Lessons for Democrats from a candidate who sings and shoots

Usually when a politician speaks to an auditorium full of children, neither party wants to be there: the kids can’t vote, and listening to an adult drone on is boring. But when Bobby Pulido, the Democratic nominee for Congress in Texas’s 15th district, showed up at Beethoven Elementary, the children cheered and held up his picture. The school’s teachers, caretakers and lunch ladies filled out the sides of the auditorium and lined up for selfies after the speech. That was not because they were wonks or ardent Democrats.

Before Mr Pulido entered politics, he won two Latin Grammy awards. In the Rio Grande Valley (rgv), Texas’s southernmost tip, he is so famous that walking with him from a restaurant’s front door to a table takes a while because of all the people who stop him. Polling is scant, and Donald Trump won this district by 18 points in 2024. But even if Mr Pulido loses (as our forecast model strongly suggests he will), a good showing in TX-15 would offer lessons for future Democratic candidates.

First, candidate and district match well. Mr Pulido was born, brought up and still lives in Edinburg, one of the rgv’s bigger cities. Like most of his constituents, he is Latino and bilingual, and lacks a college degree; like many of them, he does not have health insurance, and must cross the border to see a doctor. His two uncles were long-serving local elected officials.

This biography affords him an advantage in a region where politics is less partisan than personal: people already know him. His opponent, Monica De La Cruz, tried to dismiss him for it, saying in March that the race “isn’t about who you want performing at your niece’s quinceañera”. Since then, in a nifty bit of political jiujitsu, Mr Pulido has performed at dozens of quinceañeras (girls’ 15th birthday parties) in his district, taking payment in earned media: hundreds of family members have livestreamed and posted his performances.

Mr Pulido’s moderation also helps. He is an avid hunter and competitive long-distance shooter who has “lost count” of the number of guns he owns. He believes Democrats’ focus on social issues rather than economics cost them the district. “Down here,” he says, “people don’t consider themselves poor, they consider themselves broke…they think, you know, I’m gonna make it tomorrow. I don’t think people here want charity, they just want an opportunity.” This echoes the leading Latino presidential hopeful, Ruben Gallego, Arizona’s senior senator, who says that Latinos want a troquita, or “big-assed truck”—they want a pathway to material success.

The rgv may be ancestrally Democratic, but it is also conservative: gun ownership is common and church attendance is strong. Barbecues feel like parties anywhere else in rural Texas, with lots of beer, boots and guns, except that everyone speaks both English and Spanish. Mr Pulido says the most effective political ad in 2024 was the one claiming “Kamala is for they/them; Trump is for you.” The message worked: in 2024 Mr Trump won all four of the rgv’s main counties.

Some of his voters have buyers’ remorse. Mario Guerrero, who owns a construction firm and heads the South Texas Builders’ Association, voted for Mr Trump three times. But today tariffs have increased his input costs, ice raids have reduced his labour force, petrol prices have eaten into his budget and all this, combined with rising costs, means that fewer people can afford the homes he builds.

Under Joe Biden, the border, just half an hour’s drive from Edinburg, was chaotic, and Mr Guerrero welcomed Mr Trump’s vow to control it and get the bad guys out. But, he says, “When I would hear that the rapists and the murderers were gonna be taken out, I never thought that you were gonna go and pick up Juan that does cabinets, that has a family here, that has two sons in the air force.”

An improved showing for Democrats in the rgv would not mean Latinos are coming “home”, argues Mike Madrid, a political strategist and author of “The Latino Century”. They “are moving away from both parties, [and] the same reasons these voters turned against the Democratic Party is why they’re now moving away from Republicans”. Yet there are, he suggests, lessons for the party here.

First, he says, “start moving toward the Latino working-class base instead of holding onto false hopes of recapturing the white working class in the rustbelt…The future relevance of the Democratic Party is the sunbelt.” Second, be opportunistic and unconventional: if your opponent sniffs that you’re nothing more than a quinceañera singer, sing at as many as will have you.

Finally, it really helps to be famous. Unlike most first-time candidates, Mr Pulido has no problems with name recognition. The tendency of Democrats to defend institutions often makes them seem like rule-following scolds. They could use a few more candidates who know their way around a guitar, a ballad and a gun. ■