43% of Bexar County residents are in a new congressional district. Here’s how it could look.

Thanks to Texas’ unusual mid-cycle redistricting effort, roughly 43% of Bexar County residents are in a new congressional district this year.

But that’s not all that’s changed.

Even many voters who remain in the same district still don’t have the option to reelect their current congress member.

Redistricting took Bexar County from five members of Congress to four, losing U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo), whose district no longer stretches up to Bexar County.

Meanwhile, incumbent U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Dripping Springs) is running for Attorney General instead of reelection in the 21st Congressional District, and the 35th Congressional District changed so dramatically that incumbent U.S. Rep. Greg Casar (D-Austin) is now running for a different seat.

If scandal-plagued U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio) doesn’t make it through his primary, voters in a third San Antonio-area district will be sending a newcomer to Congress.

Across the country, Republican-led legislatures have been cracking up blue urban centers to create more GOP-friendly congressional seats.

The result is a national congressional map with fewer flippable seats than there were before the 2020 Census — even as Democrats head into an election they think offers their best political environment since 2018, following President Donald Trump’s election the first time.

That’s left both parties fighting over districts they once wouldn’t have considered competitive.

At the same time, Texas’ new district lines weren’t solidified until halfway through the filing period, and many races now feature crowded fields of candidates with either little political experience to help their community, or little connection to the district they’re running in.

“None of these candidates are very well-known by the primary electorate,” said Phil Gardner, a senior adviser at Blue Dog Action PAC, which is running TV ads for Democrat Johnny Garcia in TX35. “That can lead to all sorts of almost random outcomes.”

Interactive: Before and after

Pull right and left on the tab below to see how San Antonio’s congressional delegation looks before and after redistricting. Read on to learn more about who voters are choosing between.

A single blue district

San Antonio is currently represented by three Democrats, U.S. Reps. Joaquin Castro (D-San Antonio), Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo) and Greg Casar (D-Austin), and two Republicans, U.S. Reps. Chip Roy (R-Dripping Springs) and Tony Gonzales (R-San Antonio).

To create more GOP-friendly seats, Republicans took blue strongholds like Bexar County and put as many Democratic voters as possible into a single district, while dividing up the rest into districts where their votes would be outweighed by surrounding redder territory.

“Oftentimes, when red states are fully in charge of redistricting and they’re trying to maximize potential partisan gains, a tactic is to basically crack the bluest areas into districts that are red enough … or pack the Democratic voters all into one district, which is essentially what they did in San Antonio,” said Erin Covey, who oversees U.S. House race coverage for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

After redistricting, Cuellar’s South Texas district now stops short of Bexar County — something Republicans did to help their party flip that seat this cycle.

Another blue seat, Casar’s Austin-to-San Antonio district, was replaced by a new Republican pickup opportunity on San Antonio’s Southeast side.

“Now that [the old 35th Congressional District] is gone, you have just one blue district in Austin and one blue district in San Antonio,” Covey said. “So collectively, these two cities will potentially have the lowest number of Democratic representation in Congress that they’ve had in [20 years].”

San Antonio’s lone Democrat-held seat, Castro’s 20th Congressional District, is now bluer than ever.

Redistricting took it from a primarily West Side district to one that encompasses nearly all of downtown San Antonio. It supported Democrat Kamala Harris with 60% of its vote in 2024, but under its new boundaries, would have given her 63.5% of the vote.

Castro’s home was drawn out of the district, but members of Congress aren’t required to live in the district they represent and he faces little opposition seeking his party’s nomination for an eighth term.

One Republican, retired physician Edgardo Baez, is running for the 20th Congressional District in 2026, and hopes to capitalize on the large number of voters who shifted in during redistricting.

More San Antonio-centric seats

When the new maps were unveiled, Gonzales told the Report that San Antonio could ultimately benefit from districts that now focus more on a single major metro area, instead of looping in the bluest parts of two or more large population centers.

“While we have five members, really only Joaquin [Castro] and I are the only two that live and are raising our family in San Antonio,” he said in a Sept. 10 interview. ” … In my eyes, we really could double our delegation’s size … [in terms of] actual people that have invested skin in the game.”

Six months later, this outlook appears unlikely.

Reshaped districts drew crowded fields of little-known candidates that have raised little money to reach voters, and seem likely to head to bruising runoffs.

Now both parties have become so frantic about the razor-thin U.S. House majority that they’re pouring money behind any candidate they think will give them an edge in November — regardless of whether they’re deeply rooted in the district.

In Roy’s Hill Country-area district, redistricting removed an arm up to Austin and replaced it with a deeper reach into Bexar County. It remains quite red, and finding the right Republican to satisfy both the party’s rural and urban parts once seemed like a high priority.

But the leading contender among 12 GOP candidates running for the seat is now former MLB player Mark Teixeira, who lives north of the district in Bee Cave, and has put more than $2.5 million of his own money into the race. He has Trump’s endorsement, and one Bexar County candidate even dropped out to endorse him.

Meanwhile the district’s expansion into Bexar County has left many Democrats confused about why it’s not more of a priority for their party.

Even the reddest parts of Bexar County are still evenly split between the two parties, where Democrats new to the district are still eager to make a play for a seat that would have supported Trump with more than 60% of its vote under new boundaries.

Turmoil in a new district

Redistricting turned TX35 from a solidly blue Austin-to-San Antonio district to a potential GOP pickup opportunity, cupping San Antonio’s southeast side and stretching west into Karnes, Guadalupe and Wilson counties.

Though Republicans allegedly drew it for state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio), a former San Antonio firefighter who already represented the area in the Texas House, this month President Donald Trump and GOP congressional leaders shocked some political watchers by coming out in favor of a different candidate, Carlos De La Cruz, the brother of a South Texas congresswoman.

De La Cruz opened a boxing gym in San Antonio in 2018, and has not responded to questions about his current employment or residence.

Meanwhile Democrats plan to fight for the seat in November, but faced their own challenges finding the right candidate. Their leaders in the legislature fought hard against the new maps, and up until the late fall, maintained that the courts would throw them out.

As a result, party leaders didn’t get their top recruits. Now national groups are spending money to help longtime sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia, a first-time candidate who they’re trying to boost through a four-way primary.

“Because of the late gerrymander and the court action that occurred, neither Johnny or the three other Democrats running have really been able to raise substantial amounts of money, at least that would be necessary to do paid media in a primary,” said Gardner, the Blue Dog Action PAC advisor. “This has been a very interesting process to see him go from somebody who, about six months ago, was not thinking about running for Congress, but he has stepped up and has put together a campaign,” he added.

Both parties are trying to head off a 10-week runoff in races that could damage their eventual candidates for the general election, or drain resources from the rest of the map.

But some strategists concede they’re likely unavoidable — just due to the strange nature of Texas’ late-changing maps.