In 2022, Michelle Vallejo campaigned for a South Texas district with endorsements from the Congressional Progressive Caucus and prominent politicians like Bernie Sanders, who went to South Texas to rally with her.
This time, there’s no sign of national progressive lawmakers on Vallejo’s campaign website or with her on the campaign trail. And Vallejo’s most prominent message is something most progressives in Congress have pushed against: Democrats need to get much tougher on the border.
“Our community is being overwhelmed by the chaos at the border, and it’s time to get serious,” she said in an ad released last month. “We’ve had enough talk. It’s time to secure the border.”
Vallejo lost to Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz by 9 points in 2022, in what’s considered one of the only competitive House seats in the state, with a Cook PVI of R+1.
She stood out for running a progressive campaign then, beating out the more moderate Democratic candidate in the primary — who had been endorsed by South Texas Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez — by only 35 votes.
Now, Vallejo is part of the Red to Blue Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee program, raking in lots of money and campaigning differently. Democrats appear to be banking on a more moderate campaign to take down De La Cruz, a Donald Trump-supporting conservative who doesn’t shy away from culture war issues.
“I see myself as a South Texas Democrat,” Vallejo said when asked if she still considers herself a progressive.
Vallejo’s focus reflects a shift happening nationally, as Democrats have tried to take up the border security mantle, pushing forward increasingly conservative immigration policies and proposals. But it also runs up against how progressives have positioned themselves in the party. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that “doing Trump impressions isn’t how we beat Trump,” referring to Biden’s executive order on asylum seekers.
Across the country, Democratic candidates in tight rematches are testing out whether a different approach to border security can help boost them this time around.
Vallejo did have border security as part of her platform in 2022, and her website back then did talk about the need for more investment for things like additional agents, but this time, it’s a much bigger part of her message.
“It’s important, especially as somebody who’s trying to represent a border district, that we take this issue very seriously,” Vallejo said. “In the time that Monica De La Cruz has been in office, she has chosen to play games with it over and over again.”
Some of her supporters from 2022 felt the change was so significant that they now don’t even recognize her.
“There was a lot of disappointment,” State Democratic Executive Committee representative and South Texan Jen Ramos told NOTUS of Vallejo’s ad. “That is not the tone she had taken.”
“I am supporting her to the extent that I can, but I think this is an opportunity to really not alienate the people who put you there, and I’d like to see her continue to stay faithful to what her messaging was and who she was as a candidate,” Ramos added.
De La Cruz’s campaign manager, Andrew Baughman, said Vallejo was flip-flopping in a statement to NOTUS.
“Her dishonesty and shifting positions are why even her own party struggles to take her seriously,” he said. “South Texans know that Vallejo is an extremist who is out of touch with this community, which is why they rejected her once and will do so again in November.”
Nationally, Democrats think Vallejo’s strategy is a win.
“The public is fed up with Republicans’ hypocritical rhetoric on the border. Democrats are going on the offense with a clear message to hold Republicans accountable for playing politics on border security and immigration — and it’s a message we’re seeing resonate with voters,” DCCC spokesperson Viet Shelton said.
While the ad she released has gotten criticism, she said she’s also gained support from people all over the political spectrum. “Something that I have been very, not just surprised, but it makes so much sense to me, is that people have been reaching out to me,” Vallejo told NOTUS.
Vallejo is far from the only Democrat going on “offense” on the border. In Arizona, Democrat Kirsten Engel pushed against Republican Rep. Juan Ciscomani’s border stances during an August debate, namely for not supporting the bipartisan border deal that failed.
Engel and Ciscomani’s race is another rematch; Engle lost by just over 1 point in 2022.
In 2022, Engel said Arizona did not have an immigration “crisis” when asked explicitly, but acknowledged the situation needed more resources. This run, she’s emphasized how important issues at the border are repeatedly, penning an op-ed that said “for far too long, southern Arizona has shouldered the brunt of our nation’s border crisis.”
Engel told NOTUS she didn’t feel her own campaign was shifting much from her last run, though she has said that the Biden administration was late to the issue. “I’ve been talking about border security consistently. I talked about it when I ran during the midterms. I’m talking about it now.”
“Maybe some Democrats are starting to shift their message nationally, what Kirsten Engel is doing is falling way short even on the messaging side of what this is, even more so on the actual action side of it,” Ciscomani told NOTUS. “She’s out of touch, doesn’t get it, and again, saying that she cares about the border versus actually offering some solutions, there’s a big difference there.”
In California, in a district that’s not really even that close to the border, another rematch between Democrat Will Rollins and Republican incumbent Ken Calvert is shaping into an immigration fight as well.
Rollins, who lost to Calvert in 2022 by just under 5 points, said he wanted to make border messaging part of his campaign this year because he “didn’t want to be defined by lies” from his opponent.
“While I do believe the border needs to be fixed, I also recognize that the far right has used this issue really effectively by trying to mislead voters and demonize migrants,” he said. “I think not enough of us on our side of the aisle have made, in my opinion, that point clearly enough, which is these people are completely full of shit. They have no intent of fixing the border, and they are using it cycle after cycle to try to win elections.”
Republicans haven’t changed their attacks that Democrats are soft on crime and soft on the border.
“Open borders Democrats like Rollins campaigning on border security is like an arsonist campaigning for fire chief,” Calvert campaign consultant Calvin Moore said in a statement.
“While Democrats struggle to rebrand their extremely progressive candidates who the voters already rejected, Republicans are united in securing the border, keeping border communities safe and reelecting Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz and Congressman Juan Ciscomani and Ken Calvert,” NRCC spokesperson Delanie Bomar said in a statement.
It’s hard to know how rematch candidates in House races usually fare because of frequently changing political factors and district lines in House races. They don’t usually fare well in statewide elections. While several Republican consultants acknowledged that these races would be close, they didn’t feel a focus on border messaging was all that big of a game changer.
“The tough part about rematches are the candidate who lost was pretty defined in the last election, probably in a negative way, otherwise they wouldn’t have lost. So by coming back again, they’ve got to undo all of that from previously,” California-based Republican consultant Matt Rexroad said.
But there are things in each candidate’s favor that could make a difference. Engel didn’t attract investment from the DCCC last cycle but did this time and has raised a lot more money. Rollins only had six months after the primary to adjust to targeting Calvert in 2022, and both he and Vallejo have had two years to reach out to the parts of their districts that didn’t know them as well last time.
“I’ve built relationships with people throughout our entire district, and really, it takes time and effort for that to be the case, and we haven’t stopped fighting,” Vallejo said. “County leaders, who are Republicans, have been calling me, have been reaching out to me, asking to sit down, because they are so frustrated and they are so upset and disappointed with Monica’s time and performance.”
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Casey Murray is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
Correction: Arizona Democrat Kirsten Engel has referred to the situation at the border as a “crisis” during her 2024 campaign.