An aide to Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas sent a text message to a coworker in April saying that she had an affair with the Republican congressman, according to the coworker who shared the text exchange with The New York Times.

The text message, first reported Tuesday by The San Antonio Express-News and then obtained Wednesday by the Times, has thrown Gonzales’ reelection fight into turmoil just as voters in Texas have begun casting primary ballots.

The aide who said she had the affair died by suicide five months after sending the text, when she lit herself on fire in the backyard of her home.

“I had affair with our boss and I’m fine,” the aide, Regina Ann Santos-Aviles, wrote April 27, referring to Gonzales, a married father of six.

Gonzales would not comment on allegations of an affair. Gonzales, who has at times broken with President Donald Trump but has the president’s endorsement, is locked in a tough primary fight with a challenger to his right, Brandon Herrera. Gonzales accused Herrera on Wednesday of being behind the release of the text message.

The staff member who received the text is no longer working for Gonzales. The former aide said in an interview Wednesday that he did not agree with Herrera’s hard-right politics, but decided to share screenshots of the text exchange with the Times because Santos-Aviles had been a friend and had been wronged by Gonzales.

Gonzales said in the statement Wednesday that Santos-Aviles had been a “kind soul who devoted her life to making the community a better place” but that he would not respond to the allegation of an affair.

“I am not going to engage in these personal smears,” Gonzales said, adding that he would instead “remain focused on helping President Trump secure the border and improve the lives of all Texans.”

But Wednesday evening, Bobby Barrera, an attorney for Santos-Aviles’ husband, Adrian Aviles, corroborated that Santos-Aviles confessed to her husband in June 2024 that she had been having an affair with Gonzales for about a month. Aviles had come home and noticed his wife was texting someone.

After he asked to see the phone, Barrera said he saw texts of Gonzales asking for a meeting with his wife and requesting photos of her.

“She made the admission that she was having an affair with Tony Gonzales,” Barrera said.

Barrera said she broke off the affair and lived apart from her husband. Marriage counseling failed. Santos-Aviles struggled mentally and felt ostracized at her work, the lawyer said. The night of her death, she told a friend that she wanted to harm herself and took a video of the incident.

“People started making phone calls, but by then it was too late,” he said. “It was terribly tragic.”

Gonzales, a third-term member of Congress, narrowly survived a challenge from Herrera in 2024. His sprawling border district, which stretches from the San Antonio area to just outside El Paso, was drawn to favor a Republican, but in a year when the political winds favor the Democrats, the district could now be in play.

After the Express-News’ reporting, the newspaper’s editorial board rescinded its endorsement of Gonzales on Wednesday, saying that it would make no recommendation of a candidate in the race.

Herrera, a hard-line gun-rights advocate and YouTuber known as the “AK guy,” seized on the publication of the text message and called on Gonzales to resign. He said that the allegation created a “tremendous potential catastrophe” for Republicans.

“If he prevails in the primary,” Herrera said of Gonzales in a statement, “Democrats will seize the opportunity to flip a reliable Republican seat blue.”

According to a screenshot of the text messages between Santos-Aviles and the former aide who spoke to the Times, Santos-Aviles appeared to mention a relationship with Gonzales in an attempt to reassure her coworker, who was worried about issues at work.

The former aide shared the messages with the Times and discussed his conversations with Santos-Aviles on the condition of anonymity out of concern for potential ramifications for his family in the small community around Uvalde, Texas.

The former aide, who is now a political operative based in Los Angeles with at least one Democratic client, said he was politically in the center. He said he voted for Trump in one election but for Kamala Harris in 2024.

He said he had been working in Gonzales’ district office alongside Santos-Aviles when she and Gonzales went to a cabin along the Frio River that belonged to the former aide’s family.

The former aide said the affair took place in May 2024, as Gonzales was preparing to run for reelection, but that it ended soon after, and Gonzales was rarely if ever in the district afterward.

Over the next several months, the former Gonzales aide said, Santos-Aviles became increasingly distraught. The two worked together for about two years and often traded text messages, he said.

On Sept. 13, Santos sustained burn injuries while alone at her home in Uvalde, which she shared with her husband and 8-year-old son. She was taken to the emergency room, where she later died.

The chief of the Uvalde Police Department, Homer E. Delgado, said after the death that no “foul play” was suspected and that Santos-Aviles had been “alone in her backyard when the fire began.”

The death drew immediate scrutiny, and the local medical examiner ultimately ruled it a suicide.

Gonzales responded to the rumors during an appearance at a festival hosted by The Texas Tribune in late November, saying, “The rumors are completely untruthful, and Regina’s family has asked for privacy.”

Some members of Santos-Aviles’ family had also dismissed the idea of an affair, though her mother described her daughter as having trouble in her marriage and said she had been distressed before her death.

“They were separated, but she was hoping to fix things,” her mother, Nora Gonzales, said of Santos-Aviles and her husband in a conversation with the Times in the fall. “She loved her son very much.”

Santos-Aviles’ husband declined to comment when reached Wednesday.

The president endorsed Gonzales in December on social media, after the rumors of an affair were already known in the district.

“He will not let you down!” Trump wrote.

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If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By J. David Goodman and Edgar Sandoval/ Eric Lee
c.2026 The New York Times Company