Every House Republican is keenly aware of their party’s vanishingly small majority in the House, but as the scandal surrounding Rep. Tony Gonzales intensified last week, three of his party colleagues nevertheless called on the Texas Republican to give up his seat.
Soon, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky became the fourth GOP member to call for Gonzales’ resignation, and Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee joined the club late last week.
“I’ve got a wife and a daughter,” Massie said. “He needs to go.”
For his part, Gonzales, who’s facing a tough primary challenge on Tuesday, spent much of last week insisting that he will not resign. And on Friday, he received a public shoutout from his party’s most powerful voice.
Partway through an event in Corpus Christi, Texas, on Friday, Donald Trump took a moment to acknowledge some of the Republican officials in attendance.
“Congressman Tony Gonzales is here,” the president said. “Tony, congratulations.”
It wasn’t at all clear why exactly he congratulated Gonzales, but given the circumstances, the public acknowledgement was itself notable: Given the ongoing scandal and intraparty pressures, Trump could’ve simply ignored the congressman altogether. The president, who’s on record with an endorsement of Gonzales, instead singled him out in public remarks, suggesting that his support for the incumbent remains intact.
We obviously won’t have to wait too much longer to learn what his Republican constituents have in mind for Gonzales’ electoral future, but we continue to learn more about why more GOP members haven’t called for his ouster.
Rep. Troy Nehls, a fellow Texas Republican, argued last week that a Gonzales resignation would be “the stupidest thing he could ever do” — not because he’s innocent of all wrongdoing, but because it would be bad for his party.
Asked if there are principles that are more important than politics, Nehls replied, “No. Not up here.” (This is the same GOP lawmaker who came to the same conclusion about former Rep. George Santos after the New York Republican was caught up in scandals. “Why would we want to expel a guy [when] we’ve got a three-seat, four-seat majority,” Nehls asked at the time. “What are we doing?”)
He isn’t alone. MS NOW reported last week that for most Republicans on Capitol Hill, Gonzales is effectively “untouchable” because his party can’t afford to see him step down.
As for the underlying controversy, the scandal reached new heights two weeks ago, when The San Antonio Express-News, Gonzales’ hometown newspaper, reported on a text message from Regina Santos-Aviles, a former aide to the congressman, who said she had an extramarital affair with Gonzales. Santos-Aviles died by suicide last year.
While these allegations against the Texas Republican have come up before, and Gonzales, a married father of six, has long denied any wrongdoing, the Express-News reported that a second former aide to the congressman came forward to say Santos-Aviles told him about the relationship. That same aide (who asked not to be named by the Express-News, citing a fear of retaliation) provided a text message from Santos-Aviles in which she said she “had an affair with our boss.” (He shared the same evidence with The New York Times.)
Last week, however, a lawyer for Santos-Aviles’ husband disclosed additional sexually explicit text messages that the GOP congressman allegedly sent to his former aide. While MS NOW has not independently verified the authenticity of the texts, they were reviewed in detail by the Times, the Express-News, The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, Politico and The Texas Tribune.
Gonzales, meanwhile, has continued to say very little about the controversy ahead of this week’s primary. Though he has long denied having a sexual relationship with his former aide, Gonzales has recently accused his primary rival, YouTube personality Brandon Herrera, and Santos-Aviles’ husband of trying to blackmail him.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
