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You'll remember Flores from June of 2022 when she scored a historic upset victory in a heavily-Mexican south Texas district (CD-34) which had never before been won by anything other than a Democrat. The old version of the 34th district in which Flores won that 4-way special election 13 months ago was pretty much a tossup and had trended slightly to the right as of 2020. Special elections are always prone to fluke outcomes due to low turnout, but the flukes usually favor the left. This one didn't.

When a Democrat wins a fluke special election, the party normally goes all-in to see that the fluke outcome becomes the "new normal" outcome and they quite often succeed; examples abound in recent decades. A Republican who registers a win like that is rare enough and holding the seat for more than a few months is even rarer, so what happened in TX-34 last November was anything but a shock when Flores lost to a well-funded Democrat by 7½ points.

As to the facts about this area, the current version of the 34th district in which Flores lost the general election in November of 2022 was moved about 5 points to the left -- by Republicans -- in redistricting. That's why Democrat Vicente Gonzalez, who was the incumbent in the adjacent 15th district, packed up his carpetbag and slithered over to the new 34th. The new 15th district was moved 2 or 3 points to the right and the GOP did pick that one up last November and hopefully will be able to hold it in the future.

Texas has no party registration but the current 34th is probably somewhere around 2 to 1, or worse, in favor of Democrats. Some of those D's occasionally vote R (slightly more so now than in the past); most do not.

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Mayra Flores Texas U.S. House Historic upset Redistricting