'Extraordinary' shift in dusty red town could tip Congress for a generation: expert

A prominent Republican strategist is sounding the alarm about a political earthquake building in the reddest corner of Texas that he said could decide who runs the country for a generation.

Mike Madrid, a GOP consultant and author who has spent years studying the Latino vote, argued this week that Hispanic voters are stampeding away from Republicans "by the same historic margins they shifted to them in November 2024."

"Something extraordinary is happening in Texas," he wrote on X.

The reversal, he wrote, is so large that "the size of the shift will determine who controls Congress, and the country, for a generation."

Ground zero, in Madrid's telling, is Beeville, a dusty town of about 13,500 in a deep-red South Texas county, roughly 70% Hispanic, that backed Trump 2-1. It sits in the 15th Congressional District, where Tejano music legend and two-time Latin Grammy winner Bobby Pulido is running as a Democrat against Republican incumbent Rep. Monica De La Cruz.

Trump carried the redrawn district by 18 points in 2024, yet recent polls show Pulido leading or tied. And this month, Madrid said, a Pulido rally at a Beeville dance hall drew a whopping 2,750 people — the largest event the venue had ever hosted.

In a January special election, a Fort Worth-area state Senate district Trump won by 17 points flipped to Democrats by 14, powered by a roughly 30-point Latino swing. The result has Republicans fearing their new gerrymanders could backfire in November.

Madrid called Hispanics "the only swing vote in America," and he projects they could lurch 20 points toward Democrats this fall.