TX-23: Gina Ortiz Jones Is Out to Make History in Texas

Gina Ortiz Jones came close to making history in the 2018 election, and she feels confident she’ll achieve that goal this year.

Jones, a lesbian running for the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, would be the first Filipina-American in Congress and the first out member of the LGBTQ+ community elected to the body from the Lone Star State.

“I’d be honored to be the first of those things, but it’s so much more important that I’m not the last of those things,” Jones tells The Advocate.

As the district’s Democratic nominee two years ago, she came within a hair of achieving those firsts, finishing with 102,359 votes to incumbent Republican Will Hurd’s 103,285. But Hurd, the House’s only Black Republican, isn’t seeking reelection. The district’s Republican primary went to a July runoff between Tony Gonzales and Raul Reyes Jr., and after weeks of counting and canvassing, it appears that Gonzales, a solid conservative backed by Donald Trump, has narrowly won the nomination.

Jones, however, isn’t focusing much on her prospective opponent. She’s more interested in getting the message out about she wants to accomplish for her district, which stretches from her hometown of San Antonio west to El Paso, covering a huge rural area as well as parts of both cities. It’s larger than 30 U.S. states, she notes.


https://www.advocate.com/politics/2020/7/29/gina-ortiz-jones-out-make-history-texas