: Garza, who is seeking to unseat Joaquin Castro (twin brother of the former presidential hopeful Julian Castro), doesn’t fit the typical profile for a GOP candidate: He owns a San Antonio LGBTQ club, Pegasus, famous for its drag shows. But he told a conservative advocacy group, Texas Family Action, he is in “complete support of the Texas Republican Party platform” including “celebrating traditional marriage.” Garza’s announcement that he would run led some in the LGBTQ community to call for a boycott of his business. “Every time we spend our hard-earned dollars at Pegasus Nightclub, we are paying to support our oppression,”
said the group, Protest the Peg.
Big issue: He doesn’t like socialism. “Fight Socialism and Keep America Great” is one of 9 points on his barebones campaign issues page. An Austin podcaster, Abe Abdelhadi, a year ago pressed him over a good part of an hour about what he means by “socialism.” Abdelhadi got a little frustrated with Garza’s platform. “What is it going to include other than Joaquin [Castro] is a socialist, because honestly he’s not.” (Abdelhadi started the podcast telling Garza, “You’re sort of like a unicorn, you’re a gay Latino man running on the Republican ticket for Congress.” Garza corrected him: “I’m a Jewish gay Hispanic running for Congress.” Abdelhadi marveled at that fact, which he called “hilarious.”)
Backers: The Republican Jewish Coalition is not endorsing Garza. U.S. Impact, a conservative political action committee backing Indian Americans, is. It’s not clear why, but the Texas-based PAC has this slogan on its web page captioning photos of Trump meeting his Indian counterpart: “Howdy Modi.”
Odds: The district has never sent a Republican to Congress.
www.jta.org
