SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Democrat Johnny Garcia has won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas' 35th Congressional District, defeating Republican Carlos De La Cruz in one of the most closely watched races of the November 3 midterms. The Associated Press declared Garcia the winner at 1:23 a.m. EST on Wednesday, November 4. The AP count put Garcia at 139,968 votes, 55.43 percent, against 112,559 votes, 44.57 percent, for De La Cruz, with 311 of the district's 320 precincts reporting — 97.19 percent. The margin was 27,409 votes. Results are unofficial until Texas counties canvass them.
Source: Associated Press
Garcia's win carried a weight far beyond one district. The Washington Examiner, citing the AP, reported that the 218th House seat Democrats needed for a majority came with Garcia's victory in the 35th District, and the AP said Democrats hit that mark early on Wednesday — adding the House to a Senate the party had already been projected to win. Before the election, Republicans held the House; 218 of its 435 seats are needed for control. It made a first-time candidate from San Antonio the man who mathematically ended Republican control of the chamber.
Source: Associated Press via Today News Brief / Washington Examiner
A district redrawn to flip — that didn't
The 35th District was a test case for the mid-decade redistricting fight that defined the 2026 cycle. Republican lawmakers in Texas dramatically reshaped the district in 2025 at President Donald Trump's urging, transforming a Democratic stronghold into territory that would have favoured Trump by roughly 10 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election. The overhaul displaced the district's Democratic incumbent, Greg Casar, who opted to seek election in the newly configured 37th District rather than defend his former seat — leaving the 35th as an open seat. Forecasters rated it a toss-up: Cook Political Report, Sabato's Crystal Ball, Inside Elections and Decision Desk HQ all had the race even in the final weeks. Instead of flipping, the seat stayed Democratic by double digits.
Source: TIME (syndicated report)
The redrawn district covers portions of San Antonio and surrounding communities in Bexar County and neighbouring counties, stretching into deep South Texas. San Antonio, a city of about 1.4 million, is one of the largest Latino-majority cities in the United States, and the district's voters are the same South Texas electorate whose shift toward Republicans in 2024 persuaded the GOP that seats like this one could be drawn — and won. On Tuesday, that electorate moved the other way.
Source: TIME (syndicated report)
Two newcomers: a deputy's badge against an Air Force record
Garcia is a Bexar County sheriff's deputy who spent more than 20 years with the agency and served as its spokesperson before launching his campaign. A political newcomer, he called himself an 'old school' Democrat with more moderate views, and ran on a law-enforcement biography in a district the redraw was supposed to make safer for Republicans. De La Cruz, of Universal City, is a retired Air Force veteran and San Antonio business owner who billed himself as a conservative backer of the president and carried Donald Trump's endorsement. Both men were first-time candidates for Congress.
Source: Associated Press
The race ended with a phone call. According to Garcia's campaign, De La Cruz called and conceded, and Garcia posted on X: 'Carlos De La Cruz just called and conceded the race, and I thanked him for a hard fought campaign.' The concession closed a contest that had run through two rounds of voting: neither candidate had won a majority in the March primaries, De La Cruz beat state Rep. John Lujan — who had been endorsed by Governor Greg Abbott — in the Republican runoff in May, and Garcia won the Democratic nomination against Maureen Galindo.
Source: T-SPAN / Texas Tribune coverage
A double defeat for one family
Election night was doubly hard on the De La Cruz family. Carlos De La Cruz is the brother of U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, who was herself defeated on Tuesday in the neighbouring 15th District by Democrat Bobby Pulido (reported separately by this desk). Two members of the same family, running in two redrawn South Texas districts on the same night, both lost — a measure of how completely the region's expected Republican gains failed to arrive.
Source: T-SPAN / Texas Tribune coverage
San Antonio sits at the junction of Interstate 35 and Interstate 10 — two of the busiest freight corridors in North America — and South Texas is a working base for thousands of Punjabi and South Asian truck drivers running loads between Laredo's border crossings, Houston and the Midwest. A Democratic House majority, delivered by the vote of a San Antonio district, will shape the next two years of fights over trucking regulation, diesel costs, border-crossing delays and immigration enforcement that those drivers live with every week.
What happens next
Texas counties must canvass the vote and the state must certify it; with 97 percent of precincts already reporting in the AP count, the certified numbers may move slightly but are not expected to change the outcome. Garcia will be sworn in with the new Congress on January 3, 2027. Democrats are on track for at least 224 House seats and at least 53 Senate seats, according to States Newsroom's tally of AP calls, which puts Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in position to seek the speakership — and sets up two years in which a Democratic Congress faces a Republican president, with investigations, spending bills and immigration law all expected to become battlegrounds. Dozens of House races elsewhere were still uncalled on Wednesday morning, so the final size of the majority remains open.
For the 35th District itself, the practical change is representation: an open seat created by a redistricting meant to produce a Republican will instead send a Democratic former sheriff's spokesman to Washington, from a district whose voters were courted by both parties as the future of South Texas politics. The next test of that verdict comes quickly — the district's new lines remain in place, and both parties will treat Garcia's first term as the opening round of the 2028 fight for the same ground.