Katy Padilla Stout beats Brandon Herrera in Texas congressional race

Democrat Katy Padilla Stout defeated Republican Brandon Herrera on Tuesday, flipping Texas’s 23rd Congressional District in a contest that followed the resignation of former Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales.The Associated Press called the race for Stout at 1:05 a.m. She received 51.7% of the vote to Herrera’s 44.5%.The 23rd District stretches from northwest San Antonio to El Paso and has leaned Republican in recent elections. Gonzales dropped out of his reelection campaign on March 5 after a scandal involving a sexual relationship with a former staff member who died by suicide in 2025, causing the runoff election to be canceled. Gonzales resigned from Congress on April 13 as the House Ethics Committee investigated the matter.President Donald Trump endorsed Herrera, who has more than 4 million YouTube followers and built a following through videos about firearms and gun culture.The race has also drawn scrutiny over Herrera’s past remarks. Democrats have highlighted comments on his YouTube channel that included Nazi references and his description of a firearm as the “original ghetto blaster.”LIST: WHERE ALL THE CANDIDATES IN COMPETITIVE SENATE RACES STAND ON DATA CENTERSDuring his 2024 Republican primary challenge against Gonzales, Herrera faced criticism over a podcast clip in which he made a reference to veteran suicide. The Republican Jewish Coalition spent millions of dollars on negative advertising against him during that campaign. Herrera ultimately lost the runoff to Gonzales.The district has consistently favored Republicans in recent presidential elections, though Democrats have made gains in some parts of Texas. Trump carried the district in 2024 with 56.8% of the vote to then-Vice President Kamala Harris’s 42%, a margin of 14.8 percentage points. Trump also won the district in 2020, receiving 52.9% of the vote to eventual victor Joe Biden’s 45.7%, a margin of 7.2 points.