Eric Gay/AP Photo
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC), left, and U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) attend a campaign event on Wednesday in San Antonio.
SAN ANTONIO – The event began with a prayer. Pastor Raymond Bryant led the invocation: “Almighty God, our heavenly Father … We thank you for the work, the legacy of Henry Cuellar. We thank you for all that has been done to make a difference in our lives through him.”
The get-out-the-vote rally for Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) took place Wednesday afternoon in San Antonio, at the outdoor patio of a barbecue restaurant right off the highway. It was a typically muggy spring day in Texas, and a diverse, older crowd of 80 or so supporters had gathered to support Cuellar in advance of his upcoming runoff election, sipping cold beer under fans blasting cool mist.
On May 24th, Cuellar will once again face off against 28-year-old progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros in what is likely to be a close runoff. But Wednesday’s rally loomed in the shadow of the leaked Supreme Court opinion draft that not only overturns the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision but also the “right to privacy” itself, which props up several other Court decisions from gay marriage to contraception.
More from Isabelle Gius | Aden Choate
Since 2005, Cuellar has represented Texas’s 28th Congressional District, which serves a predominantly Hispanic voting base and extends from San Antonio to the U.S.-Mexico border. Just last month, a woman in his district was arrested and charged with murder over an alleged self-induced abortion. Before the charges were dropped, she spent three days in jail.
Cuellar was the only Democrat last year to vote against the Women’s Health Protection Act, a piece of legislation that would codify Roe and a woman’s constitutional right to choose. Yet, as the Prospect reported yesterday, he retains support from the upper echelons of the Democratic establishment, including at least three DCCC-approved political firms.
“Pelosi has endorsed me. Steny has endorsed me. Clyburn has endorsed me,” Cuellar bragged to the gathered crowd.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), the House majority whip, went one step further by joining Cuellar on the campaign trail. His remarks at the rally made clear that he doesn’t plan to rescind his endorsement or abandon his “good friend” this midterm election season.
“When people tell you that you got to agree on everything, I don’t agree with Henry Cuellar on everything,” Clyburn said, alluding to but never explicitly mentioning abortion.
After the event concluded, Clyburn told reporters, “A pro-life Democrat or an anti-abortion Republican, what’s more important? Because come November, that could very well be the choice.”
Isabelle Gius
Former congressional candidate Rick Treviño protests outside the rally in San Antonio.
Besides abortion, many things were left unsaid over the course of the 90-minute event, which saw a group of speakers take the stage and alternately address the crowd in English and Spanish. There was no mention of Cisneros, who has called on the Democratic leadership to rescind their endorsement of Cuellar after the leaked Supreme Court draft. Speakers treaded carefully in order to project the image of Democratic unity and focus on past successes.
“I thank you very much for sending Henry Cuellar [to D.C.]. I thank him. Because we have been very successful in getting Joe Biden’s issues across the finish line,” Clyburn continued.
In fact, Cuellar has systematically undermined President Biden’s agenda at almost every turn. He voted against the PRO Act, which would make it easier to join unions. As a member of the “Unbreakable Nine,” he demanded delinking the bipartisan infrastructure bill from the Build Back Better Act, which led to the demise of the social-spending package. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce ran ads on Facebook last year thanking him for that. More recently, he has criticized the administration for proposing to end the Title 42 policy at the border that has kept asylum seekers fleeing deprivation or violence out of the country.
Referencing the infrastructure bill, Clyburn praised Cuellar’s ability to “reach across the aisle.” State Rep. Barbara Gervin-Hawkins and several other speakers emphasized the importance of seniority and tenure as essential to bring necessary resources to the district. Clyburn twice repeated that “the first sign of a good education is good manners.”
Cuellar himself ended his speech by discussing earmarks that he had in the pipeline. “I don’t think you sent me to Washington to make political statements,” he said. “I want to deliver for our district.”
Outside of the event, a small group of protesters gathered. Rick Treviño, previously a progressive House candidate for Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, was the first to arrive, bearing signs calling out the hypocrisy of Democratic leadership and urging for the codification of Roe. Members of San Antonio DSA, including chapter secretary Justin Davidson, reiterated the messaging of a joint statement released Tuesday by his chapter as well as chapters in Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, that urged Clyburn to cancel his participation in the rally and rescind his endorsement of Cuellar.
Davidson views the Democratic Party’s decision to back Cuellar over Cisneros as rooted in Cisneros’s support for “progressive platforms that go against the American oligarchy, American capitalists, and American capital in general.”
“I was a Democrat,” Treviño explained. “I was the secretary of the Democratic Party here in Bexar County for a long time and I idealistically believed in this stuff. And then slowly but surely you realize that [Democratic Party leadership] actually don’t. Why else would one of the most powerful politicians in the Democratic Party be stumping for this guy?”
Treviño’s time in the Bexar County Democratic Party meant that many of the attendees and event organizers recognized him as they passed by, stopping to chat and say hello. Even the rally’s emcee, Manuel Medina, former party chair, waved over. Treviño called out to Medina as he approached the restaurant’s entrance: “You could say no right now, you don’t gotta go in.”
Isabelle Gius
Josey Garcia, candidate for Texas House District 124, addresses the rally.
Eventually, the progressives and democratic socialists were joined by a smaller group of pro-Trump protesters, who at first assumed that the others were fellow Republicans and asked about extra signs. Even once their political allegiances were revealed, the atmosphere was friendly. The left-wing protesters explained that Cuellar is pro-life and tried to convince the pro-Trump group that they have no real reason to oppose him. In fact, their signs endorsed positions that Cuellar himself has actually supported, from abortion to Title 42.
As the event neared its scheduled end, Josey Garcia, a retired U.S. Air Force combat veteran and mother of eight running for Texas House District 124, was called to the stage. She was the only speaker to mention abortion, the “elephant in the room.”
“I’m here to tell you that I will fight for your reproductive rights. I will fight for your families. And I will fight for our communities,” she said.
“They’re going to stab me for that,” she joked afterward.
Garcia views abortion as a health care issue that disproportionately impacts low-income women of color. Her perspective is informed by her experience in the foster care system, which revealed to her the insincerity of pro-life claims to care about protecting children. “Because if it was about the kids, the foster care system wouldn’t be where it’s at,” she said.
A group of older Black women supporting Cuellar echoed this sentiment. They’re hesitant to support a candidate like Cisneros, whom they don’t feel they know. Yet they’re worried about Cuellar’s stance on abortion, which is connected to his Catholic faith.
“Biden is Catholic,” one woman reminded. “And I know he’s not taking that position.”
One can’t help but wonder how they ended up at Wednesday’s rally, endorsing the only anti-abortion Democrat in the House.
“The opposition is always in support of something that will keep us minority and people of low income and women down,” explained Evelyn Harris, a San Antonio resident and former telecommunications advocate. “What else are they gonna want to take away?”
