U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Laredo) is narrowly leading 51.4% in a race to return for his 11th term in Congress representing Texas’ 28th Congressional District. He is running against Republican Jay Furman, who currently has 48.6% of the vote, according to AP.
In Bexar County, Cuellar has taken 56.3% to Furman’s 43.7% of the vote, with 150 of 302 voting centers reporting.
“A week from today, I’ll be back in Washington,” Cuellar said late Tuesday evening. “[We’ve] got a lot of work, but a lot of it depends on who the new president will be. If Harris gets elected, we’ll probably finish appropriations and other work that has to be done. If Trump wins, I think a lot of this will be passed till next year.”
Cuellar has long represented a South Texas district that includes the southeastern part of Bexar County, but recent legal troubles have dominated his re-election campaign.
The congressman was indicted in May for accepting foreign bribes and money laundering. Between 2014 and 2021, Cuellar and his wife Imelda Cuellar allegedly accepted $600,000 in bribes from two foreign entities, according to court documents: an oil and gas company wholly owned and controlled by the Government of Azerbaijan, and a bank headquartered in Mexico City.
In exchange for the bribes, Cuellar allegedly agreed to use his office to influence U.S. foreign policy and pressure officials to pass measures beneficial to the bank. If convicted, the Cuellars face prison time.
The allegations against Cuellar led the National Republic Congressional Committee, which had spent millions making the district a top priority in previous election cycles, to sit this one out, placing odds on Cuellar going to jail, rather than back to Washington, D.C.
Cuellar’s opponent Furman, a retired U.S. Navy commander, campaigned on “Plan Alamo,” which calls for closing the border and deporting all of the asylum-seeking migrants who arrived in the U.S. during the Biden Administration.
At a watch party downtown Tuesday evening, Furman’s campaign manager Rachel Trevino said the candidate had spent the day in Laredo addressing what she called “election irregularities” as Furman claims his name did not appear on the ballot at some Webb County polls.
Cuellar said Furman is using a voter fraud claim to excuse the loss.
“With all due respect to the retired commander, I think he needs to man up, and if he lost, he lost, and then take it from there,” he said.