Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) got caught texting his own staffer for a “sexy pic” and asking her “favorite position.” She texted back: “This is going too far boss.” She also wrote: “Please tell me you didn’t just hire me because I was hot.” Regina Santos-Aviles is dead now. She set herself on fire in Uvalde last September.

Gonzales went on stage at a Texas Tribune event two months later and called the affair “completely untruthful.” Her widower released the texts proving he lied. Oops.

Adrian Aviles — the widower — had already sent a group message to Gonzales’s entire congressional staff back in June 2024: he and his wife were divorcing “after my discovery of text messages and pictures, that she’s been having an affair on me with your boss Tony Gonzales for some time now.” Every person in that office knew what their boss was doing. Every single one.

And Gonzales looked right into a camera and denied it.

This is a United States congressman using his position to pressure a subordinate into a relationship she tried to end. “This is going too far boss” isn’t ambiguous. That’s a woman drawing a line and her superior ignoring it. She’s dead now and he’s running for reelection. These people are unbelievable.

Even Rep. Lauren Boebert — who once got handsy with her date at a Beetlejuice performance — called for Gonzales to resign. When Boebert is wagging her finger at you, you’ve fallen through the floor.

Now here’s what makes this story so much worse than a garden-variety congressional sex scandal. Gonzales was already the most hated Republican in his own district. He called his own voters “scumbags.” He voted for gun control — as the congressman representing Uvalde, where 21 people were murdered in a school shooting. He voted for Ukraine funding. The MAGA base has been sharpening their knives since 2024, when he beat Brandon Herrera by a pathetic 354 votes out of 30,000.

Herrera is “The AK Guy.” A gun rights YouTuber with 4 million subscribers. His brand is literally firearms, and he’s running against the Republican who voted for gun control in the Uvalde district. Someone in Hollywood couldn’t write this casting.

Primary night: Gonzales 43%, Herrera 42%. Nobody hit 50%. Runoff is May 26th.

Let’s do some math that Tony Gonzales probably doesn’t want anyone doing. In 2024 — before the affair, before the dead staffer, before the texts leaked — Gonzales won by 354 votes. That’s a 1.18% margin when his biggest liability was being a squish on guns and Ukraine. Now he’s the congressman who texted his employee for sexy pics, called the rumors a lie, and is unrepentant about her suicide. He lost 7 percentage points off his 2024 primary number just getting to the runoff. Where exactly does he find new voters between now and May?

He doesn’t. That’s the answer.

Here’s the pattern that nobody in the GOP establishment wants to talk about: Gonzales is the second Texas Republican to get demolished on the same primary night. Dan Crenshaw got wiped out the same evening. Two establishment guys, two Texas districts, same result. The base isn’t sending subtle messages anymore.

You know who figured this out twenty years ago? The Democrats. They pulled the same move on Iraq War hawks in 2006. Ask Joe Lieberman how that ended — he had to run as an independent just to keep his seat, and even then he was done within one cycle. The MAGA base is running the same purge on Ukraine hawks and gun control Republicans right now, except they’re doing it faster because candidates like Herrera don’t need the party’s blessing or its fundraising apparatus.

That’s the part the old consultants can’t wrap their heads around. Herrera has 4 million YouTube subscribers. He can raise money, mobilize voters, and run ads without ever placing a single phone call to the RNC or a super PAC. The traditional party infrastructure that used to protect vulnerable incumbents? Gonzales can have it. It won’t save him. There are currently a dozen House Republicans who voted for Ukraine aid and represent districts Trump won by double digits. Every one of them just watched what happened to Gonzales and Crenshaw. “Hey boss, how’s my primary looking?” is a question being asked in a lot of congressional offices this week.

Mark my words: at least two more establishment Republicans in similar districts will announce “retirements” before the end of summer rather than face embarrassing election losses. The donor class will call it “choosing to spend more time with family.” The rest of us will call it what it is — they saw the Gonzales texts and the Crenshaw margin and decided to get out before the base comes for them too.

Tony Gonzales is finished. But his political death isn’t just about one creep who couldn’t keep his hands off his female staffers. It’s the clearest signal yet that the old Republican playbook — vote with the Democrats when it’s convenient, rely on party infrastructure to survive your primary — is dead. Brandon Herrera doesn’t need the party. He’s got 4 million subscribers and the texts.

That’s the new math. And it doesn’t work out well for Tony.