Representative Tony Gonzales, a Texas Republican accused of coercing a staff member into a sexual relationship before she killed herself, said on Thursday he would not seek re-election amid growing bipartisan outcry from fellow House members.
Mr. Gonzales’s decision to bow out of the race came in the midst of a fierce primary fight that has been overshadowed by text messages that emerged showing his pursuit of the female staff member, Regina Santos-Aviles.
“After deep reflection and with the support of my loving family, I have decided not to seek re-election while serving out the rest of this Congress with the same commitment I’ve always had to my district,” he said in a statement late Thursday.
Ms. Santos-Aviles worked for Mr. Gonzales at a district office in Uvalde, Texas, when he sent her “sexual texts” in 2024 and sought a relationship with her, according to a lawyer for her husband, Bobby Barrera, who reviewed the texts. A fellow staff member, who worked with Ms. Santos-Aviles in the Uvalde office, shared a text exchange with The New York Times in which Ms. Santos-Aviles told the co-worker of an “affair with our boss.”
Ms. Santos-Aviles killed herself in September 2025, according to the Uvalde Police Department.
After her death, there were discussions in Mr. Gonzales’s district of a possible affair between the congressman and the staff member, which would be a clear violation of House ethics rules. Mr. Gonzales, a third-term congressman from an increasingly conservative border district that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso, initially denied any sexual relationship at the time.
But he publicly acknowledged the extramarital affair to a podcaster on Wednesday, the day after he and Brandon Herrera, a gun rights advocate and YouTuber known as the AK Guy, failed to receive a majority of the Republican primary vote. The two were headed to a runoff, which was scheduled for May 26.
Mr. Gonzales accused Mr. Herrera of being behind the renewed attention to the accusations.
As voters began casting ballots last month, calls were already mounting for Mr. Gonzales to step down, including from many conservative and female Republicans in the House. The text messages showed that Mr. Gonzales had used crude sexual language with Ms. Santos-Aviles and pressured her into sending nude pictures, even after she told him he had gone too far.
Representative Anna Paulina Luna, Republican of Florida, argued that every member of the House “should be condemning a sitting member of Congress asking for explicit photos of their staff.”
The three most senior House Republicans said in a joint statement on Thursday that the Ethics Committee would investigate the matter and that party leaders had asked Mr. Gonzales to step aside from his bid for re-election while it proceeds.
The House passed a measure in 2018 barring members from engaging in sexual relationships with their staff. Before the primaries, Speaker Mike Johnson said that the accusations against Mr. Gonzales, which he called “very serious,” were being investigated and that the system should be allowed to play out.
J. David Goodman is the Texas bureau chief for The Times, based in Houston.
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