LAREDO, Texas. Just a few years ago, Jessica Cisneros was an intern in Henry Cuellar’s office in Congress. Now the former intern representative has forced the nine-term incumbent into a runoff, leaving the Progressives an opportunity to oust a powerful moderate Democrat and turn South Texas politics around.
The runoff election on May 24 — the same day that Ms. Cisneros turns 29 — will be a rematch that has been in the making for over two years. In 2020, she won just 2,700 votes to defeat Mr. Cuellar in the Democratic primary. Her father and volunteers drove around the area after she lost, picking up campaign posters. They held on to many of these signs, knowing that there could be a sequel. As such, some of her 2020 posters will be back on the streets of Laredo in 2022, with the old election date painted over.
“We knew from the start it was going to be a very difficult election,” Ms. Cisneros said Wednesday morning, addressing a crowd of reporters crammed into her one-room headquarters, a Laredo shop window tucked between a diner and Mexican bakery. “We deserve much more than what we are offered. And I’m very happy that more than half of the voters agree that it’s time for new leadership.”
Ms. Cisneros’ success in forcing Mr. Cuellar into a runoff was one of the highlights of Tuesday’s Texas primary, the first of the 2022 midterm season. In the Texas primary, any candidate with less than 50 percent of the vote faces the second-place candidate in the second round. As of Wednesday evening, Mr. Cuellar received 48.4% of the vote, Ms. Cisneros 46.9%, and the other Liberal candidate, Tanna Benavidez, 4.7%.
While she’s often compared to New York MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – they campaigned together in San Antonio last month – Ms. Cisneros is no swashbuckler. While she promotes many of the same progressive policies as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, including the Green New Deal and the $15 federal minimum wage, Ms. Cisneros has campaigned extensively for what she describes as additional problems with bread and butter in this frontier. district – jobs and health care.
Tuesday’s results showed an ideological and geographic divide among South Texas Democrats.
The Congressional District extends from the outskirts of San Antonio to Laredo and into rural counties along the southern border. Ms. Cisneros performed best in the northern part of the county furthest from the border, beating Mr. Cuellar in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio. But she lost to him in Webb County, which includes Laredo, and in more rural areas closer to the border, including Zapata and Starr counties. Newly changed neighborhood boundaries included more liberal San Antonio and seemed to help Cisneros.
Guide to the 2022 midterm elections
The politics of South Texas do not fit easily into national norms. Senator Bernie Sanders won several parts of the district in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. But at the same time, Donald J. Trump dramatically improved his performance with voters in the larger South Texas region in the 2020 general election. The shift has alarmed many Democrats, who are warning that Hispanic voters along the border are increasingly leaning to the right.
Ms Cisneros has dismissed these views, arguing that the area is considered conservative largely because Mr Cuellar is helping to perpetuate the idea. Mr. Cuellar, in turn, criticized Ms. Cisneros’ support for political leaders outside of Texas, including Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
“South Texas is a separate area,” Ms. Cisneros told The Laredo Morning Times in 2019. “We are in a very unique place politically and also geographically, being right here on the border. But in general, I think the big challenges are dealing with issues like poverty — the rampant poverty that we have here on the border — access to health care and the problem of jobs.”
Like Mr. Cuellar, Ms. Cisneros is the daughter of immigrants from Mexico.
Her parents moved to the United States before she was born, after their eldest daughter needed serious medical attention. Her father worked in agriculture and later opened a small trucking company. Raised in Laredo and graduating from Early College High School with honors, Ms. Cisneros moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas and went to law school there, majoring in immigration law.
During the campaign, Ms. Cisneros frequently referred to her work as an immigration lawyer, citing her efforts to help asylum seekers who are stranded at the border under the Trump administration’s “Stay in Mexico” policy.
She has often relied on immigration to counter Mr. Cuellar, who has been an outspoken critic of President Biden on the issue. Mr. Cuellar said the president was too careless about border security and not listening enough to border agents. Ms. Cisneros said she supported a revision of the old laws that make up the immigration and deportation system.
But for all the controversy that helped define her campaign nationally, many of the voters who supported her were simply focused on changing leadership, especially with Mr. Cuellar facing an FBI investigation.
On Tuesday evening, Ms. Cisneros and her supporters gathered outdoors behind a mall in Laredo, cheering every time the vote count showed her ahead of Mr. Cuellar. By the time she took the stage just after 11 p.m., the lead had faltered, but the mood had barely deteriorated. At that hour, it was not clear whether she received enough votes to force a second round.
Standing in front of her parents and sisters, Ms. Cisneros assured the audience in English and Spanish that she was confident of her victory. “Tonight, tomorrow or in May,” she said.