Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales (TX-23) may have thought that his confession to an affair with his regional district director, Regina Santos-Aviles, her tragic suicide following said affair, and the suspension of his reelection campaign for his seat would be enough to quell the investigation into his perpetration of other alleged instances of sexual abuse.
Gonzales was wrong. The San Antonio Express-News, the same publication that first reported Gonzales' alleged (at that time) affair with Santos-Aviles and her suicide by self-immolation, has obtained more alleged texts from Gonzales' former 2020 political director. The staffer worked with Gonzales in his first campaign for Congress, four years prior to his misconduct with Santos-Aviles.
EXCLUSIVE: Regina Santos-Aviles wasn't the first staffer that Rep. Tony Gonzales asked for nude photos & sex.
— Bayliss Wagner (@baylisswagner) April 6, 2026
He sought a sexual relationship with his congressional campaign's political director in 2020— 4 years before his affair with Santos-Aviles.
🧵 pic.twitter.com/I6Lw8JJlk9
This former staffer requested not to be named, but wanted it out there that this wasn't Gonzales' first time at the rodeo. The alleged text interactions are quite telling and reflect a pattern of abuse, rather than the "lapse in judgment" Gonzales claimed led to his 2024 affair with Santos-Aviles.
The previously-unreported messages — and hundreds of others obtained by the San Antonio Express-News — show the congressman pursued a sexual relationship with a subordinate years before his 2024 affair with a married congressional staffer who later committed suicide.
As we all know, the 2020 elections were riddled with inconsistencies and fraught with tensions. Gonzales won the seat vacated by retiring moderate Republican Rep. Will Hurd. Around April 2020, was when the staffer said she first joined Gonzales’ campaign as a volunteer. In June of that year, when his campaign picked up steam, Gonzales formally hired her as his political director.
The staffer claimed that this is when the explicit banter and conversations started.
Late on a June night in 2020, amid a nail-biter of a GOP primary runoff, then-congressional candidate Tony Gonzales quickly turned a conversation with his campaign’s political director from casual to intimate.
Gonzales texted that she was a “smart girl" in response to frustrations she had expressed about dating. He used a diamond emoji to convey that she was special and shouldn't "settle."
Then, he asked when she normally went to sleep. Next, he asked what she would wear to bed.
Soon, it was “What kind of panties do you wear?”
Within hours, the married Navy veteran from San Antonio was asking for nude photos and describing how he wanted to have sex with her and have her "squeeze my balls."
At the end of the night, after she replied “Nope” to yet another request for a photo, he replied, “47 nos is about my limit.”
In a June 15, 2020, text, Gonzales allegedly wrote, "I know what I want and won’t stop until I get it.” The relentlessness he allegedly applied with this staffer, pressure to which she claims she did not give in, had also been employed against Santos-Aviles, with tragic results.
In the texts Gonzales sent Santos-Aviles in 2024, he repeatedly pushed her to send "sexy pics" and described his favorite sexual positions, then asked for an in-person meetup. He acknowledged the affair in a March 4 interview on "The Joe Pags Show,” a conservative talk show, calling the relationship a “mistake” and “a lapse in judgment.”
In the texts from 2020, Gonzales asked his campaign’s political director more than a dozen times to send nude photos over a period of three days, and persisted each time she declined. He pushed her to reveal more of herself after she sent two images that concealed most of her body.
Gonzales also attempted to initiate a sexual relationship over several weeks, the messages show. Though he twice met with the staffer at her home to discuss work, their relationship never became physical, according to the texts and an interview she gave to the Express-News.
Dive Deeper: After Admitting Affair With Staffer Who Died Tragically, Tony Gonzales Is Fighting for His Seat
Express-News did its due diligence to verify that the texts were sent from Gonzales' cell phone. The publication also dug into campaign finance filings to confirm that the staffer did indeed work for his campaign. It all tracks.
She said she decided to come forward with her own account after learning that Santos-Aviles, who ran Gonzales' regional district office in Uvalde, had died last September after setting herself on fire. (Gonzales has insisted his affair with Santos-Aviles played no role in her suicide, and police records show she told responding officers she did it because her husband had been unfaithful.)
“He obviously pursued, pursued, pursued her like he did with me,” the former campaign staffer told the Express-News. “I never took him serious… It wasn't until this poor girl died that I thought, ‘No, this guy is pure evil.’”
She added, “This behavior needs to stop.”
Once Gonzales won his House race, the staffer resigned soon after he took office in January 2021. According to Express-News, the staffer now volunteers for YouTube 2A advocate and businessman Brandon Herrera, who is the Republican Party-endorsed candidate for the TX-23 seat. As RedState reported, Gonzales had been forced into a runoff with Herrera after the March 3 Texas primary, before he decided to suspend his campaign altogether.
Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.
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