When newly minted Rep. Monica De La Cruz came to Washington, in 2023, she was instantly famous for two firsts—De La Cruz was the first woman and first Republican ever elected to Congress from Texas’ solidly Democratic 15th congressional District.
De La Cruz’s oddly-shaped district—a narrow strip that includes Rio Grande Valley counties and McAllen, a town swamped by illegal immigration—was ready for a change. The porous border was a big factor. “The Democratic leadership never took time to listen to us,” De La Cruz tells Independent Women. “Our area had been under Democrat control for more than 100 years, but Democratic leaders would never go down there to find out what our community thought.
“In fact, when there was a high point in illegal immigration in 2019, they never came down to the border to talk to community members,” she continues. “They might go to the border to talk to officials, but never actual people who lived and worked in the community. So, they made up this narrative based on elitists in Washington D.C. who just thought massive illegal immigration was what Hispanics wanted, and boy, were they wrong.”
“The Democratic leadership never took time to listen to us,” De La Cruz tells Independent Women. “Our area had been under Democrat control for more than 100 years, but Democratic leaders would never go down there to find out what our community thought.”
There were other issues that moved the district into the conservative column. “I am in deep South Texas along the border, the Mexican-Texas border,” says De La Cruz. “The southernmost tip of my district, Hidalgo County, is 95% Hispanic, most first and second-generation Hispanics. So, we have a culture that believes in God first and then the importance of family. In fact, there are many families that have homes with multiple generations in the home. In addition, those that have migrated over here are very, very proud to be Americans, and proud of their cultural heritage.
“So that being said, in 2019, President Trump really highlighted how the movement against law enforcement and border patrol was coming to a height by the Democrat Party, and it was at that time that I really understood how those values of the Democrat Party did not align with my own and with those in South Texas, and what we started to see in 2020 was a Trump effect where Hispanics like myself said no more. The Democrat Party does not understand what Hispanic values are, they have moved so far from the beliefs that we have, which include border security, economic prosperity, and cultural conservatism. And it was the first time in 2020 that anyone of a successful business background like me had stood up and said I’m not a Democrat, I’m a Republican. The Democrat Party abandoned Hispanics like me a long time ago. And that’s when we really saw a shift in the Rio Grande Valley.”
Like most of her constituents, De La Cruz was a Democrat who grew up in an immigrant family. She studied marketing at the University of Texas, San Antonio. An entry in her bio says that she studied Spanish at the National Autonomous University (La UNAM) in Mexico. Didn’t she already speak Spanish? Her reply is revealing. “Well, I grew up in a very different time from today,” says the Congresswoman, 50. “Today, it’s widely accepted to speak Spanish, and I think sometimes it’s as they say de moda, or fashionable, it’s cool to speak Spanish. But when I was growing up, that wasn’t the case. My mother and father are bilingual, and they grew up in a time when speaking Spanish was not encouraged. In fact, I remember my mom telling me that as a young lady, she wanted me to only speak English so that I wouldn’t speak with an accent. She wanted me to learn English first.
“Growing up, I had a real longing to understand fluent Spanish. Now, of course, living on the border, we speak a dialect of Tex-Mex, so I could get along in a conversation very easily using Spanglish, and that is something that we speak in South Texas, and it’s very, very common, but I wanted to learn proper Spanish. I wanted to be fluent in my Spanish and understand my cultural roots, and that’s why I went to Mexico City and studied at La UNAM so that I could practice and learn more fluently reading and writing in Spanish.”
De La Cruz’s resume includes a stint working for Cartoon Network Latin America. “That was some of the most fun that I had in my young twenties, and now that I’m a mature adult, it’s fun to look back on those days,” she says.
“When I left Mexico City, I applied for an internship with Turner Entertainment, did the internship, and then fell into Cartoon Network. I launched all three Scooby movies, I launched Mike, Lu and Og, and Dexter’s Laboratory. It was so much fun, but the experience really, really sharpened my skills in marketing specifically and promotions, press releases, and reaching out to the community.
“And then on the TNT side, my job was to focus on contest winners—I took contest winners to the NBA games and made sure that their prizes were fulfilled. So, it was a fun time in my life, most definitely.”
“I’m from a blue-collar family, a little girl from a single-mom household, and my American dream was to own my own business, and so I did that.”
Monica always aspired to go into business, however. “I’m from a blue-collar family, a little girl from a single-mom household, and my American dream was to own my own business, and so I did that,” De La Cruz says. “I was married at the time, and we didn’t have money,” she recalls. “State Farm, the big insurance company, gave my first opportunity, and it was a way to be able to gently get into the insurance business and be supported by a big insurance company with all the tools that they have in place, but at the same time have that entrepreneurial spirit. I found that my background in cartoons, because I came from the Cartoon Network and TNT background, was important because at the end of the day, I was still marketing, I was still reaching people on an intimate level because we were learning about their family life. I was there when they had children, when they were married, when they were divorced, when someone passed away, and we were creating relationships in the business. And I loved my job. I loved being an insurance agent and helping people on a day-to-day basis. I had a State Farm agency for more than 15 years. I was in financial services and insurance for over 25 years. I have another business that has a portfolio of housing, residential housing, and single-dwelling residential housing.”
One thing this successful businesswoman hadn’t thought about was running for office. “If you speak to my friends and family,” she says, laughing, “they’ll tell you when I shared with them that I was going to run in late 2019, they were shocked. I had never imagined being in politics, let alone being a congresswoman.” But the border, the defund the police movement, and her discomfort at where the Democratic Party was going changed that, as did Donald Trump, whom she cites as an important inspiration.
De La Cruz’s first race was in 2020 when she took on District 15 incumbent Vincente Gonzalez. Although she lost, the three-point margin in an overwhelmingly Democratic district was enough to make national Republican leaders sit up and pay attention. When she ran a second time, in 2022, Donald Trump and then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy endorsed her. Because of redistricting, Gonzalez ran in a different district. Thus, De La Cruz would not face an incumbent this time. In the general election, De La Cruz won 80,869 votes against Democratic opponent Michelle Vallejo’s 67,913. Vallejo challenged her again this year. Although the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—the DCCC—invested heavily in Vallejo’s campaign as part of its “Red to Blue” program, De La Cruz won the rematch. She proudly reminds an interviewer that President-elect Donald Trump flipped every formerly Democratic district in the Rio Grande Valley this year.
De La Cruz’s first race was in 2020 when she took on District 15 incumbent Vincente Gonzalez. Although she lost, the three-point margin in an overwhelmingly Democratic district was enough to make national Republican leaders sit up and pay attention.
Monica has a son who is a senior in high school and a daughter who is a junior. She is proud of the work she did in her first term, including passing a law that will help track trafficking money, and is excited that she will be a member of the upcoming 119th Congress. “As a freshman,” she says modestly, “there is a learning curve. But now that we have a robust team, a team that has been with me for over a year, in fact, many of them have been with me for close to two years, in place. We understand the priorities for our community. One of the first priorities is, of course, successfully passing border security legislation. The second is securing water for our farmers and ranchers through the 1944 Water Treaty. We’re going to work very closely with the Trump administration to make sure that we include the 1944 Water Treaty in the USMCA (United States Mexico Canada Agreement) language. Those will be priorities for me, as well as of course supporting our small businesses and our communities with economic incentives through the tax package that we’re working on in the House.”
As for telling her story, “I love speaking out about my life,” she says. “I hope I am able to inspire somebody to fulfill their American dream. One of the greatest treasures that I have as a congresswoman is when I go out to a community, and I see a little girl or a little boy who comes up to me and says ‘I want to be just like you. I want to be a Congress member, or a business owner, or a teacher, or a doctor.’ When this happens, it brings me so much happiness that they’ve been inspired to reach that next level in their life.”