Four years ago, Mayra Flores was riding high after a special election upset that made her the face of Republican efforts to win over more Hispanic voters under President Donald Trump.
“We are all really proud of Mayra,” Trump posted on social media after Flores flipped the 34th Congressional District. “Great things to come!!!”
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Two election losses later, Flores finds herself in a less advantageous position. Trump and other powerful Republicans are backing her main primary rival, former federal prosecutor Eric Flores, as she makes a third conservative bid to reclaim the seat she briefly held in South Texas.
“You cannot do something for a third time and expect a different result,” Eric Flores said in an interview. “You have a candidate who significantly lacks substance.”
His ads are more direct, branding Mayra Flores a “loser.”
There is no love lost.
“I did it when it was hard. I ran so someone like him could walk,” Mayra Flores said in an interview. “When they think of a Flores, they don’t think of him. They think of Mayra Flores.”
The stakes are high for Republicans, who redrew the district to be easier to flip this time — and to cement their recent gains in predominantly Hispanic South Texas. Yet they are also confronting a battle-tested incumbent in Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who has beaten Flores twice now, as well as Trump’s declining numbers with Hispanic voters.
A University of Texas poll released Wednesday found Democrats leading the generic congressional ballot among Texas Hispanic voters, 50% to 31%. Nearly three-quarters of the new 34th District’s eligible voters are Hispanic.
With little daylight between the candidates on issues, they have debated most intensely who is best positioned to flip the district and show the way forward for Hispanic Republicans in the Trump era. Yet it is Eric Flores who has gained the support of Trump, Gov. Greg Abbott, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other House GOP leaders. His supporters have hailed his law-and-order background, pointing to his time prosecuting crime along the Mexican border as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas.
The high-profile support for Eric Flores has left Mayra Flores banking on her higher name ID and deeper local relationships to beat the odds.
“Clearly Washington does not understand the meaning of loyalty, but the people of South Texas, of District 34, do,” Mayra Flores said.
There will be a bigger spotlight on the race Friday, when Trump is expected to visit Corpus Christi, which anchors the district to the north. The White House has not announced details of the trip yet, but the location and timing — four days before Tuesday’s primary — suggest he could make a renewed display of support for Eric Flores.
While Mayra Flores won the 2022 special election runoff for the 34th District, she lost the election for the full term months later, when she had to run in a redrawn version of the district that favored President Joe Biden by nearly 16 points. She lost by 9 points, a notable overperformance but not enough to hang on.
Flores tried again in 2024, with another Trump endorsement, but lost by 3 percentage points as Trump carried the district by 5 points. Some of Eric Flores’ ads include a bar chart illustrating her deficit compared to Trump.
Now, Mayra Flores is running in a 34th District that has been transformed yet again by the mid-decade redistricting plan that Texas Republicans passed at Trump’s urging. The 34th District, one of five Democratic-held seats targeted by the map drawers, is now one that Trump would have won by 10 points in 2024, having been extended to the Corpus Christi area to fold in more conservative voters.
Mayra Flores was originally running this cycle for the 28th District — held by Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar — before switching to the 34th District in August, days after the Texas Legislature approved the new map.
The primary for the redrawn district was initially crowded, but after Trump backed Eric Flores in December, multiple candidates dropped out and coalesced behind him. Mayra Flores initially responded to Trump’s decision by criticizing him for backing a candidate “pretending to be MAGA.”
David Garza, a Brownsville lawyer who has supported Mayra Flores since her first race, said he counseled her to take the setback in stride.
“If she wasn’t known, I’d think [the Trump endorsement] could have an impact,” Garza said. “For people who’ve known her and supported her, I don’t think that changed the needle.”
One of the contenders who suspended their campaigns after Trump intervened, Corpus Christi businessman Scott Mandel, said he did not have to think hard about backing Eric Flores over Mayra Flores.
“I think there is a lot of fatigue, and if she gets this spot, she loses to Vicente,” Mandel said. “There’s no question.”
Mayra Flores argued she has the political experience and “battle scars” to finally capture the district this time. She vowed that she would not take anything for granted as the nominee and “run like it is still a Biden district,” referring to the previous, Democratic-friendly version of the seat.
Garza said it was “apples and oranges” to focus on her past two races because the district lines have since changed in significant ways.
While Eric Flores has built momentum as a fresh face, some GOP operatives acknowledge that Mayra Flores remains a serious competitor, well-known after appearing on five ballots in the region since June 2022. That could make it hard for either candidate to secure the majority support needed for an outright win Tuesday. If both fall short of 50%, they will face off in a late May runoff, with 12 more weeks to extend their feud into even more bitter territory.
The Floreses have been competitive with each other in fundraising. Each candidate had taken in roughly $1.3 million as of Feb. 11, the latest date covered by campaign financial disclosures, with Eric Flores’ receipts including nearly $500,000 in personal loans to his campaign. He also has at least three outside groups supporting him, including one super PAC, Operation Guardian Support PAC, that has received the bulk of its funding — $200,000 — from McAllen business owner Jaime Ramirez.
That money has helped fund a barrage of attacks aimed at keeping the primary focused on Mayra Flores’ electoral history and the candidates’ loyalty to Trump.
Eric Flores’s ads have attacked Mayra Flores as a “failed career politician” who has used her campaigns to enrich herself and her family. She has continued to pay herself a salary in her latest campaign, something the Federal Election Commission allows under certain conditions.
Eric Flores has also highlighted Mayra Flores’ initial criticism of Trump for snubbing her. In the interview, Mayra Flores steered clear of repeating the criticism, instead blaming Trump’s “advisers” for leading him astray.
Since the snub, Mayra Flores has taken a $5,000 campaign donation from the leadership PAC of Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, one of Trump’s biggest GOP dissidents in Congress. Asked about the donation, she said she was “grateful for everyone’s support” in the race.
Mayra Flores has focused her attacks on Eric Flores’ time as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Texas, pillorying him for being part of the “Biden DOJ.” Eric Flores has emphasized he was a career prosecutor, not a political appointee picked by the former Democratic president.
“I think this just shows her lack of understanding of the government,” Eric Flores said. “If I in fact was Biden DOJ, President Donald J. Trump would not have endorsed me.”
Mayra Flores has also sought to tie Eric Flores to Biden by claiming Eric Flores voted for Biden and attended his inauguration, citing a January 2021 Facebook post where Eric Flores said he was “watching” the ceremony and congratulated the incoming president. Eric Flores’ campaign denied both of those claims, saying he was stationed in Victoria on the day of the inauguration as a member of the Texas Army National Guard.