The departing consultants were Chris Cantu, a data specialist; Andrew Kovach, a digital marketing consultant; and Bert Santibañez, a field organizing expert, according to two people familiar with their exit. All three Democratic consultants are based in San Antonio, and Cuellar’s progressive challenger, , heavily outperformed him in 2020 in Bexar County, the part of Texas’ 28th Congressional District where San Antonio is located.
“We have a top-tier team on the ground, and our campaign has run an unprecedented outreach effort for the 28th Congressional District,” Sonneman said in a statement. “We are confident and ready to turn out our supporters with thousands of phone calls and door knocks between now and Election Day.”
The FBI on Cuellar’s home in Laredo as part of an effort to seek information about the congressman and his wife’s transactions with businesspeople and foreign officials from the oil-rich central Asian nation of Azerbaijan. It is unclear whether Cuellar and his wife are targets of the investigation; federal authorities have not brought charges against them.
Cisneros, who was recruited by the left-wing group Justice Democrats, is running on a now-standard array of progressive positions, including Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, student debt cancellation and aggressive immigration reforms. Cisneros surprised poll watchers in 2020 with an unexpectedly competitive bid that brought her within 4 percentage points of unseating Cuellar.
Cisneros’ second effort to unseat Cuellar, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, reflects progressives’ belief that a Democratic-leaning seat should be represented by someone closer to the views of President Joe Biden, let alone a left-wing lawmaker like Ocasio-Cortez. Among other breaks with party orthodoxy, Cuellar opposes abortion rights and legislation to make it easier to form labor unions.
Still, Cuellar and his allies maintain that following a 2020 election cycle in which Democrats lost ground in South Texas’ heavily Latino border counties, a conservative Democrat is the safest bet to keep Texas’ 28th in Democratic hands. In 2020, Biden bested then-President Donald Trump in the district by 4 percentage points ― a marked decline from 2016, when Hillary Clinton beat Trump in the district by nearly 20 points.
This content was originally published here.