Anti-abortion Democrat Henry Cuellar primary race is too close to call against progressive challenger

If Cuellar ultimately wins it would be a rebuke to progressive Democrats

Representative Henry Cuellar’s race against progressive primary challenger Jessica Cisneros in Texas’s 28th Congressional District is still close to call as of late Tuesday evening.

After 11pm ET, Mr Cuellar led Ms Cisneros by a little more than 1,206 votes in a district that encompasses numerous rural counties with large Hispanic populations.

Mr Cuellar is the sole anti-abortion member of the House Democratic Caucus and as such, progressives have tried to depose the congressman who represents many communities on the US-Mexico border. Last year, Mr Cuellar was the only Democrat to vote against the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified the protections in Roe v Wade.

But after Politico published a draft opinion by the Supreme Court indicating it is likely to overturn the 1973 decision that enshrined the right to terminate a pregnancy, Mr Cuellar cut an ad saying he opposed a “total ban on abortion”.

The district is also heavily Hispanic, with almost 79 per cent of its residents identifying as Hispanic or Latino, according to 2019 US Census numbers. In 2020, former president Donald Trump improved his margins in many of the heavily Hispanic counties in the Rio Grande Valley, such as Webb, Zapata, Duval and Jim Hogg County.

Immigration was also a major fault line in the race, as many Hispanics without college degrees work for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Mr Cuellar criticised Ms Cisneros for saying she wanted to cut the personnel for the department in half.

For her part, Ms Cisneros criticised Mr Cuellar, calling him “Trump’s favorite Democrat” and she earned support from progressive Democrats like New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who campaigned for her in San Antonio, but also Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Representatives Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Jamaal Bowman of New York.

Mr Cuellar, for his part, enjoyed support from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Whip James Clyburn, who campaigned for Mr Cuellar earlier this month.

“He is not pro-choice, but we didn't need him; we passed the bill with what we had,” Ms Pelosi said in a press conference earlier this month.

The race was also a referendum on Democrats’ doomed attempt to pass Build Back Better, their proposed social spending bill. Progressives like Ms Ocasio-Cortez wanted the bill to be passed in tandem with the bipartisan infrastructure bill whereas Mr Cuellar was part of a coterie of moderate House Democrats who wanted to pass the bipartisan bill on its own.

Last week, progressives likely knocked out Representative Kurt Schrader, who was part of the original nine Democrats alongside Mr Cuellar, when Jamie McLeod Skinner beat him in Oregon’s 5th district despite President Joe Biden supporting Mr Schrader.

Mr Cuellar also appeared to dodge a bullet after the FBI raided his home and office in January, although his lawyer stated the FBI was not investigating Mr Cuellar.