In key Texas state race, Rep. Cuellar’s sister throws in with Republicans against Democrat who beat her

A member of a powerful and embattled Democratic South Texas political family has thrown her weight behind the Republican candidate in a pivotal race for the state legislature.

This week, the campaign of former Uvalde mayor Don McLaughlin (R) — who is running for the key state legislative seat in a race that has drawn the interest of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) — published a campaign endorsement from an unlikely source: Rosie Cuellar, sister of recently-indicted conservative Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar.

In that ad, released on Thursday, Rosie Cuellar takes direct aim at Cecilia Castellano, who defeated her by more than 15 percentage points in the District 80 Democratic primary.

“Cecilia lied about my record as a judge and tax assessor and even called me a criminal — yet she’s the one under criminal investigation for election fraud,” Cuellar said.

The Hill has reached out to Castellano for comment. Cuellar was referring to the August search of Castellano’s offices by officials from the attorney general’s election fraud unit. Paxton has said the search and several others his office has conducted of Latino organizers were necessary to secure elections in the state, which he has claimed without evidence that Democrats are trying to steal by illegally registering millions of undocumented immigrants to vote.

Latino rights groups have called them an attempt at voter suppression .

The Cuellars are a powerful local family in South Texas with their own legal troubles. Henry Cuellar was indicted in May on charges of taking bribes from a Mexican bank and the Azerbaijani national oil company. He has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence.

Rosie Cuellar’s and the congressman’s brother, Sheriff Martin Cuellar of nearby Webb County, had his offices raided by the FBI in2023, though the sheriff told the public that he was not the target. Local officials told nonprofit newsroom NOTUS that the sheriff had used his staff and local officials as a private get-out-the-vote and fundraising team for the Cuellars. Martin Cuellar declined to comment on the NOTUS investigation.

As part of that investigation, NOTUS reported it had found that Rosie Cuellar was appointed and paid an undisclosed amount for “a judgeship for which she heard no cases, in a town with no courthouse.” Cuellar did not respond to these allegations.

In August, Paxton ordered searches of South Texas Democratic party organizers across three South Texas counties, including Frio and Atascosa County, which fall within District 80. That investigation originated in a complaint by the loser of a 2022 Democratic race in Frio County, according to The Texas Tribune .

The District 80 state House seat — which represents one of just a handful of true battleground districts in Texas— is a major target for both parties, who see it as essential to the success or failure of the conservative campaign for school vouchers, which Democrats and many rural Republicans depict as a back-door campaign to privatize the state’s public schools.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) repeatedly tried and failed to get vouchers passed n the 2023 legislative session, but was stymied by an unusual alliance of Democrats and rural Republicans representing districts where public schools are key pillars of the community.

In Texas’s brutally contentious Republican primaries and runoffs earlier this year, the state’s Republican leadership — Paxton, Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — targeted a slate of such conservative but anti-voucher Republicans, who they depicted, without evidence, as closet Democrats committed to open borders and general “wokeness.”

While this electoral purge was largely successful , passing vouchers will still depend on Republican pickups in a number of battleground seats — like the one McLaughlin and Castellano are vying for, which was recently vacated by retiring Democrat Tracy King.

In the bitter District 80 primary earlier this year, Cuellar sought to cast Castellano as an outsider from San Antonio and a fake Democrat. “She claims to be a Democrat but voted in the Republican primary when Greg Abbott ran,” Cuellar said in a May ad.

In her endorsement of the Republican for District 80, Cuellar echoed these attacks against her former opponent. Castellano, she said, had “attacked Democratic officials throughout district 80 — that’s why they’re not endorsing her.”

— Updated at 3:00 p.m.

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