Standing in a San Antonio barbecue joint, the speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, laid out a stark contrast between two congressional candidates in a sprawling West Texas border district. Voters could choose the “common sense” of the G.O.P. nominee, Brandon Herrera, he said, or the “crazy” positions of his Democratic opponent.
Until recently, however, establishment Republicans were trying to paint Mr. Herrera as the crazy one.
A self-described gun-rights absolutist and YouTuber known for his inflammatory humor, Mr. Herrera, 30, was initially opposed this year by both Mr. Johnson and President Trump as he challenged the district’s Republican incumbent, Tony Gonzales, for a second straight time. Mr. Gonzales and his allies spent millions painting Mr. Herrera as extreme, highlighting old videos in which he made wildly offensive jokes like saying that a Nazi-era submachine gun was “the original ghetto blaster” and “Hitler’s street sweeper.”
But after a sexual misconduct scandal forced Mr. Gonzales out of the race and then out of Congress this year, top Republicans quickly closed ranks around Mr. Herrera.
In an era where candidates’ online pasts are etched into the public record, Mr. Herrera’s rise is testing voters’ tolerance for comments, even those made in jest, that are beyond the pale of public acceptability.
It also underscores the anti-establishment energy coursing through both parties. As they wrestle for control of Congress, national leaders have jumped into shotgun marriages with outsider candidates — and those candidates, in turn, are welcoming help from an establishment they once attacked.
“After a brutal primary on all sides,” Mr. Herrera told reporters in San Antonio late last month, “the focus has to be bringing the party together.”
The district leans Republican — Mr. Trump carried it by 15 percentage points in 2024 — but Democrats believe Mr. Herrera’s polarizing nature could give their nominee, Katy Padilla Stout, a chance.
Mr. Herrera says he does not need to moderate, but since 2024, he has sought to broaden his appeal. That year, he ran largely on a pro-gun platform in the district, which hugs a long stretch of border and reaches from San Antonio to El Paso — and which includes Uvalde, the site of a school shooting in 2022 that killed 19 children and two teachers. This year, he has crisscrossed the district to host town halls on veterans’ benefits, water scarcity and guardrails for data centers.
His digital footprint continues to dog him. In the days before Mr. Johnson rallied for Mr. Herrera and held a fund-raiser for him, a video resurfaced of the YouTuber using crude, sexualized insults against a female gun-control activist in 2022.
But Mr. Herrera says that the voters he meets are far more concerned about gas and grocery costs than about his online archive.
“The only people who have ever cared about that are either in the media or in D.C.,” he said in an interview with The New York Times, adding, “As long as I can convince voters that I’m right on the issues, then I shouldn’t have any problem winning their vote in November.”
A Minefield of an Online Past
The comments by Mr. Herrera in the latest unearthed video are graphic and, Democrats hope, the kind of thing that could keep some Republican voters home in November.
In the video from July 2022, Mr. Herrera used crude language to insult Shannon Watts, who founded the gun-control group Moms Demand Action after the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.
Ms. Padilla Stout has sought to highlight the remarks. At a recent gathering of left-leaning women in the northern hills of San Antonio, she paused to ask if children were out of earshot before recounting what he had said.
“That is not the type of person you want making decisions for you and your children,” she said.
In the interview, Mr. Herrera waved off the comments as part of the comedic persona he assumes as a YouTuber. While he wouldn’t use the same language as a political candidate, he said, he’s not apologizing.
“I know the difference between the way that you speak in a comedy performance, so to speak, and the way that you speak in a political environment,” he said, adding: “I’ve always toed that line perfectly fine. What they’re going to do is they’re going to pretend jokes are policy, and they’re going to purposely pretend that they don’t know the difference.”
Ms. Padilla Stout has also pointed to a video of Mr. Herrera highlighting his ownership of a 1939 English edition of “Mein Kampf,” and has circulated clips of him joking about Nazi atrocities against Jews.
In the interview, Mr. Herrera vehemently denied that he was antisemitic, and said he owned an annotated copy of “Mein Kampf” as part of a historical book collection.
Yehuda Remer, a Second Amendment activist who has known Mr. Herrera for a decade and is Orthodox Jewish, said the idea that Mr. Herrera was a Nazi was preposterous.
“If Brandon was actually antisemitic, he wouldn’t have helped me along my journey, and continued to help me,” Mr. Remer said.
‘Much Calmer Than the Online Presence’
Originally from North Carolina, Mr. Herrera built up a base of more than four million subscribers with gun reviews, weapon tests and re-enactments of famous assassinations. He also created The AK Guy, a company that restores historical firearms, and other businesses. He moved to San Antonio in 2020.
The provocative humor that fueled his career also threatened his political rise.
During his Republican primary in 2024, the Republican Jewish Coalition, a pro-Israel group, spent millions to amplify an old joke by Mr. Herrera that made light of veterans who die by suicide.
“Fools like Brandon Herrera who mock veterans do not belong in Congress or Texas,” a narrator said in the ad.
(In an interview, he called the idea that he does not support veterans “a disingenuous lie,” and pointed to fund-raisers that he and his podcast co-hosts have held for veterans’ causes.)
Mr. Herrera has positioned himself as a conservative Republican, earning endorsements from members of the right-wing House Freedom Caucus.
He opposes aid to all foreign countries, including Israel, “while the U.S. is still in debt.” He is against all new restrictions on firearms, including red flag laws. He would also “like to see deportations ramp up a good bit, with a priority toward convicted criminals.”
While he is closely aligned with Mr. Trump, he has broken from the administration at times. He has lobbied against the federal government’s plans to build a border wall in Big Bend National Park.
Mr. Herrera has won the support of some previously skeptical Republicans, including Greg Brockhouse, a Republican consultant in San Antonio who worked on Mr. Gonzales’s campaigns.
Mr. Herrera is “much calmer than the online presence, much more thoughtful,” Mr. Brockhouse said in an interview. But he, along with some other Republicans, worries that Mr. Herrera has not done enough to court moderate voters.
“This ain’t a walk,” Mr. Brockhouse said. “And if anybody in Brandon Herrera’s team thinks it’s a walk, they’re going to lose.”
Do Democrats Have a Chance?
Ms. Padilla Stout said she decided to run to stop a gun influencer from representing Uvalde.
She has staked out center-left positions on immigration and public safety, despite Speaker Johnson’s claim that she supported “open borders” and abolishing prisons. Her family hunts and owns guns, she said, but she backs age and mental health checks.
House Democrats’ campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, recently added the district to its midterm target list, saying Mr. Herrera’s “disturbing history of extremism” had put it in play. Democrats also argue that the decision by Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, not to replace Mr. Gonzales — which has left the district unrepresented since April — signals Republican worries about keeping the seat.
“Why wouldn’t you call a special election?” Ms. Padilla Stout said at the July campaign event. “Because you’re scared you’re going to lose.” A spokesman for Mr. Abbott declined to comment on the governor’s reasoning.
But the campaign arm hasn’t yet put its money where its mouth is.
“I’m, like, in the most toxic relationship of my life” with the D.C.C.C., Ms. Padilla Stout, 41, said at the July campaign event. “I find myself thinking, ‘I don’t want your time and attention. I want your money!’”
The national party may have bigger fish to fry. Republican-led redistricting in Texas put Democrats on the defensive in three districts held by the party.
Some moderate Republicans who are on the fence about Ms. Padilla Stout say she appears to be to the left of what the district wants, while Mr. Herrera may be too far to the right.
Amy Posada, who was a congressional staff member for Mr. Gonzales from 2021 to 2022, said that if Ms. Padilla Stout could show her that she would work with Republicans, and hear out conservative voters, “she’s got my vote.”
