Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) admitted Wednesday that he had an affair with a staff member in his congressional office, reversing months of public denials and confirming what his critics had long alleged. The confession came during a radio interview on "The Joe Pags Show," one day after Gonzales finished behind challenger Brandon Herrera in the Texas Republican primary.
Gonzales called the relationship a "lapse in judgment" and said he takes "full responsibility for those actions." He spent the rest of the interview pointing fingers everywhere else.
The woman at the center of the scandal, Regina Santos-Aviles, a regional district director in Gonzales's office, died in September 2025 after pouring gasoline on herself and setting herself on fire in the backyard of her Uvalde, Texas, home. She is not here to tell her side of the story. That fact should weigh on everything that follows.
The timing of the admission is difficult to read as anything other than strategic. With 99 percent of votes counted in Texas's 23rd Congressional District, Herrera led with 43.3 percent to Gonzales's 41.7 percent. A May 26 runoff looms. Only after the voters had already delivered their verdict did Gonzales find the clarity to confirm what he'd spent months dismissing, Breitbart noted.
Last fall, at a panel at the Texas Tribune Festival, Gonzales was unequivocal:
"The rumors are completely untruthful, and Regina's family has asked for privacy."
That statement was, by his own admission this week, a lie.
The story had been building for months. Messages published in February showed exchanges between Gonzales and Santos-Aviles, including texts the New York Post reported in which Gonzales wrote "[S]end me a sexy pic" and "What do you like, Anal?" Santos-Aviles responded that the conversation was going "too far."
The San Antonio Express-News reported that the two met privately at a rental cabin near Uvalde on at least two occasions in May 2024. When host Joe Pags asked Gonzales directly about the messages, Gonzales did not confirm or deny their authenticity. He said he would "let the investigation play out and share all the different details on it."
That's not how a man taking "full responsibility" talks.
Then there is the matter of Santos-Aviles's compensation. Her base quarterly salary rose from about $13,500 in late 2023 to roughly $17,000 in 2024. With bonuses and other compensation exceeding $4,000, her total earnings in 2024 reached nearly $73,000, roughly $19,000 more than the previous year.
Gonzales insisted the increases had nothing to do with the relationship. He told Pags:
"What they don't tell you is that pay raise was February of 2024, right, before all these alleged incidents occurred."
He described it as "a staff-wide pay increase" and called the bonuses "standard." He was emphatic that Santos-Aviles was never "reprimanded or rewarded in any form or fashion other than anyone else in the office."
Under House rules, members are prohibited from engaging in sexual relationships with staff they supervise. Whether the pay increases and the relationship overlapped, and whether the relationship constituted a misuse of the supervisory dynamic, is now the Ethics Committee's problem.
The House Ethics Committee announced on March 4 that it had voted to establish an investigative subcommittee to examine allegations that Gonzales may have engaged in sexual misconduct with an employee or provided special favors or privileges. The inquiry follows an earlier investigation by the Office of Congressional Conduct into allegations surrounding Gonzales and Santos-Aviles.
Gonzales claimed there were "no complaints of any issues whatsoever in any form or fashion" relayed to his office. He dismissed the broader allegations as "half-truths" and characterized the entire scandal as a "very coordinated attack" that was "intentional," driven by "power and money."
Perhaps the most striking element of Gonzales's interview was his claim that Santos-Aviles's estranged husband, Adrian Aviles, attempted to obtain $300,000 from him after her death. Gonzales characterized this as an attempt to "shake me down."
Bobby Barrera, Adrian Aviles's attorney, told CBS News the letter was a standard confidential settlement letter and accused Gonzales of "trying to play the victim."
A senior Republican lawmaker, quoted by Wall Street Journal Congress reporter Olivia Beavers, offered a blistering assessment:
"A total disaster. Tony Gonzales' video is textbook case of what NOT to do. He shows no contrition or empathy for his staffer who died, shows no sincerity to his constituents for lying, and actually attacks the widower and family of his dead staffer. And smears the widower as gay."
That's not a Democrat talking. That's a senior Republican member of Congress.
Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) issued a statement calling on Gonzales to step aside:
"Representative Gonzalez has done the right thing by admitting fault in having an affair. Now he needs to make the responsible choice, focus on his family, and stop his current reelection bid for his congressional seat."
Gonzales has repeatedly refused to resign. He now enters a runoff trailing Herrera, carrying an active ethics investigation, a shattered credibility, and the weight of a woman's death that he seems determined to make about himself.
Voters in TX-23 deserve a representative who tells them the truth before an election, not after one he lost. They'll get another chance on May 26.
