NY Times: “Most people who trickled into a historical movie theater in the border city of McAllen, Texas, this week had heard of Bobby Pulido, the Latin Grammy Award-winning Tejano singer running for Congress in the oddly shaped district jutting from the border to the outskirts of San Antonio, some 250 miles straight north.
But on this day, the candidate they had come to hear was the one breathing fire about dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement, legalizing abortion and challenging the insular Democratic Party in the Rio Grande Valley. That wasn’t Mr. Pulido, the favorite of the party. It was Ada Cuellar, an emergency room doctor running considerably to his left.
Alex Cantu, 42, said Mr. Pulido’s run was “a fame grab” by “basically what I would refer to as an establishment politician.” Mr. Cantu had organized a vigil after federal agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and he said he wanted real change.
The fight for the Democratic nomination to challenge Representative Monica De La Cruz, the Republican incumbent in Texas’ 15th District, gets to the struggle for the soul of the party in 2026. Democratic primary voters in Texas began voting Tuesday ahead of the March 3 primary, and their choice, like many Democrats around the country, is whether they want to push their party to the left in a year when the wind is at Democrats’ back, or elevate centrists who traditionalists say can win swing districts like the 15th in November.”