Two sitting members of the House are running to represent Texas Congressional District 34. Republican Mayra Flores won a special election in June and currently represents the district. She is running for a full term. Democrat Vicente Gonzalez currently represents Texas CD-15. Due to re-districting, he is now running in CD-34. The race is contentious, to say the least.

Gonzalez is showing the ugly side of campaign politics. The most recent example happened during a get-out-the-vote event in Harlingen on Wednesday. Gonzalez told supporters that Flores can’t “think for herself, can’t speak for herself, can’t act for herself, can’t vote for herself,” Whoa. Talk about a war on women. Or at least one woman. Flores has this man unhinged.

“We can’t do this alone,” Gonzalez told his supporters gathered in the room. “We need everyone’s help, we need everyone’s friends, everyone’s family, and everyone’s friends’ and families’ friends and family. That’s the way we’re gonna push back on these outside resources coming here picking a candidate, a hand-picked candidate that can’t think for herself, can’t speak for herself, can’t act for herself, can’t vote for herself.”

Can you imagine if a Republican male candidate said that against a Democrat female candidate? Women would be marching in the streets against him. Unfortunately for this campaign, it isn’t the first time Gonzalez has attacked Flores in a personal way. In May, Flores said that Gonzalez paid for advertising on two blogs that launched racial attacks against her.

On May 13, Jerry McHale, who has referred to Flores as “Miss Frijoles” and a “cotton-picking liar,” questioned, “DOES FLORES WANT TRUMP TO COME & TAKE HER P**SY???”

Speaking to Fox News Digital, McHale said the posts on the blog are “satire” and that he has never spoken with Gonzalez, who is facing Flores in the November midterm election. He also claimed that Gonzalez’s campaign did not pay him to criticize Flores and that they are not paying him for “anything specific.”

Satire. Right.

Last week I wrote about the Gonzalez campaign photoshopping (badly) a photo from Flores’ Instagram account and putting it on his campaign material. Her eyebrows are edited to look severly arched and makes her expression look menacing. It’s amateur time. Candidates launch ugly personal attacks when they don’t have legislative successes to remind voters about. Gonzalez has none. He was first elected to represent CD-15 in 2017. He’s a backbencher but is striking out at Flores because she didn’t vote for a bill in the House, the Keep Communities Safer Act, which was passed on a mostly party line vote.

“After we lost 19 children and two teachers in a massacre in Uvalde, Texas, her first vote in the United States Congress was a no vote on the Keep Communities Safer Act,” he said.

Responding to the ad with the poorly photoshopped picture, Flores commented on the history Gonzalez has in making such attacks against her.

Responding to the ad, Flores told Fox at the time: “First, Vicente Gonzalez hired a racist blogger to attack me for my heritage. Now Vicente is doing the dirty work himself with this shameless and pathetic Photoshopping. The people in the [Rio Grande Valley] are smarter than this and will see right through Vicente’s scare tactics and constant lies.”

Like other Democrats, he uses the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde to politicize the issue of gun control. Flores did vote against it as all but 14 Republicans did in the House. Flores introduced her own bill to deal with school security and mental health resources.

Last month, Flores introduced the Reduce Gun Violence Act, which the campaign says is a “comprehensive funding package of more than $11 billion dollars to schools across the country to increase physical security and access mental health resources.”

Democrats are keeping a close watch on this race because it is an indication that inroads have been made by the Republican Party with Hispanic voters. This district is a majority Hispanic district that has been controlled by Democrats for over 100 years – that is until Flores made history and won the special general election in June. Gonzalez represents the status quo. Democrats are worried. The Texas Tribune reports that he is running more aggressively than ever before.

Gonzalez’s aggressive spending in the race shows that he’s not taking anything for granted. His campaign has spent $2.2 million as of the end of June on a robust ground game — nearly twice the expenses of his past two campaigns combined — and that’s before he released his first TV ad in late September. With over $1.4 million in cash on hand, he’s on his way to surpassing his 2016 spending of $2.3 million. This year is his most robust operation since he first ran for Congress in 2016, he said.

To Republicans, it’s an admission that their forays into the traditional Democratic stronghold of South Texas are scaring Democrats and that Flores’ special election was not the one-time, off-season fluke they’ve made it out to be. Flores stresses her message of hard work, faith and border security appeal to the socially conservative values of the region, saying Democrats took South Texas Latinos for granted even as the party became increasingly out of step with their values.

National forecasters are also less certain about Gonzalez’s odds with the Cook Political Report assessing the race Wednesday as a “toss up.”

The Texas Tribune also reports that “Republicans are relentlessly going after Gonzalez’s verbal gaffes and portraying him as an out-of-touch creature of Washington.” Yes. Yes, we are. This Republican blogger intends to write about each and every time he says something stupid like his misogynistic attacks on Flores.

Some good news is that Republicans outraised Democrats over the summer in all three contested districts in South Texas.

But the large GOP fundraising shows how intent Republicans are on taking over the predominantly Hispanic region after President Joe Biden underperformed there in 2020. They are targeting Cuellar’s 28th District, which includes Laredo in a long stretch of the border up through San Antonio; the 15th District, which is an open seat and runs in a thin line from McAllen up to east of San Antonio; and the 34th District in the Rio Grand Valley, where Gonzalez is running for reelection against U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores, R-Los Indios, who captured the seat in a June special election.

Winning the seats could help the GOP retake the U.S. House, but would also provide a major psychological win for a party intensely focused on border policy and gaining ground with Hispanic voters.

All three Republican nominees raised over $1 million, and Cuellar’s challenger, Cassy Garcia, had the largest haul — $1.7 million. The biggest disparity, however, was in the 34th District, where Flores more than tripled Gonzalez’s fundraising, $1.6 million to $497,000.

This race continues to be one to keep an eye on. Stay tuned.