Brandon Herrera is confident Texas’ Congressional District 23 will stay red.
He’s so confident, in fact, that the prominent gun rights advocate known as “The AK Guy” doesn’t feel the need to move to the center heading into the November elections.
“People in the district just want somebody who can get the results. And I know I’m that person,” the Republican nominee for the district told Capital Tonight. “I think we’ve had enough of politicians that change who they are to try to get elected. I think we’ve seen that a million times before. We saw that with my predecessor. I think that’s the last thing we need.”
Herrera’s outlook is noteworthy. The congressional district he wants to represent had historically been a swing district but has grown solidly Republican in the last decade.
The political position recently belonged to former Rep. Tony Gonzales, a moderate Republican, who resigned last month following revelations of sexual misconduct with congressional and campaign employees.
Democrats have jumped on the congressional opening, trying to paint Herrera as too extreme for the district. Their candidate, Katy Padilla Stout, has seen a massive increase in fundraising since the March primary and is making a pitch to win over “moderate Republicans.”
Democrats have criticized Herrera for making light of the persecution of Jews by the Nazis on his YouTube channel and for comments he made calling himself an “honorary veteran” because he often thought about putting a gun in his mouth – an allusion to veteran suicides.
Herrera said those comments were taken out of context and made as jokes on his YouTube channel and podcasts.
“If you actually look at the broader context of anything I’ve said, I think the average person can figure out that I’m being misrepresented horribly,” he said.
But he added that he would talk differently if elected to Congress.
“There’s a time and a place for that side of things, and then there’s a time to get serious and focus on the issues,” Herrera said. “It’s the same way that, you know, there’s a different way between the way that you talk with your friends and the way you might talk in church or with your grandmother.”
Herrera said questions about his past comments “only get brought up by media types.” On the campaign trail, he said, voters want to talk about the price of gas, the lack of water in West Texas, the growing presence of data centers and how to stop a border wall going through Big Bend – an issue he supports despite being in favor of more border security.
“They’re worried about all the issues that actually impact us in Texas 23, and so that’s what I try to spend most of my time focusing on,” he said.
A border wall isn’t the only issue where his positions are at odds with President Donald Trump, whose campaign he worked for in 2016. Herrera also opposes what he calls “endless wars” where the U.S. has no clear national interest. He’s called for pulling out troops from Iraq and Syria.
As the war in Iran enters its third month, Herrera said he wants to prevent the Middle Eastern country from becoming a nuclear power but would not support a prolonged war there.
“If I was asked as whether or not I would be one of 435 people that would vote to go to war with Iran, my vote would be no,” he said.
Herrera is also a vocal proponent for loosening gun laws in the country. His more than 800-mile district includes cities that have seen two of the country’s biggest mass shootings in the last decade: El Paso, where 23 people were killed by a gunman at a Walmart, and Uvalde, where 21 children and two schoolteachers were shot at an elementary school.
Herrera said the issue has not harmed his election prospects and that internal numbers show him up by 20 points in Uvalde. On the campaign trail, Herrera has criticized the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, legislation that Gonzales and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn pushed for at the behest of some of the Uvalde victims’ families.
“What I don’t want to do is support knee-jerk legislation that doesn’t address the root cause. When something bad like this happens, everybody wants to do something,” he said. “I just want to make sure that the things we do actually protect children.”
The bill closed the so-called “boyfriend loophole,” which ensured that people convicted of domestic violence against a spouse or child could not purchase a gun. The bill also created a 10-day waiting period for first-time gun buyers under the age of 21 to help sellers identify disqualifying information. It helped fund red flag laws in states where such laws are legal, which wrought major conservative backlash.
Herrera opposes red flag laws – which Texas does not have – and has vowed to block them at the federal level. He also advocates for increased funding toward firearm training for staff at schools to protect against mass shootings.