running for the U.S. House of Representatives from Texas’s 23rd Congressional District, would be the first Filipina-American in Congress and the first out member of the LGBTQ+ community elected to the body from the Lone Star State.“I’d be honored to be the first of those things, but it’s so much more important that I’m not the last of those things,” Jones tells The Advocate.As the district’s Democratic nominee two years ago, she came within a hair of achieving those firsts, finishing with 102,359 votes to incumbent Republican Will Hurd’s 103,285.
But Hurd, the House’s only Black Republican, isn’t seeking reelection. The district’s Republican primary went to a July runoff between Tony Gonzales and Raul Reyes Jr., and after weeks of counting.