Jessica Cisneros

Based on Wikipedia: Jessica Cisneros

The 289-Vote Margin

In American politics, elections are often decided by thousands, sometimes millions of votes. But every so often, a race comes down to a margin so thin that it exposes the raw mechanics of democracy itself. In May 2022, in the scorching heat of a South Texas congressional runoff, Jessica Cisneros lost her bid for Congress by exactly 289 votes.

Two hundred eighty-nine people. Roughly the population of a single apartment building. The difference between one future for South Texas and another.

This was her second attempt. Two years earlier, she had lost to the same opponent by 1,700 votes. She was getting closer. And the story of why she kept running—and why she kept losing by such agonizingly small margins—tells us something important about the fault lines running through American politics today.

A Daughter of Immigration Law

Jessica Cisneros was born in Laredo, Texas, on May 24, 1993. Laredo sits right on the Rio Grande, directly across from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. It's one of America's largest border cities, a place where the abstract debates about immigration that happen in Washington feel intensely personal and immediate.

Before Cisneros was even born, her family's story was already shaped by immigration. Her parents emigrated from Mexico, crossing the border to seek medical care for her older sister. They would later become United States citizens through the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986—a sweeping law signed by President Ronald Reagan that granted amnesty to approximately three million undocumented immigrants. It remains one of the largest legalizations of immigrants in American history, and it's worth noting that it was a Republican president who signed it. Immigration politics looked very different in the 1980s.

Cisneros excelled academically. She was valedictorian of her graduating class at Early College High School in Laredo. She went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin, then a law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. Throughout her education, one subject kept pulling her attention: immigration law.

In 2014, while still a student, she got a chance to see how immigration policy was actually made. She landed an internship in Washington, D.C., in the office of her local congressman: Henry Cuellar.

This detail matters. The man she would later challenge twice for his seat was once her boss.

The Defender

After law school, Cisneros didn't take a lucrative job at a corporate firm. Instead, she went to work at Brooklyn Defender Services in New York, focusing on immigration law. For those unfamiliar with how public defense works: these are the lawyers who represent people who can't afford their own attorneys. In immigration cases, this often means representing people facing deportation—asylum seekers fleeing violence, families being separated, individuals caught in the grinding machinery of immigration enforcement.

The work is demanding and often heartbreaking. You're fighting against the full resources of the federal government on behalf of people who frequently have nothing. You lose more cases than you win. But for someone whose own family had once been immigrants seeking a better life, it was clearly meaningful work.

She might have stayed in New York, building a career in immigration defense. But then something unexpected happened.

An Advertisement and a Proposition

In 2019, a political organization called Justice Democrats placed an advertisement in a Laredo newspaper. They were looking for candidates—ordinary people willing to run for Congress on a progressive platform. Justice Democrats had burst onto the national scene the previous year when they helped elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York, unseating a powerful Democratic incumbent in a primary that shocked the political establishment.

Local community leaders in Laredo saw the ad and thought of Cisneros. Young. Brilliant. From the community. Passionate about immigration. They proposed her as a candidate.

This is how political careers sometimes begin—not through years of climbing party ladders or cultivating donors, but through a newspaper advertisement and a group of neighbors who believe in you.

Cisneros agreed to run. And she set her sights on the man who had once given her an internship: Henry Cuellar.

The Incumbent: Henry Cuellar

To understand why Cisneros challenged Cuellar, you need to understand what makes him unusual in today's Democratic Party.

Henry Cuellar has represented Texas's 28th congressional district since 2005. The district stretches along the Texas-Mexico border, covering a swath of predominantly Latino communities. In most ways, it's solid Democratic territory. But Cuellar himself is not a typical Democrat.

He's one of the most conservative members of the Democratic caucus. He's accepted campaign donations from the private prison industry—companies that operate the detention facilities where immigrants are held. This became particularly controversial during the Trump administration, when conditions at these facilities drew widespread criticism. He's also taken positions on abortion rights that put him at odds with most of his party. In fact, he's one of the last anti-abortion Democrats in Congress.

For progressives, Cuellar represents exactly what they want to change about the Democratic Party. For moderates and some local constituents, he represents pragmatic border politics—someone who understands the complexity of immigration issues in a way that national progressive activists, they argue, do not.

This tension—between a national progressive movement and local political realities—would define both of Cisneros's campaigns.

The First Campaign: 2020

In 2020, Cisneros ran on a platform that would have been considered radical just a few years earlier but was becoming increasingly mainstream among progressive Democrats. She supported Medicare for All—a single-payer healthcare system that would replace private insurance with a government program covering all Americans. She called for raising the federal minimum wage to fifteen dollars per hour.

She was endorsed by Justice Democrats, the group that had recruited her. Brand New Congress, a similar organization, also backed her campaign. These groups specialize in finding and supporting progressive challengers—particularly young, diverse candidates willing to take on entrenched incumbents.

If she had won, Cisneros would have made history. At twenty-six years old, she would have been the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

She didn't win. But she came remarkably close.

In the March 2020 Democratic primary, Cuellar defeated Cisneros by just 1,700 votes out of more than 70,000 cast. For a first-time candidate challenging a fifteen-year incumbent, it was an impressive showing. Close enough to suggest that with a little more time, a little more money, a little more organization, the outcome might be different.

The Return: 2022

In August 2021, Cisneros announced she would try again.

This time, she had more support. U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren endorsed her—two of the most prominent progressive voices in the country. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose own upset victory had inspired Cisneros's first run, threw her support behind the campaign.

Abortion rights groups rallied to her cause. NARAL Pro-Choice America (the National Abortion Rights Action League, now known as Reproductive Freedom for All) endorsed her. So did EMILY's List, a powerful political action committee dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women. The name "EMILY" stands for "Early Money Is Like Yeast"—it makes the dough rise, in fundraising parlance.

Labor unions joined the coalition. The Texas AFL-CIO—the state federation of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations—endorsed her. The Latino Victory Fund, which works to increase Latino political representation, backed her campaign.

The money followed the endorsements. According to Federal Election Commission reports, Cisneros raised $4.5 million total for the campaign. Cuellar raised $3.1 million. In the final weeks before the runoff, between April 1 and May 4, Cisneros raised $1.2 million compared to Cuellar's $352,000.

She was outpacing the incumbent. The momentum seemed to be on her side.

The Earthquake

Then came May 2, 2022.

Politico, the political news outlet, published something extraordinary: a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion. It showed that the Court's conservative majority was preparing to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that had established a constitutional right to abortion.

The draft was written by Justice Samuel Alito. It was unsparing. It didn't just limit Roe—it obliterated it, along with Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that had reaffirmed abortion rights.

The leak was unprecedented. The Supreme Court does not leak. Its deliberations are among the most closely guarded secrets in Washington. Yet here was a draft opinion that would reshape American life for millions of people, published for all to see before the Court was ready to announce it.

Suddenly, a congressional race in South Texas took on national significance. Here was Henry Cuellar—one of the only anti-abortion Democrats in Congress—facing a pro-choice challenger at exactly the moment when abortion rights appeared to be on the verge of collapse.

On May 4, Cisneros released a statement calling on Democratic Party leadership to withdraw their support from Cuellar. How could the party support an anti-abortion candidate at a moment like this?

Leadership did not withdraw their support.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi continued to back Cuellar. So did House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn. On May 12, Pelosi recorded robocalls supporting Cuellar's campaign.

This created a remarkable spectacle: the top Democrats in Congress were actively supporting an anti-abortion candidate against a pro-choice challenger, even as the Supreme Court was poised to end federal abortion protections. For progressives, it was a betrayal. For the party establishment, it was pragmatism—Cuellar was an incumbent, and you protect incumbents.

The Final Push

The March 1 primary had ended without a clear winner. Cuellar led, but he hadn't broken fifty percent, which Texas law requires to avoid a runoff. So Cisneros and Cuellar would face each other one more time, on May 24.

In the final days, outside money poured in. Women Vote!, the super PAC affiliated with EMILY's List, spent $526,000 on advertising to support Cisneros. Laphonza Butler, president of EMILY's List, issued a public statement criticizing Cuellar's positions on abortion.

Representative Pramila Jayapal endorsed Cisneros on May 19. Jayapal chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest ideological caucus in the House Democratic conference. "We must elect pro-choice candidates," she said.

May 24 arrived. Voters went to the polls in the Rio Grande Valley, in Laredo, in the small towns scattered across the district.

It was also Jessica Cisneros's twenty-ninth birthday.

The Count

Elections are usually called on election night. This one wasn't.

The race was too close. The margin too thin. Days passed as officials tabulated every vote, checked every count.

On June 3, ten days after the election, the counting concluded. Cuellar led by 281 votes.

Two hundred eighty-one votes, out of tens of thousands cast. Less than six-tenths of one percent.

Cisneros filed for a recount.

There was a certain irony here. Back in 2004, when Cuellar himself had won a razor-thin primary, he had faced a 145-vote deficit that led to a recount. At the time, Cuellar had said: "Until every eligible vote is accurately counted, the voters cannot be certain of the outcome of this election."

Now Cisneros echoed that sentiment: "With just under 0.6 percent of the vote symbolizing such stark differences for the future in South Texas, I owe it to our community to see this through to the end."

The recount changed almost nothing. On June 21, when it concluded, Cuellar's lead had grown by eight votes—to 289.

The Associated Press called the race. Cisneros conceded.

What the Margin Reveals

Two hundred eighty-nine votes is nothing and everything.

It's roughly the number of people who might live on a single city block. It's fewer people than attend many high school football games in Texas. If 145 people had changed their minds—less than a fraction of a percent of voters—the outcome would have flipped.

Yet those 289 votes determined who would represent a congressional district of roughly 760,000 people. They determined whether South Texas would send an anti-abortion Democrat or a pro-choice progressive to Congress at one of the most consequential moments for abortion rights in fifty years.

After the recount, Cisneros returned to her legal work. She had already joined Texas RioGrande Legal Aid in Laredo after the 2020 race, representing low-income clients who couldn't afford attorneys. She became a supervising attorney at RAICES—the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services—continuing the immigration work that had defined her career.

She has not ruled out running again. Given how close she came, twice, the question is not whether she could win—it's whether she chooses to try once more, and whether the political winds are favorable when she does.

The Larger Story

Jessica Cisneros's campaigns matter beyond the specific outcome in Texas's 28th district. They illuminate several tensions that define contemporary American politics.

First, there's the question of what the Democratic Party should be. Progressives like Cisneros believe the party needs to be bolder—to fight for universal healthcare, workers' rights, and uncompromising support for abortion access. The party establishment, represented by Pelosi and Clyburn's support for Cuellar, often prioritizes incumbency and electability, even when incumbents don't align with party positions.

Second, there's the complexity of border politics. Cuellar's continued success in a border district suggests that national progressive positions don't always translate to communities that live with immigration as a daily reality, not an abstract policy debate. Or perhaps it just suggests that incumbents have enormous advantages—name recognition, donor networks, party support—that are hard for any challenger to overcome.

Third, there's the pure mathematics of democracy. In close races, everything matters. Turnout, organization, weather, competing news events—any factor that shifts a few hundred votes can change history. Cisneros lost by 289 votes the same year that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. If those 289 voters had gone the other way, there would be one more pro-choice Democrat in Congress today.

The story of Jessica Cisneros is, in some ways, a story about the agonizing closeness of political change. About a young woman from a border town who came within a few hundred votes of Congress, twice. About the gap between momentum and victory, between coming close and winning.

Whether that gap ever closes remains to be seen.