Most people who trickled into a historical movie theater in the border city of McAllen, Texas, this week had heard of Bobby Pulido, the Latin Grammy Award-winning Tejano singer running for Congress in the oddly shaped district jutting from the border to the outskirts of San Antonio, some 250 miles straight north.
But on this day, the candidate they had come to hear was the one breathing fire about dismantling Immigration and Customs Enforcement, legalizing abortion and challenging the insular Democratic Party in the Rio Grande Valley. That wasn’t Mr. Pulido, the favorite of the party. It was Ada Cuellar, an emergency room doctor running considerably to his left.
Alex Cantu, 42, said Mr. Pulido’s run was “a fame grab” by “basically what I would refer to as an establishment politician.” Mr. Cantu had organized a vigil after federal agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and he said he wanted real change.
The fight for the Democratic nomination to challenge Representative Monica De La Cruz, the Republican incumbent in Texas’ 15th District, gets to the struggle for the soul of the party in 2026. Democratic primary voters in Texas began voting Tuesday ahead of the March 3 primary, and their choice, like many Democrats around the country, is whether they want to push their party to the left in a year when the wind is at Democrats’ back, or elevate centrists who traditionalists say can win swing districts like the 15th in November.
The Democratic primary for the seat of Texas’ senior senator, John Cornyn, holds a similar dynamic, pitting Representative Jasmine Crockett, a firebrand intent on mobilizing the Democratic base, against State Representative James Talarico, who is appealing to the center and disaffected Republicans.
But far from the glare of that spotlight are Democratic voters in El Valle, as the Rio Grande Valley is known. And there, another question looms: Where will the Hispanic voters who flocked to President Trump in 2024 go in 2026, amid the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown, and which type of candidate do they prefer?
Cine El Rey is known as the Mexican Apollo because its advocacy of Mexican cinema parallels the Apollo Theater’s advocacy of Black artists in Harlem, and inside, Dr. Cuellar, who recently added a law degree to her medical résumé, was doing some advocacy of her own. She promised to push for the dismantling of ICE and had harsh words for Democratic Party stalwarts who have made their preference for Mr. Pulido clear.
“I’m told I’m a progressive,” Dr. Cuellar said in an interview.
Mr. Pulido, with his endorsements, name recognition and a ground game that has touched all 11 counties in the district, appears to be the favorite, but not necessarily with the voters most frustrated with Mr. Trump’s return to power, like Mia Diaz-Aleman.
“We need someone who is a fighter,” Ms. Diaz-Aleman, 42, of McAllen, said of Dr. Cuellar, adding, “We’ve done the central view before, and that has gotten us nowhere.”
Over the summer, the Republican-controlled state legislature redrew the 15th District to favor their candidate, but if Latino voters are shifting, Democrats believe the district is still in play — with the right candidate.
Dr. Cuellar, who has poured a lot of her own money into her campaign, said she supports codifying Roe v. Wade, expanding access to health care to all and pushing for federal immigration authorities to confine enforcement actions to criminals. She also has the endorsement of Ms. Crockett.
She describes herself as a “mama bear” and a “fighter,” a single mother who decided to run after years of frustration with the local political system and its “compadrismo,” or cronyism, where only those with political connections are supported.
“People want somebody outside of the establishment,” she said.
Mr. Pulido is less categorical and more circumspect. He wants a secure border but opposes agents going after otherwise law-abiding immigrants. He wants to expand health care, but especially to those in poor or rural communities, where people often have to drive long distances to find a hospital. He wants to do away with some tariffs, the ones that hurt agriculture.
The race has also turned personal, in large part thanks to ads and social media posts for Dr. Cuellar and social media posts that attack Mr. Pulido for his views on abortion and ties to Democratic Party leaders.
“People are just waking up right now,” Dr. Cuellar said. “I’m the one who is pro-choice and he wants to leave it to Texas politicians.”
In an interview this week in his native Edinburg, Texas, Mr. Pulido said that while he personally opposes abortion, he also opposes his state’s near-total ban on abortion, without exceptions for rape and incest. Pushed again, he went much further, saying women should be able to make their own medical decisions.
“It’s not my place to tell a woman what she can do with her body,” he said. “Policy is different than my personal beliefs.”
He said he also has his eyes on the general election. He has decided not to run negative ads against his opponent and said he’ll continue to rely on events that attract far larger crowds than the two dozen or so that came to Cine El Rey to see Dr. Cuellar.
Democratic leaders in the area have said that they will not endorse anyone in the race until after the primary, but some expressed confidence that Mr. Pulido’s more socially conservative stances could bring back voters from the Republican camp. Mr. Pulido, a father of four and a generational Texas Latino with two Latin Grammy Awards, said people see him as a rugged cowboy-hat-wearing Spanish-language performer with rural sensibilities.
Outside an early polling site in Edinburg, Ernesto Rosales, 48, a gun owner and longtime Democrat, said he agreed.
“When you decide to run normally, people don’t know who you are, right? And you have to spend a lot of time and a lot of money and a lot of effort to build that name recognition,” Mr. Rosales said. “Bobby didn’t need to do that. He’s a name brand here and with the Latino community.”
“To me he resonates, because he’s a middle of the ground kind of guy,” he said. “He speaks to me.”
Edgar Sandoval covers Texas for The Times, with a focus on the Latino community and the border with Mexico. He is based in San Antonio.
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