Last year, musician Bobby Pulido tearfully announced that he’d be going on one final tour to celebrate more than 30 years as a Tejano icon. His reason for retiring? To trade concerts for a career in politics.
On Wednesday morning, Pulido confirms to Rolling Stone that he will be running as a Democrat in South Texas’ 15th congressional district, aiming to unseat incumbent Republican Monica De La Cruz. But in a district that has shifted red in recent years, in part due to gerrymandering, Pulido says he’s approaching his candidacy with a bipartisan mindset.
“Let’s be honest, this is the most conservative district in South Texas,” Pulido tells Rolling Stone. “I think you need to have a candidate that is tailor-made for the district in order to flip it. I don’t think a progressive will ever be able to flip this district — doesn’t matter how popular you are, it’s just not made that way.”
He puts it simply in his campaign video: “I’m not team red. I’m not team blue. South Texas, I’m team you.”
The 15th district spans more than 300 miles across South Texas, covering rural areas along the border where Pulido says many residents have felt disenfranchised and disconnected from the Democratic Party, but also upset with some aspects of the Trump administration’s approach to immigration and other issues. He says he isn’t afraid to go against the party line, centering his campaign on three issues: immigration, healthcare, and the economy.
On immigration, he says he opposes both Biden’s “open borders” approach and Donald Trump’s deportation push that has separated families. On the economy, he wants to champion working families by “investing in skills and apprenticeships, and creating high-wage jobs that keep our talent right here at home.” And on health care, Pulido admits he doesn’t have insurance himself, citing skyrocketing prices, and says he wants to put people ahead of Big Pharma.
“I really feel like the country’s off kilter right now. There’s a tremendous imbalance and I can either stay on the sidelines and be a guy with an opinion or I can actually attempt to do something that most people think is not doable, which is win in a heavily gerrymandered district,” Pulido says.
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For his campaign, Pulido is spotlighting his family values, Mexican American identity, and lifelong ties to South Texas as the son of immigrants who built a life in the community. He hopes to draw on both his cultural roots and the respect he’s earned over his storied music career to connect with voters and represent the region he feels deeply tied to on a national stage.
“I know it’s cliché because we heard the guy in the Oval Office say it — but I don’t have to do this,” Pulido says. “I don’t have nearly as much wealth as he does, but I would definitely take a financial hit if I were to win. And I’m OK with that because I really want to fight for South Texas — and for my kids’ future.”
The morning after a show in Mexico, Bobby Pulido sat down with Rolling Stone over a breakfast of huevos con jamón to explain why he’s running for Congress, his frustration with “phony capitalism,” and why he believes South Texas needs a candidate tailor-made for the district.
What do you say to the people who doubt your candidacy because of your background in music?
I don’t blame them. I have been incredibly careful not to mix politics with my career. I understand if somebody says, “What does he know? He’s a singer.” But that’s why you talk about the issues. And I will tell you this: If anybody that would judge me based on that, especially in the district, I would also just ask that you be fair and ask yourself the same question: If you voted for the guy that was a reality TV star, and if you voted for the woman that is now our congresswoman that was selling insurance out of a strip mall, did you ask her the same question? At the end of the day, I just ask for fairness and for an opportunity for people to listen to me talk about the issues.
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Why did you decide to run for office?
It has been a long time coming, to be honest with you. The very first time I thought about it was during the election of 2022. I traveled with Congressman Vicente Gonzalez and spent a day with him. I’m a big policy nerd. I’ve always been that way. And for me to get the chance to spend a day with a congressman on a campaign trail [changed everything.] His wife said, “Why don’t you consider running? You’d be awesome.” And I said, “Well, I always wanted to get into politics, but I love my life. My life’s good.” And she said, “Think about it.” And I did. I talked over with my wife later, and she said, “I haven’t seen you write a song lately, but you’re always keeping up with what’s going on.” And I said, “Yeah, that’s always been in my DNA.”
Why run in South Texas?
South Texas is something that I’ve been culturally very close to. I consider myself 100 percent South Texas, and I felt as long as they kept me in South Texas, I have a fighting chance, ’cause I do believe I represent the values of South Texas. But the question is, what am I going to do to help improve my kids’ chances of making it in the world? I sense them getting incredibly frustrated that even if they work hard, that dream is not attainable right now. The system that we have in place is not working. It’s phony capitalism. And I think it’s affecting the youth.
I want to get into policy and your district. I’m from California, but my family’s from Texas. Some family members turned toward MAGA and very anti-immigration. That shift is happening a lot with Latinos in Texas. How do you plan to appeal to them?
I ask a lot of questions. I think we have to be honest: We did not handle the border correctly. And I say we, being the Biden administration. It was not handled correctly. What created some resentment in the Mexican-American community is that a lot of the people who had parents who were undocumented crossed over, and they just had to figure life out. They didn’t get anything given to them. They had to go figure life out and make it work. Now, some Mexican Americans start feeling a little bit resentful when they see that other people cross the border who are not from Mexico, and declare political asylum.
I have a lot of friends and even family members who are border patrol agents who have felt very frustrated because they’re like, “I signed up to protect the border, not to be processing people. And that’s not what they signed up for.” The border patrol vote went really, really heavily towards Republicans.
It feels now like there’s only two sides: let them all in or kick them all out. And that’s not a policy. Right now, what the Trump administration is doing with immigration is using fear. But the problem with fear is fear doesn’t just affect the undocumented people from coming over here, but it’s also people with visas. You would think that we would have tons of border traffic from Mexico of people coming over to spend their money, but they are not. It’s affecting our local economy.
So what’s the solution?
Bipartisanship. Before the election, Republican Senator James Lankford from Oklahoma put forward a good bill — but Trump killed it, saying, “No, the elections are coming and we need to win.” They didn’t want to fix it. The solution is working across the aisle, but partisan tribalism gets in the way. And the problem with the Republican leadership right now is that there’s a swath of people who don’t want to fix this because, in their eyes, there are already too many Hispanics in the country.
Is it racism, in a way?
I’m going to be very careful about using that word or calling anybody that. But I won’t blame you if you use it, and I’m not saying the Republicans are all like that. I’m not saying that there is a segment that has that worldview, and they won’t accept the fact that we can have more Hispanics in the country. And that’s the problem that I have with some of them.
On the immigration front, a lot of Mexican music acts haven’t been able to get their visas as well.
I feel like it’s an attack on our people. My biggest problem is that they don’t even give them an excuse. They don’t even tell them, “You can’t come because of this. We’ve canceled your visa.” They just say, “We don’t owe you an explanation.” Now, that’s not right. What do they do to our economy when Julión Álvarez sells out Cowboy Stadium? How many people reserved hotels and got flights and just lost money? That’s not an attack on us? I absolutely think it is. Give us a reason. There’s no reason they’re just doing it.
If you win the Democratic primary, you’d be facing off against Monica De La Cruz, who is a Republican and took over a GOP district. Why would you be the right person then to face off against her if you win the primary?
Well, that’s a good question. I feel that I’ll be able to be the best person to face off against her because I have a very high name ID in the Latino community. This district is 11 counties and stretches almost 300 miles. That’s a lot of campaigning. I have the time to campaign. I have a grasp of the issues. I understand the people, their values, and their needs.
We have a lot of rural areas. I’m a rural guy. I feel like we have to make a better case as to why the Republicans are really leaving rural America in the dust. I know it goes contrary to what you might imagine, but rural hospitals are getting defunded by those budget cuts that my hopefully future opponent voted for. And what makes it even worse is that De La Cruz wrote a letter to the Speaker of the House just days before that vote saying, “Please don’t cut this because you’re going to hurt my people.” She’s acknowledging that it’s going to hurt her constituents and her people — and then voted for it.
You’re talking about the Big Beautiful Bill, no?
I am. And I don’t call it beautiful. For sure, it was big, but not beautiful. At the end of the day, if you have your loyalty to the party, it never serves the people, especially in this day and age; it is really dangerous.
Speaking of healthcare, what do you hope to bring to South Texas?
I don’t have health insurance. And I’m going to tell you something: most musicians in my field don’t have health insurance, unless they’re married to somebody who does. It’s too expensive. And the reality is, the people in office have sold us out. They have allowed these companies to prey on us. And it just bothers me that there’s no balance on them. It’s phony capitalism at its finest. The whole healthcare industry is just out of control, and not enough people speak out against it. And it’s hurting us. I have personally lost two people that I know who died because they didn’t have health insurance, and they felt a little sick, but they didn’t go to the doctor because they didn’t have health insurance.
On the economy: What are the biggest changes you think need to happen to help the future generation of South Texans?
If we stop selling ourselves out to these corporations, the people will be fine. We have a very fighty spirit down there. People down in the Rio Grande Valley don’t consider themselves poor; they consider themselves broke. And there’s a big distinction because when you’re broke, you’re always thinking, “I can still make it.” You have hope. And that’s been our spirit. But right now, I feel like that spirit has been broken, because we’re not even given a chance, and that’s the problem. The income disparity keeps getting larger and larger.
The people in power sit there, and they blame the poor people. But the people saying that are the ones who are really rich, who don’t pay their taxes and look for loopholes to get out of paying taxes. And then they dare to blame the middle class.
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What do you make of the political violence that has gone on in recent years, and in the last week?Look, it shouldn’t get lost on you that at the inauguration, the president had a bunch of these tech guys sitting behind him. Now, he who controls the algorithm controls the information that gets out to people. Who do you think the algorithm is working for? I’ll tell you, they’re using this to play us against each other and make it a left versus right thing. And it’s not. But that’s what people are conditioned to look at and see that way. And we’re getting played. We are living in dangerous times.