underestimating or altogether dismissing the strength of this support would be a costly miscalculation indeed.
