Tony Gonzales

Tony Gonzales' (full name unavailable) (born c. 1980) is the incoming U.S. Representative for Texas's 23rd congressional district, the most competitive of the thirty-six districts in the state. It stretches from western San Antonio to eastern El Paso and encompasses the lower portion of the Texas Hill Country. Gonzales succeeds Moderate Republican Will Hurd; he ran with Hurd's endorsement, but his campaign positions were more conservative than than the record compiled since 2015 by Hurd.

Tony Gonzales
U.S. Representative for Texas' 23rd congressional district
Incumbent
Assumed office  January 3, 2021
Preceded by	Will Hurd
Spouse(s)	Angel Gonzales
Children	Christina, Jesus, Emmanuel, Daniel, Gabriel, and Izzy Gonzales
Residence	San Antonio, Texas
Alma mater	Georgetown University American Public University University of Southern Mississippi
Military Service
Service/branch	United States Navy
Years of service	1999-2019
Rank	Master Petty Officer Cryptologist
Battles/wars	Operation Iraqi Freedom War in Afghanistan

Background

Gonzales was reared in San Antonio, Devine, and Camp Wood Hills, Texas. He is a retired United States Navy cryptologist who worked in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the longstanding war in Afghanistan. For a time, he was a Department of Defense Legislative Fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. He has been an assistant professor at the University of Maryland system, for which he instructed counterterrorism, U.S. Government, and political science courses. Tony holds a graduate certificate in Legislative Studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., a master’s degree in International Relations from American Public University, an on-line institution based in Charles Town, West Virginia . He is studying for a Ph.D. at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in International Development with an emphasis on Security Studies and International Politics.

His Tony Gonzales Fourndation is a non-profit organization focused on the encouragement of growth and development in poor neighborhoods in San Antonio. The foundation seeks to unite local businesses with schools, and families. In 2018, Gonzales received a National Security Fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a non-profit, non-partisan Washington, D.C., institute focused on foreign policy and national security. He has been the community representative for the San Antonio Head Start Policy Council, for which he oversees a budget of $32.5 million devoted to early childhood development.

Gonzales and his wife, Angel, have six children: Christina, Jesus, Emmanuel, Daniel, Gabriel, and Izzy.

Political life

In his first venture in politics, Gonzales led a multi-candidate field in the primary election held on March 3, 2020. He won a July runoff with the second-placed candidate, Raul Reyes, a former United States Army officer from Del Rio by only nine votes. However, he ran surprisingly well in the general election against the liberal Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, an acolyte of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who had hoped to ride a "Blue wave" to victory. In 2018, Ortiz Jones lost to Hurd by some one thousand votes. Gonzales polled 147,496 votes (50.7 percent) to Ortiz Jones' 135,415 (46.5 percent), and 6,152 ballots for the Libertarian Party candidate.

Gonzales carried support from U.S. President Donald Trump, whom Hurd has often criticized on immigration issues, including the border wall with Mexico. Gonzales' third-place primary rival, conservative firebrand Alma Arredondo-Lynch, a dentist and rancher from Uvalde County who had lost the nomination to Hurd in 2018, campaigned on Gonzales' behalf.