Long before national Republicans set their sights on flipping a trio of South Texas congressional seats, Southside native John Lujan had a vision for introducing his San Antonio community to the Republican Party.
“I was the only Republican on our five-man legislative committee,” Lujan said of his earliest political venture: lobbying for the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association, of which he was a member.
Lujan, now the state representative for House District 118, landed the job when he threatened to pull his money from the group’s political action committee over its unilateral support for Democrats.
“[The incoming union president] said, ‘Why don’t you, instead of complaining, make change?'” Lujan said. “…That got me into politics.”
Lujan took the advice to heart. He retired from firefighting after 25 years and launched a community organization called Southside on the Rise, where he sought to quietly introduce conservative ideas to a part of the county that others in his party had written off.
“We just wanted to do better for the South Side,” Lujan said of the effort. “[Republicans] relate so well with the Hispanic community. … I just don’t feel that they know it.”
Lujan made enough headway to win a special election to the Texas House in January 2016 but couldn’t hang on to the seat in the general election that fall. Having reclaimed the seat in a 2021 special election, Lujan is in a familiar spot. This time, in the final weeks of a heated race against Democrat Frank Ramirez, Lujan has help from some powerful allies.
Gov. Greg Abbott will campaign with Lujan days before the Nov. 8 election at Lujan’s brother’s feed store in Von Ormy, in South Bexar County. Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan has chipped in more than $200,000 worth of TV and direct mail ads and campaign research to Lujan’s campaign, and the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), a national organization that helps elect Republicans to state-level offices, spent roughly $185,000 on Spanish-language TV and digital ads.
It’s a massive infusion of support into a state House race in which candidates from both parties spent less during the 2020 and 2018 cycles combined than Phelan and the RSLC dropped in the past six weeks. Apart from Lujan’s two special election wins, his party has never carried the district in a general election.
“We just need good, godly people in office,” Lujan said at gathering of supporters Wednesday. “If we do that, this will be the year of change.”
When Lujan won in 2016, Donald Trump was not yet president and as a conservative Hispanic Republican, Lujan drew attention from national media and state party leadership.
“I was offended at first,” he said of invitations to appear on shows like “Fox & Friends.” “I was like, ‘It’s just because I’m brown. We got a brown guy here. He’s a Republican. Here’s the brown Republican guy. I don’t want to be that guy.”
Since then Lujan said he’s prayed over the personal conflict and embraced what he sees as the positive outcomes of the Republican Party’s focus on Hispanic voters.
“I really think we needed to have a conservative movement. I really believe that,” Lujan said. To himself, Lujan added, “I said, ‘Quit crying about it.’ … If I’m the spokesperson, I want to be that spokesperson.”
The Trump factor
Much of Republicans’ enthusiasm about their prospects in South Texas revolves around President Donald Trump’s success there in 2020, when he narrowed President Joe Biden’s lead in a swath of counties Hillary Clinton had won.
But for Lujan, Trump’s 2016 election nearly derailed his own grassroots efforts to expand the party.
Lujan shocked political observers earlier that year by finishing first in a special election to replace retiring state Rep. Joe Farias, but lost to Democrat Tomas Uresti the following November, before ever having served in the state’s biennial legislative session.
He ran again in 2018 — a banner year for Democrats in the first midterm of Trump’s presidency — and lost to Democrat Leo Pacheco.
“I threw away my signs. I threw away lists and material, to prove to everybody I was not ever going to run again,” Lujan said, blaming his losses partly on the “general divisiveness that happened with Trump.”
But when Pacheco announced plans in 2021 to step down before the end of his term, Lujan said Phelan personally urged him to run. Though Lujan was reluctant, Phelan offered resources to help fund the race.
“Some of it flattered me,” Lujan said. “But I also thought, ‘Eh, he’s just saying that because they need somebody to run.'”
Just 11,569 voters participated in the November runoff in which Lujan defeated Ramirez with 51% of the vote.
For his rematch with Ramirez, Lujan said he’s now focused on winning voters who might not choose any other Republicans, like a woman he met recently who put one of his signs in her yard, but told him she plans to vote for Democrat Beto O’Rourke for governor.
“That’s an example of what we’re going through here in South Bexar County,” said Lujan. “We’re having people that are making that first step [toward the GOP]. … They might not go all the way, but the first step might be state Rep. John Lujan.”
Campaign cash
Throughout South Texas, Hispanic candidates are raising big money for uphill bids to flip seats from blue to red.
Republicans have spent millions helping U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores compete for Texas’ 34th Congressional District, which would have supported Biden by more than 15 percentage points, according to an analysis of the redrawn district by the Texas Tribune. This week the chair of the National Republican Campaign Committee campaigned with GOP hopeful Cassy Garcia for her race in Texas’ 28th District, which would have supported Biden by roughly 7 percentage points.
“[Republicans] have hedged their bets tremendously in every single one of the districts they are talking about [in Texas],” said Matt Angle, a longtime political strategist who runs a political action committee to help Texas Democrats. “They’ve redrawn them in a way that’s increased the voting strength of Anglos and decreased the voting strength of Hispanics. … [Texas’ House District 118] is a perfect example of that.”
In 2021, District 118 was redrawn to remove roughly 20% of its Hispanic voters, according to Ramirez. The redistricting is currently being challenged in court by voting rights activists, but a ruling is not expected to affect the 2022 election.
Including cash and in-kind contributions, Lujan brought in a total of $582,000 between July 1 and Sept. 30 to Ramirez’s $126,000 in the same span, according to campaign finance reports.
“It doesn’t seem like they’re trying to to persuade people. It seems like they’re trying to buy people,” Ramirez said of Republicans’ efforts to court Hispanic voters.
On the heels of a disappointing election cycle for Texas Democrats in 2020, Ramirez said many of the party’s donors “are taking a step back because the investments that were made” that year.
But Democratic Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer hosted a fundraiser for him last Tuesday at which Ramirez brought in close to $30,000 — a sign he says indicates the party is taking the race seriously in the final stretch.
Education funding
Among Lujan’s advantages in a district that’s friendly to Democrats: He has yet to actually serve in the Texas House, which last year saw its most conservative agenda in history, including passing controversial laws on abortion and voting rights.
In the meantime, a wide range of supporters view Lujan as a potential ally should he win reelection.
For example, Lujan joined Abbott at PicaPica Plaza in May as the governor unveiled a plan to support private school vouchers — something public school advocates say would drain money from public school systems. The move came as Lujan is also campaigning hard on supporting public education.
In an interview before a candidate forum hosted by the San Antonio chapter of the Texas Retired Teachers Association, Lujan said he would be open to using vouchers in a limited capacity, but not in a widespread manner that takes funding from public schools.
“On the voucher system … look, I am for funding our public schools, I don’t want to destroy public schools,” Lujan said in a later interview to clarify his position. “But if that school is failing our children, you should not be forced to put your kid there.”
Lujan said he attended the event with Abbott not to show support for vouchers, but for the governor’s “parental bill of rights,” which is aimed at limiting what teachers can say to students about race, gender and sex.
“I think what we ought to do is lay the groundwork with what’s taught in schools — your reading, your writing, your math, arithmetic, history,” said Lujan. “I’m totally against indoctrinating our kids on [things] like pronouns, like I’m a he-she — to me, it’s stupid.”
A political action committee that supports charter schools in Bexar County spent close to $15,000 on door hangers that say Lujan will stop “radical indoctrination” of students. His ties to such groups have drawn criticism from the American Federation of Teachers, which is block walking and phone banking in support of Ramirez.
“Lujan plays footsie with the wrong people like the Charter Schools Now PAC, which has taken millions from out-of-state billionaires trying to defund public education,” said Anthony Elmo, director of political organizing for the AFT’s Texas chapter.
Redshirt freshman
In Austin’s politically polarized environment, Lujan may find it hard to please his supporters with different perspectives as well as work across the aisle if he makes it to the legislative session beginning in January.
“I’m going to have Democrats upset with me. I’m going to have Republicans upset with me,” said Lujan. But “… I’m a man of prayer. I will pray for godly wisdom.”
On stage with fellow members of the Bexar County statehouse delegation at a Texas Tribune event in April, Lujan said he wished the state’s new voting law, which initially caused a high level of rejected mail-in ballots from both parties, had involved Democrats when it was crafted.
Democrat Rep. Ina Minjarez, who is leaving House District 124 at the end of the year, said Lujan should take that concern up with his own party’s leadership, and suggested his outlook on the process was naive.
“I’m going to tell you, Rep. Lujan, if you go and you serve in the House, be ready,” said Minjarez. “Not everything is bipartisanship. You’re going to be in for a big surprise when you see how things are really truly done.”
