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Tony Gonzales
Ernest Anthony “Tony” Gonzales, II, born October 10, 1980 (age 41), is the current U.S. Representative for Texas's 23rd congressional district, the most politically competitive of the thirty-six districts in the state. It stretches from western San Antonio to eastern El Paso and encompasses the lower portion of the Texas Hill Country. Gonzales succeeds Moderate Republican Will Hurd; he ran with the endorsements of Hurd and several establishment Republicans, though his campaign positions were more conservative than than the record compiled since 2015 by Hurd. Contents[hide] BackgroundGonzales was reared in San Antonio, Devine, and Camp Wood Hills, Texas. He is a retired United States Navy cryptologist who worked in Operation Iraqi Freedom and the longstanding war in Afghanistan. For a time, he was a Department of Defense Legislative Fellow in the office of U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. He has been an assistant professor at the University of Maryland system, for which he instructed counterterrorism, U.S. Government, and political science courses. Tony holds a graduate certificate in Legislative Studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., a master’s degree in International Relations from American Public University, an on-line institution based in Charles Town, West Virginia. He is studying for a Ph.D. at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in International Development with an emphasis on Security Studies and International Politics.[1] His Tony Gonzales Fourndation is a non-profit organization focused on the encouragement of growth and development in poor neighborhoods in San Antonio. The foundation seeks to unite local businesses with schools, and families. In 2018, Gonzales received a National Security Fellow for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a non-profit, non-partisan Washington, D.C., institute focused on foreign policy and national security. He has been the community representative for the San Antonio Head Start Policy Council, for which he oversees a budget of $32.5 million devoted to early childhood development.[1] Gonzales and his wife, Angel, have six children: Christina, Jesus, Emmanuel, Daniel, Gabriel, and Izzy.[1] He is a Roman Catholic who has emphasized on the importance of his faith in God.[2] United States House of Representatives2020 electionIn his first venture in politics, Gonzales led a multi-candidate field in the primary election held on March 3, 2020. He won by only seven votes in a July runoff with the second-placed candidate, Raul Reyes, Jr., a retired United States Army officer from the border city of Del Rio in Val Verde County. However, Gonzales polled surprisingly well in the general election against the liberal Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, an acolyte of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who had hoped to ride a "Blue wave" to victory and is a staunch advocate of Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act. In 2018, Ortiz Jones lost to Hurd by 1,150 votes.[3] The congressional district went for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by a narrow three-point margin.[4] Gonzales carried support from U.S. President Donald Trump, whom Hurd has often criticized on immigration issues, including the border wall with Mexico. Gonzales' third-place primary rival, conservative firebrand Alma Arredondo-Lynch, a dentist and rancher from Uvalde County who had lost the nomination to Hurd in 2018, campaigned on Gonzales' behalf. In the final general election results, Gonzales polled 147,496 votes (50.7 percent) to Ortiz Jones' 135,415 (46.5 percent), and 6,152 ballots for the Libertarian Party candidate.[5] TenureGonzales abandoned Trump in early January 2021 over the certification of the electoral votes for Joe Biden, with his two first congressional votes being against the objections for the states of Arizona and Pennsylvania.[6][7] Gonzales said that his vote was in line with "states' rights."[Citation Needed] He was one of thirty-five Republicans to vote for the Partisan Hack resolution calling for an Investigation on Capital Hill.[8][9] References
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