A CNN review of Brandon Herrera's videos, podcasts and social media found years of comments mocking women's weight, looks and intelligence. He called them jokes. He is the Republican nominee in a district whose last congressman resigned during a House Ethics investigation into sexual misconduct allegations, and his opponent is a woman.
Texas ranks 40th of 50 on the measures we track, with the second-worst food insecurity and second-worst women's health scores in the country. Greg Abbott signed the abortion ban and the school voucher law, never expanded Medicaid, and now runs on affordability after property tax levies rose to $89.4 billion and home insurance premiums rose 79%. Here is the record, and what each of the seventeen Republicans running for reelection has been busy with.
Herrera calls himself a millionaire and told the Express-News he's made about $2 million in revenue. His financial disclosure lists $80,000 in earned income and no assets at all. He promised to fix it in July. He still hasn't.
Stands With Trump's Agenda That Cut Health Care for Texans
We all deserve access to quality, affordable healthcare so we can live healthy and productive lives. But Brandon Herrera has built his campaign around backing President Trump and his agenda — and that agenda stripped health coverage from millions of Americans, including tens of thousands of Texans right here in the 23rd district.
Herrera has made full support for President Trump the centerpiece of his platform, and says he has backed Trump since 2016. That agenda — driven by Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson — included the One Big Beautiful Bill, which nonpartisan estimates projected would leave at least 17 million Americans without health coverage — 11.8 million of them from the bill itself, mostly because of its Medicaid cuts, and the rest as pandemic-era ACA subsidies expire. More than 4.4 million Texans count on Medicaid for their health insurance, and more than 41,000 people in TX-23 were at risk of losing their coverage.
A vote for Brandon Herrera is a vote to take health care away from Texans. We deserve better.
Texas seniors worked their whole lives for the Medicare and Social Security they count on today. Brandon Herrera backs the agenda that put both at risk.
Trump's DOGE brought longer wait times and website crashes and mass layoffs at Social Security offices, making it harder for Texas seniors to get the benefits they earned. Closer to home, San Antonio businesses lost an estimated $375 million in federal contracts to DOGE cuts, and Texas lost at least five Veterans' Affairs contracts.
Brandon Herrera is on the wrong side of Texas seniors. We deserve better.
No family should have to skip meals to make ends meet. Yet Brandon Herrera backs the agenda that made the largest cut to food assistance in history — even as more than 31,000 households in TX-23 rely on SNAP to put groceries on the table.
In America, a hard day's work should be enough to afford the basics. Instead, Trump's tariffs are slowing job growth and driving up prices across Texas — and Brandon Herrera has pledged to stand with the president behind them.
Every Texas kid deserves a good school, no matter their zip code. Brandon Herrera wants to gut the federal funding that helps make that possible.
Herrera has said he wants to defund the Department of Education. At a 2023 campaign Q&A with students at UT San Antonio he said, "I'd like to defund it. I'd like to defund it" — calling the idea that "we should all hand over our education to the government" the most Soviet thing to come out of the United States in a century, and backing policies "bringing us away from federally funded education systems." In fiscal 2024 alone, that department sent $3.9 billion to the Texas Education Agency — money that serves rural and low-income communities, special education and career and technical training.
Brandon Herrera would pull the funding that keeps Texas classrooms running. We deserve better.
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary in Uvalde. Ten weeks later, Brandon Herrera took part in a video pegged to the massacre in which a submachine gun was strapped to a robot dog — and he wants to abolish the very agency that helped investigate it.
About ten weeks after the Uvalde shooting, Herrera took part in a video by Australian YouTuber Alex Apollonov that strapped a submachine gun to a robotic dog to "solve America's school shooting problem." Apollonov drove the robot through Uvalde and stopped it in front of a school bus there, then tested the gun with Herrera at a Texas property, shooting at cardboard cartoon cutouts that included children — and hitting one of them. 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed in the Uvalde shooting.
Is an Internet Troll Who Has Been Called a Goose-Stepping Extremist and a Nazi
Members of his own party have called Brandon Herrera a "goose-stepping extremist." He has joked about Nazi weapons, mocked veteran suicide, and reenacted the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. This is not the conduct of someone fit to hold office.
Herrera is known for joking that a Nazi submachine gun was "the original ghetto blaster," goose-stepping with it on camera to a Nazi marching song, and playing Nazi marching songs in an earlier video about Nazi guns. He also boasted about owning a 1939 copy of "Mein Kampf." In 2024, the Republican Jewish Coalition denounced him as a "goose-stepping extremist."
Herrera made a "joke" about veteran suicide on a podcast — saying "I often think about putting a gun in my mouth so, I'm basically an honorary veteran." Texas Republicans including Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland and Texas Border Czar Mike Banks criticized his comment.
Loaned Himself Nearly Three Times What His Donors Gave
Our elected officials should work for us, the people.
A campaign is supposed to be an argument you persuade people to fund. Brandon Herrera has not persuaded many.
Of the $1,937,719 his campaign has taken in this cycle, only $147,921 - 7.6% - came from another human being or organization. He put in $420,000 of his own as a loan, nearly three times what every donor gave him combined, and moved another $1,369,342 across from committees he already controlled, recycled from the race he lost in 2024. His committee reports owing $570,000.
That would be his own business, except for where the money goes next - and the fact that federal regulators have already asked him about it.
Brandon Herrera - $420,000, loaned to himself. This is not the first time the size of those loans has drawn attention: in 2024 the Federal Election Commission questioned a $50,000 loan he made to his own campaign, after his financial disclosure reported earning roughly $84,000 the previous year.
$1,369,342 transferred in from his own committees. Seven of every ten dollars his 2026 campaign has taken in is not new support from Texans - it is money moved over from the campaign apparatus of his failed 2024 run.
Individual donors - $85,421 in total. Across an entire election cycle, fewer than one dollar in twenty came from a person choosing to give him money. Small donations too little to require a name came to $17,445.
The handful of PACs that did give. The Freedom Caucus Fund, Texas Values PAC, the National Association for Gun Rights, and the campaign and leadership committees of Tom Emmer each sent money - $62,500 between all of them.
And then 99.4% of it went straight back out to a single company. Federal filings show nearly every dollar his 2026 campaign spent went to Texas Strategy Group - an entity that is not registered to do business anywhere in the United States and has no website. In his 2024 run the figure was 92%. See Is Illegally Hiding His Campaign Spending below.
That company's addresses lead back to his own treasurer. Texas Strategy Group lists addresses in Hudson, Wisconsin and Washington, D.C., and the Campaign Legal Center's complaint argues both are linked to Thomas Datwyler - the treasurer who keeps the books for Herrera's committees, who paid more than $20,000 in fines in 2023, and whose work for the expelled congressman George Santos drew scrutiny of its own.
Brandon Herrera's campaign is funded by Brandon Herrera, and spends its money at a company nobody can find. We deserve better.
Voters deserve to know who is funding the people who want to represent them. Brandon Herrera's campaign has repeatedly been accused of hiding exactly that.
The FEC has separately questioned a $50,000 loan Herrera made to his own campaign — even though he reported earning roughly $84,000 the prior year — along with missing employer and occupation details for his donors.
His campaign treasurer, Thomas Datwyler, has paid more than $20,000 in fines over alleged campaign finance violations and was scrutinized for his ties to the campaign of expelled Rep. George Santos.
A candidate who won't say where his money goes hasn't earned the public's trust. We deserve better.
