Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas was already facing a serious scandal. On Monday, however, newly released text messages between the congressman and a former aide generated something new: bipartisan calls for his resignation. The New York Times highlighted some of Gonzales’ GOP colleagues who now believe he needs to go.
‘Resign!’ wrote Representative Lauren Boebert, a hard-right Republican from Colorado, in a social media post that included images of the text messages. Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican on the House Oversight Committee, urged colleagues to condemn Mr. Gonzales for ‘asking for explicit photos’ of a member of his staff. … Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina, also said Mr. Gonzales should resign immediately instead of ‘campaigning like nothing happened.’
A variety of other GOP officials, including Texas Reps. Chip Roy and Brandon Gill, stopped short of calling for Gonzales’ ouster, but they urged him to end his re-election campaign in light of the allegations.
The underlying scandal reached new heights last week 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 former aide to the congressman came forward to say that Santos-Aviles had 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.)
This 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, continues to say very little about the controversy ahead of next week’s primary election in Texas. That said, though he’s long denied having a sexual relationship with his former aide, he’s recently accused his primary rival, YouTube personality Brandon Herrera, and Santos-Aviles’ husband of trying to blackmail him.
As for Donald Trump, the president formally endorsed Gonzales last week, and to date, his support for the incumbent lawmaker remains intact.
There’s no shortage of questions about where this story will go next, but in the short term, it’s an open question as to whether Gonzales’ congressional career will come to a premature end in the very near future.
Pressed for answers on Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson conceded that the underlying allegations are “serious,” adding that he’s urged Gonzales to address the controversy “in an appropriate way with his constituents.” The Louisiana Republican did not, however, join the list of members calling on Gonzales to step down, concluding, “It’s too early for anybody to prejudge any of that, but we’ll see how it develops.”
Johnson is hardly a dispassionate observer. His House Republican Conference was already shrinking when, earlier this month, the GOP majority in the chamber was reduced to a one-vote margin. If Gonzales were to resign, his party’s advantage would hardly exist at all, and the Republicans’ ability to move legislation would largely come to an end, at least for a few months.
Watch this space.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.
