LAREDO, Texas — Rep. Henry Cuellar's final stretch before his Tuesday primary election wasn't one typically expected from a Democrat facing a challenge from the left.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which usually backs Republicans, endorsed the south Texas congressman earlier this month. Libre Initiative Action, a group backed by the conservative megadonor Koch family, also gave him its stamp of approval.
About a month before his March 3 election against immigration lawyer Jessica Cisneros, Cuellar broke from his party to vote against a labor reform bill. Despite a blossoming progressive movement in the state, the Democratic congressman said he still sees his area reflecting conservative views on a range of issues.
"My district. It's very simple," Cuellar told CNBC earlier this month when asked why he has opposed some of his party's proposals on topics from gun safety to labor rights and abortion.
The congressman's voting record has come under scrutiny from a liberal wing of the party intent on ousting several House incumbents they say have fallen out of step with Democrats in 2020.
The primary election in Texas' 28th District on Tuesday will likely determine who represents a Democratic-leaning seat that extends south from the San Antonio suburbs to a big stretch of the U.S. border with Mexico. Cisneros, endorsed by two of the leading candidates in the state's Democratic presidential primary in Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, hopes to pull an upset that would be a significant moment for the progressive movement in a changing Texas.
Cisneros, a former Cuellar intern, supports a single-payer "Medicare for All" system and a Green New Deal. She said she would have voted for the labor bill known as the PRO Act that Cuellar opposed.
She told CNBC that the congressman is "the one that's out of step with what the true values of south Texas are."
The primary has put powerful Democratic figures in opposing camps. Sanders has backed Cisneros as he leads polling averages in the 2020 Texas primary. He has tried to energize younger Latino voters to win the state.
Warren and former San Antonio Mayor and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro have supported Cisneros. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who works to protect incumbents, held a fundraiser with Cuellar in the border city of Laredo last weekend.
"We want this to be not only a victory, but a resounding victory for Henry Cuellar," Pelosi said, according to the Texas Tribune.
A trade hotbed
His congressional seat juts southwest from the eastern suburbs of San Antonio, past Sutherland Springs, where a gunman killed 26 people at a church in 2017. Drivers navigating the last flat stretch of the drive on Interstate 35 south to Laredo roll past gates to ranches, U.S. Customs and Border Protection vehicles and 18-wheelers hauling goods to and from Mexico. Driving north after a customs inspection point, drivers see a Cuellar campaign billboard.
The district is about three-quarters Hispanic or Latino, according to U.S. Census estimates.
Trade buzzes through Laredo, the largest inland port in the country. Retail trade and transportation and warehousing are among the district's largest employers. Still, it has a higher unemployment rate, 6.6%, than the U.S. as a whole. About 20% of families live in poverty.
Cuellar said "there are so many jobs here tied into trade." He added that businesspeople "always say we need predictability," but Trump "has been doing the reverse" by threatening to put tariffs and Mexico and withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Trump achieved a campaign goal earlier this year when Congress ratified the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, his update to the 1994 free-trade deal that helped to facilitate commerce between Mexico and the United States. Cuellar voted to pass it in the House last year.
Cisneros did not explicitly say whether she would have backed the version of USMCA that lawmakers passed, but noted that she was pleased Democrats appeared to listen to more labor voices when making changes to the Trump administration's original deal. She also said she would have pushed for tougher environmental standards in the deal.
Several Democrats cited climate change in voting against the agreement.
Dueling backgrounds
Cuellar is a known commodity in the 28th District after representing it for 15 years. Standing on the corner of a busy Laredo intersection on the first day of early voting this month, he waved at and bantered with drivers. "I want to be like you when I grow up!" he yelled at one constituent stopped at a light.
Cisneros, who moved back to the district after spending time in Brooklyn, N.Y., said she feels her message resonates better with people struggling in the district. The daughter of Mexican immigrants said locals were "looking for someone who was going to step up" against Cuellar after a long tenure.
Her strategy for winning may have to involve expanding the electorate to younger and more infrequent voters — something Sanders hopes to do at the same time at the presidential level.
"One can make the argument that we might be seeing the beginning of the progressive movement in Texas in some respects," said Jon Taylor, chair of the department of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
While progressive leaders have helped to fuel Cisneros, the U.S. Chamber and Koch endorsements underscore the support Cuellar has in the region's business community.
Jose Gonzalez, a customs broker in Laredo who said he employs 10 people, said Trump administration tariff policy disrupted trade in the city in recent years, making business unpredictable at times. He said he likes the revised trade deal and called Cuellar "a strong supporter of our community."
Gonzalez described himself as a political independent and said he likes some of Trump's policies. He added that he has voted for Cuellar in the past.
In recent years, the congressman has tried to balance the at times competing interests of his conservative track record and the state's politics. For instance, he championed a bill that aimed to fix flaws in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in response to the Sutherland Springs shooting.
Last year, he voted to pass a bill to tighten background checks.
Still, he argues against more drastic gun safety measures, saying "we just can't pick and choose amendments" to the Constitution. And even though he has disagreed with Pelosi on a range of issues, he sees her support as an acknowledgement that House Democrats need a variety of viewpoints in their caucus to hold a majority.
"Pelosi and these folks, they know where I stand on certain votes. ... Pelosi understands the way she becomes the speaker is to have progressives, moderates from different types of districts," he said.