The Texas Republican has said he will not resign despite disturbing revelations about his affair with a staffer who took her own life.
I pay a lot less attention to the scandals of semi-anonymous congressmen these days, for two reasons that are indirectly related to one another: (1) Congress doesn’t meaningfully legislate anymore, at least not in this Republican-led Congress under Donald Trump. (2) In the age of Trump, what even is scandal anymore? The Trump administration is rife with sex and corruption scandals — the Department of Homeland Security seemingly combines both right now — and the voters and media alike treat this as an afterthought. Some even resent having this pointed out to them, having learned to price it in as “the way things are nowadays.”
Maybe you think our current decline in ethical standards is a positive evolution. But if you detect a note of outrage in my tone, it’s because I despair at how quickly and seemingly permanently our cultural and political standards have been lowered, and how little comment it receives nowadays. We feel far too often like a “post-decency” nation.
This brings us to the repulsive, pathetic case of Tony Gonzales. Gonzales is the representative for Texas’s 23rd congressional district — essentially the vastness of West Texas minus El Paso. Once fiercely contested country, it swung solidly to the Republicans during the Biden era (and the peak of the border crisis), and has now been made into safe Republican territory after this year’s redistricting. Gonzales barely won his 2024 primary to MAGA challenger Brandon Herrera — who finished only 1 percent behind him in a runoff — and faces him once again in Tuesday’s primary race.
Gonzales, as the incumbent, currently boasts the endorsement of Trump. He has a track record in the district. He has a (political) reputation as a problem-solver type rather than a bomb thrower. Normally, I’d default to supporting him.
But alas, it would also seem to be the case that Tony Gonzales is a moral reprobate, a home-wrecking cad, and, were that not enough, also indirectly connected to the death of his staffer by suicide. This is such a sordid story that I almost regret discussing it, and in fact I invite you to fill yourself in on the details on your own time. Short version: Gonzales initiated an affair with a young aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, in May 2024. After her husband discovered the affair — the way most such affairs are discovered, by checking a spouse’s text history — he contacted Gonzales’s office directly, and separated from Santos-Aviles. The woman apparently suffered a self-abnegating decline, and in September 2025 she committed suicide in the most gruesome way possible — by dousing herself in gasoline and setting herself on fire.
A former Gonzales staffer knows where to put the blame: Per the New York Post story linked above, the staffer said, “You have to understand that the affair she had with Gonzales led to sharp mental decline. It led to drinking, medication use, and insecurities.” It seems like a tragic downward spiral, and while a stolidly impartial judge would note that she made her own mistakes, she is no longer alive to be judged.
Representative Gonzales is. The widower of Regina Santos-Aviles has been on the warpath ever since his estranged wife’s suicide and is releasing the text messages between her and Gonzales to the world. Dating back to May 2024, they depict a drunken boss sleazily demanding “sexy pics” from his staffer and lewdly discussing his favorite sex positions. “This is going too far boss,” Santos-Aviles replied at one point — although apparently at some later point they consummated their relationship.
In the wake of these revelations, Gonzales has firmly insisted he will not resign. Other House Republicans seem to believe he should reconsider: Tennessee Republican Tim Burchett, invoking his own wife and daughter, stood on the steps of the Capitol this morning and called for Gonzales’s resignation based on the revelations of the texts. He was joined by Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Lauren Boebert, and he will likely find more support elsewhere in the GOP caucus.
I suggest an easier solution: There is a primary on Tuesday in the state of Texas. (That, in fact, is why you’re hearing about this scandal right now — the news has its obvious subsurface rhythms.) Republican challenger Brandon Herrera might be a downgrade on Tony Gonzales as a legislator. But remember, Congress doesn’t legislate anyway. We can be fairly certain that he hasn’t been involved in anything this awful, however, and that’s enough of an upgrade for me.