Five years after winning Texas’s 23rd Congressional District as a Navy veteran and a rare Hispanic Republican voice representing a borderland district stretching from San Antonio to El Paso, Tony Gonzales resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives on April 15, 2026, effective at 11:59 p.m. ET, rather than face what was shaping up to be a historic and bipartisan expulsion vote.
The resignation, announced the evening before on social media with the words “There is a season for everything and God has a plan for us all,” came as the House Ethics Committee investigation into his conduct was accelerating and as members from both parties signaled they would vote to remove him. It came within an hour of California Democrat Eric Swalwell announcing his own resignation under separate sexual misconduct allegations, producing what CNN described as a stunning simultaneous moment of accountability from both sides of the aisle.
The Affair with a Congressional Aide and the Staffer Who Died by Suicide
The conduct that ended Gonzales’s congressional career began inside his own office. The House Ethics Committee formally launched an investigation in March 2026 into whether Gonzales had engaged in a sexual relationship with a former congressional aide, Regina Santos-Aviles, a relationship prohibited under House rules governing members and their staff. Gonzales initially denied wrongdoing, then reversed course. In an interview on a right-wing talk show, he acknowledged the affair and described it as “a lapse in judgment” and “a lack of faith.” He added that he “had absolutely nothing to do with her tragic passing,” a reference to Santos-Aviles’s death by suicide, which became central to how colleagues and the public understood the seriousness of what had occurred.
The Ethics Committee’s review also examined whether Gonzales had shown favoritism or abused his position in connection with the relationship, beyond the fact of the affair itself. Republican leadership, unwilling to absorb the political cost, called on him to withdraw from his reelection bid, which he did in March 2026. He had until that point insisted he would serve out his term.
A Second Former Staffer’s Allegations and the Text Messages That Accelerated His Departure
What changed the calculation was the publication by the San Antonio Express-News of text messages Gonzales had allegedly sent to the political director of his 2020 campaign, a woman who had worked on his first run for Congress. The messages, as published, showed Gonzales asking the staffer what kind of underwear she wore, repeatedly soliciting nude photos from her, and describing explicit sexual acts he wanted to perform. In response to one escalating message, the staffer had replied: “this is too far tony.”
Axios separately obtained copies of text messages from the staffer’s husband, who shared them with his attorney. The volume and specificity of the documented conduct shifted the internal Republican debate. Members who had been willing to tolerate Gonzales while he remained a reliable vote on Speaker Mike Johnson’s thin majority began to conclude that the political cost of keeping him was no longer worth bearing. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, one of the most vocal Republicans calling for Gonzales’s removal, had reportedly been coordinating a bipartisan expulsion push with Democratic members. Had he not resigned, he may have become the seventh member in American history to be expelled from the House.
What His Resignation Means for Texas’s 23rd District and the Republican Majority
The vacancy Gonzales created requires a special election under Texas law. Governor Greg Abbott has discretion over timing, though state law generally requires the election to fall on a uniform election date at least 36 days after the governor orders it. Democrat Katy Padilla Stout, who had been positioning herself for the race, said she would “absolutely” run. Republican nominee Brandon Herrera said he intended to compete for the seat, calling Gonzales’s conduct “heinous” while expressing regret that his actions had left the district without representation.
Republicans hold a razor-thin House majority, and the twin departures of Gonzales and Swalwell on the same evening created a brief window of uncertainty about whether the balance of power in the chamber could shift. The parallel nature of the resignations, a Republican and a Democrat falling within hours of each other, provided political cover for both parties but left the practical question of how quickly Texas and California would hold and certify their respective special elections unanswered. Speaker Johnson called both departures the appropriate outcome, suggesting the House’s informal pressure system had functioned as intended, even if the Ethics Committee process was cut short before it produced findings.
The Contradiction Between His Independent Reputation and How His Career Ended
Gonzales had built an unusual profile inside the House Republican conference. He was one of the few members to break with his party on gun legislation following the 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, a city that sits inside his district. That vote made him a target of primary challengers and drew sustained criticism from the conservative wing of the conference. He was re-elected in 2024 despite the opposition and continued to position himself as an independent voice on border issues, drawing on his own background and the demographics of a district that remained genuinely competitive.
The conduct now documented against him stands in stark contrast to that public positioning. The relationship with Santos-Aviles was not a lapse confined to a single moment. The second staffer’s allegations, the text messages from the 2020 campaign, and the pattern of behavior described across multiple accounts suggest conduct that persisted well into his time in office, running parallel to the independent-minded legislator image he cultivated for public consumption.
Conclusion
Tony Gonzales resigned not as an act of accountability but as an act of self-preservation, filing what he called his “retirement from office” hours before members from his own party and the opposing one were prepared to vote him out. The district he represented for five years will now hold a special election to replace him. The aide whose death became the center of the story is gone. The Ethics Committee investigation into the full scope of his conduct was closed by his departure before it produced a public finding. What remains is a resignation letter read into the House record by a clerk, a vacancy in a competitive Texas district, and a career that ended not with the independent reputation he had spent years building but with the conduct he had spent months denying.
