AUSTIN (LifeSiteNews) – The Texas State Republican Executive Committee voted overwhelmingly over the weekend to censure U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, who represents the state’s 23rd congressional district in Congress, for taking several left-wing positions at odds with the Republican Party platform, including his support for same-sex “marriage.”
On the “Values” page of his campaign website, Gonzales presents himself as a typical Republican, “100% pro-life,” a “strong supporter of Americans’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms as well as a “staunch defender of Americans’ property rights [who] opposes efforts to stifle free speech.” But Just the News reports that members of his party in the Lone Star State disagree.
On Saturday, the executive committee voted 57-5 to pass a resolution censuring Gonzales for “actions taken during the current biennium in opposition to the core principles of the Republican Party of Texas.”
Chief among those actions was his voting in favor of the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, which formally requires all fifty states to recognize the same-sex “marriages” of other states, effectively codifying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, which most Republicans considered an act of judicial activism.
It next names Gonzales as the “only Republican in the United States to vote with the Democrats against the rules package presented by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his leadership team, thereby endangering the hard-won Republican majority control of Congress and the victories earned by conservative Congressmen.” That package included calling for the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, requiring all proposed legislation to identify a constitutional basis, allowing for a single member to make a motion to vacate the chair, and requiring increases in mandatory spending to be offset by spending cuts.
The resolution also faults Gonzales for opposing the Border Safety and Security Act of 2023 (and in the process “falsely stat[ing] that the legislation would ban ‘all asylum’ [… and] repeat[ing] the Democratic canard that supporters of border security are ‘anti-immigrant’”), and for supporting President Joe Biden’s “‘Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,’ which subsidizes red flag laws, imposes additional restrictions on otherwise legal owners of firearms, and expands background checks.”
“Contact with Congressman Tony Gonzales to meet with our CEC to answer questions on votes against the Republican Party of Texas Principles, Legislative Priorities and House Republican majority has gone unanswered” repeatedly, the resolution adds.
In censuring the lawmaker, the resolution declares that “[n]o Rule or Bylaw enacted by any division of the Party at any level that demands the Party be neutral in intraparty contests shall be observed with respect to Congressman Tony Gonzales, and no financial or other support shall be provided to his campaign by the Party except that which is required by law”; and that Gonzales “is discouraged from participating in the 2024 Republican Party Primary.”
Fox News reports that Gonzales replied with defiance, saying he does not regret any of the votes at issue.
“Today, like every day, Congressman Tony Gonzales went to work on behalf of the people of TX-23,” a spokesperson for the lawmaker said. “He talked to veterans, visited with Border Patrol agents and met constituents in a county he flipped from blue to red. The Republican Party of Texas would be wise to follow his lead and do some actual work.”
In November, Gonzales endorsed Donald Trump for reelection, the day after the former president announced his 2024 campaign.