If De La Cruz or Flores wins, she’ll make history. South Texas has never elected a Republican member of Congress. Nor has deep South Texas—the borderlands from Laredo down into the lower Rio Grande Valley—ever sent a woman to Washington. Meanwhile, if Peña-Garza wins reelection to chair the Hidalgo County Republicans, she’ll be one of four Latina GOP chairwomen in the Valley—a sign of how entrenched women’s leadership has become among the region’s Republicans.

This marks a remarkable shift: for generations, South Texas border politics have been dominated by Democratic men—and often, their male heirs. Politically powerful families such as the Lucios, a Texas statehouse institution, have sometimes passed down political offices like heirlooms.

But many voters appear to be weary of the region’s Democratic party, which, like any party machine that spends decades in power, has been accused of becoming complacent, unresponsive, and prone to insider politics. Given that Hispanic Trump voters were more likely to be male in 2016, it might seem odd that women are coming to the forefront. But Trump’s popularity surged among Hispanic women in 2020; polls found their approval of the former president rose by roughly 8 percentage points between elections.

Candidates such as De La Cruz and Flores offer something new for South Texas voters: shared immigrant stories and opposition to Democratic party policies that are unpopular in the region, combined with Trumpian rhetoric.