I used to have a crush on Bobby Pulido.
When I was a college student at the state university in Monterrey, Mexico, Pulido, then a rising Tejano music star, was inescapable. He was on the radio constantly, and his music played at every party and in the Tejano dance clubs I frequented back then.
Pulido belonged to a wave of Tex-Mex artists in the ’90s whose catalyst was none other than Selena Quintanilla Pérez. That so-called Golden Age of Tejano music also produced Emilio Navaira and La Mafia, acts as popular in Northern Mexico as in South Texas. To them, the border was less a line than a shared dance floor and stage.
Thirty years later, Pulido is 53, has two Latin Grammys, and is the Democratic nominee in Texas’s 15th Congressional District, a majority-Hispanic seat that Donald Trump carried by 18 points in 2024. The Cook Political Report just moved the race to a tossup and recent polls have him ahead of the Republican incumbent, Rep. Monica De La Cruz.
How Pulido got there is one of the most interesting stories in Democratic politics right now. In March, De La Cruz tried to belittle him: The race “isn’t about who you want performing at your niece’s quinceñera.” Pulido called the insult a badge of honor and issued an open call for invitations. Within a day, the campaign received almost 1,000 invitations. He has since played at least 75 quinceañeras, free, ending each one by dancing with the birthday girl and handing her a hat: “Make Quinceañeras Great Again.”
Call it a gimmick. But it’s also a lesson in showing up on the community’s terms rather than the party’s. Pulido’s political instincts are worth a listen: “We let the Republican Party literally run on God, family, and country,” he told The Latino Vote podcast in March. “And those things in the Hispanic culture resonate.” The quinceañera tour, in his telling, is identity politics done right. And he isn’t waiting for Trump to self-destruct. “Schadenfreude is not a strategy.”
Pulido, who studied political science in college before dropping out to sing full time, is a self-described conservative Democrat who personally opposes abortion but says the choice belongs to women and should stay legal. On immigration, he wants border security and legal status for people who are already here, and he faults both parties on the intractability of the issue.
That pitch may well work in the 15th, which has been called “masterfully gerrymandered” and runs from the border cities of McAllen and Edinburg north to the outskirts of San Antonio. Latinos, who polls suggest are souring on the GOP, make up roughly 75 percent of the citizen voting-age population.
And yet, part of me wishes Pulido had stayed on the musical stage.
To be clear, I’m not trying to gatekeep Congress. Anyone with the inclination should be free to run, and voters will ultimately judge them. My hesitation is more selfish. Congress is where heroes often go to become footnotes, or worse, tabloid headlines. Granted, Pulido wouldn’t be the first entertainer to make the leap, but few have excelled — the odds favor disappointment.
The drip has already started. NBC News reported that some of Pulido’s old Spanish-language tweets included racist and homophobic slurs. The Texas Tribune and others have reported that his former accordionist is a registered sex offender, convicted in 2014 of indecent sexual contact with an 8-year-old. Pulido’s campaign says he never knew and fired the man in 2021.
Pulido told Politico he’s apologized “for everything that I’ve ever joked about that offended anybody” and won’t keep relitigating every old post. Voters in the 15th will decide whether any of that is disqualifying. But I know which Bobby Pulido I want to remember: the one singing “La Rosa,” not some future one explaining himself to a disappointed voter.
This is an excerpt from ¡Mira!, a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Marcela García. Sign up to get ¡Mira! in your inbox each week.
Marcela García is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at marcela.garcia@globe.com. Follow her on X @marcela_elisa and on Instagram @marcela_elisa.