Texas Republicans to censure Gonzales over support for gay marriage, gun control legislation

The Republican Party of Texas is set to vote this weekend on whether to censure Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) over complaints that Gonzales has failed to uphold party values in Congress by voting with Democrats on issues like same-sex marriage and gun control.

The expected state party vote would follow a censure resolution approved earlier this month by the Medina County Republicans in south-central Texas that accuses Gonzales of acting in ways that are antithetical to the party’s value system.

“Congressman Tony Gonzales has demonstrated a pattern of action demonstrably opposed to the Principles of the Republican Party of Texas (RPT) Platform and the Legislative Priorities of the Republican Party of Texas,” the resolution reads.

The Medina County Republicans in the resolution said Gonzales has been a “poor representative” of his constituents, in part because he voted with Democrats last year to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which safeguards the right of same-sex and interracial couples to marry. President Biden signed the landmark legislation into law in December.

The Republican Party of Texas last year adopted a platform that recognizes homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice” and argues LGBTQ people are not entitled to legal protection from discrimination. The state party also opposes “all efforts to validate transgender identity,” according to its platform.

The Medina County Republicans’s censure resolution also accuses Gonzales of failing to uphold party values by breaking with Texas Republicans in the House to vote against the new GOP majority’s rules package and by voting in favor of a bipartisan gun control package during the last Congress that was introduced after a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, which is in Gonzales’s district.

Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the May 24 shooting.

Texas’s State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) is expected to vote Saturday on whether to censure Gonzales during its quarterly meeting in Austin, according to the San Antonio Report. The resolution will need the support of three-fifths of the committee’s 64 members to pass.

If the effort is successful, SREC members may choose to revoke “financial and other support” from Gonzales’s campaign, according to party rules, or publicly discourage Gonzales, whose term ends in 2025, from running for reelection as a Republican.

If the censure resolution passes and Gonzales decides to run for a second term, the SREC will be authorized to spend a portion of the state Republican party’s budget on “voter education” in Gonzales’s district, which includes republishing the original censure.

Gonzales’s office did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.