Texas Republicans redrew US Rep. Vicente Gonzalez’s district last year to make it harder for the Democrat to win. In the process, they sent him home.
The new map pushed the 34th Congressional District north along the Gulf Coast into Nueces County and Corpus Christi, the city where Gonzalez was born and raised. To make room, lawmakers cut out part of Hidalgo County, home to his McAllen political base.
The GOP-led Legislature redrew the lines in 2025 after President Donald Trump pushed Texas to create five more Republican-leaning seats. Under the new boundaries, Trump would have carried the district by about 10 percentage points in 2024, Spectrum News reported. Gonzalez won the old version that year by about 2 points.
Now he faces Republican Eric Flores in a race forecasters rate as lean Democrat, and one that could help decide control of the US House. That makes Corpus Christi, a city of about 300,000 where neither candidate has been on the ballot before, one of the most important pieces of the district. Its voters are coming off a year dominated by a water crisis.
Trump visiting Corpus Christi
Gonzalez has leaned on that history. He told Spectrum News that Republicans “redrew me to my hometown of Corpus Christi,” where he said his relationships go beyond party politics.
Flores, a former assistant US attorney and former Texas Army National Guard infantry captain, has pitched himself to the whole coast. Trump and Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed him in the Republican primary in March, which he won over former US Rep. Mayra Flores—the two are not related—who lost to Gonzalez in 2022 and 2024. Days earlier, he appeared at Trump’s Feb. 27 event at the Port of Corpus Christi.
Since the primary, Flores has distanced himself from Trump. His campaign removed “Trump Endorsed” and “Republican” from its yard signs, though he has continued to tout the endorsement online and at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas. This month, his campaign sent a cease-and-desist letter over a Brownsville billboard, paid for by Gonzalez’s campaign, that showed Flores with Trump and touted his support for ICE.
Trump is scheduled to hold a midterm rally in Corpus Christi on Tuesday, a week before Election Day. Eric Flores is expected to attend.
Flores has said the newly redrawn district has made the race more competitive for both parties, rather than Republican-leaning.
Corpus Christi’s water crisis
Corpus Christi has faced a growing water crisis driven by a yearslong drought, major industrial water consumption, and failed local infrastructure plans.
In March, Lake Corpus Christi fell below 10% of capacity, its lowest level since it first filled in the late 1950s, the Texas Tribune reported. Heavy rain in July refilled the region’s reservoirs and ended the immediate emergency, but the city still has no long-term fix for supplying water through the next drought. Corpus Christi relies on rain-fed reservoirs and pipelines to distant lakes and rivers, and refineries and chemical plants along its coast use more water than all the region’s residents combined.
Corpus Christi has spent at least $50 million on a seawater desalination plant that was never built. The City Council fired its contractor in 2025 and rejected a new proposal in September, and the city could have to repay $235 million it borrowed from the state. Abbott has blamed local leaders repeatedly, saying they “squandered” the state loans.
City voters will also decide on a measure in November that would end an exemption shielding the region’s largest industrial water users from drought surcharges. City Manager Peter Zanoni has said neither the city nor the state can solve the problem alone and that the federal government needs to step in with funding.
Both candidates in the 34th congressional district race have pointed to federal dollars as necessary. Gonzalez told Spectrum News that infrastructure, including money for a desalination project, is one of his top issues. He has also highlighted an amendment he passed in the National Defense Authorization Act intended to strengthen military operations and address workforce and workload concerns at the Corpus Christi Army Depot, KRIS 6 reported.
Flores’ campaign says he would fight for federal investment in water infrastructure, protect farm and city water supplies, and push for long-term regional water planning.
Trump’s Texas 34 test
The district remains majority Hispanic, and both parties are watching whether Trump’s 2024 gains with Hispanic voters in South Texas hold. Paul Gottemoller, a political science professor at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, told Spectrum News those gains may not be permanent, and that some voters feel border enforcement has gone too far. He said Flores has to hold Trump’s base while the president’s favorability is low.
Gonzalez has said he believes that after years of shifting right, South Texas Latinos are now more open to voting for Democrats as Trump’s unpopularity has hurt Republicans’ chances in the region.
Early voting runs through Oct. 30. Election Day is Nov. 3.
