A text message obtained by the New York Post shows that Regina Santos-Aviles, a 35-year-old regional director for Rep. Tony Gonzales, acknowledged having an affair with the Texas Republican congressman months before she covered herself in gasoline and set herself on fire in the backyard of her Uvalde home.
Santos-Aviles died of her injuries on September 14, 2025, one day after the immolation. She was a wife and mother of one.
The text, sent in the early morning hours of April 28, 2025, went to a colleague in the congressman's office. A screenshot provided to the Post captures the admission plainly:
"I had [an] affair with our boss and I'm fine."
Gonzales, who represents Texas's 23rd Congressional District, a sprawling stretch of west Texas bordering Mexico, has denied the affair. In a statement to the Post on Wednesday, the same day early voting opened for the March 3 GOP primary, he cast the story as a political hit job.
"It's shameful that Brandon Herrera is using a disgruntled former staffer to smear her memory and score political points, conveniently pushing this out the very day early voting started."
Herrera is Gonzales' primary rival in the upcoming race.
The primary source for much of the account is a former colleague of Santos-Aviles who has since left Gonzales' office and moved to Los Angeles, where this person now works on Democratic campaigns. That context matters. But the text message exists independent of their political trajectory.
According to this former colleague, the affair became known among staff during the 2024 election cycle. In May 2024, Santos-Aviles' husband, Adrian Aviles, discovered text messages between his wife and the congressman confirming the relationship. He then texted a group of local staffers to expose it. Santos-Aviles called a colleague in tears.
After the exposure, the dynamic in the office shifted. The former colleague told the San Antonio Express-News that Santos-Aviles "went from the number one employee in the office to nothing." The same source said she "talked about Tony every day."
In remarks to the Post on Wednesday, the former staffer said Gonzales "just avoided" Santos-Aviles after the spring of 2024, and that meetings she had arranged were canceled. The colleague described her unraveling as a "terrible thing that happened."
By June 2025, the former staffer said they went to Jalen Falcon, Gonzales' district director, with concerns about Santos-Aviles' mental well-being. Three months later, she was dead.
Gonzales has consistently rejected the allegations. In a November interview with KSAT, he characterized the accusations as baseless.
"In politics, you better have thick skin. I totally get that, but the rumors are completely untruthful."
His Wednesday statement to the Post also praised Santos-Aviles directly:
"Ms. Santos-Aviles was a kind soul who devoted her life to making the community a better place. Her efforts led to improvements in school safety, healthcare, and rural water like never before."
Santos-Aviles' mother, speaking to the Post in October after the Daily Mail first reported the purported affair, disputed the account as well. She said reports that the affair took place after her daughter split from Aviles were "completely false" and added, "I don't think it has any merit." Whether she was denying the affair entirely or only contesting the timeline remains unclear.
Meanwhile, the Texas Attorney General's office decided in December to seal the 911 calls, police reports, and other video related to Santos-Aviles' death in response to media requests. The legal basis for that decision has not been publicly detailed. Adrian Aviles, through his former attorney Javier Guerra, expressed concern about his late wife's private records being released.
The sealing of those records means that whatever investigators found, whatever Santos-Aviles may have said or written before her death, remains out of public view. Whether that protects a grieving family's privacy or shields a sitting congressman from scrutiny depends entirely on what those records contain.
The timing of this story is impossible to separate from the primary. Gonzales knows it, which is why his statement names Brandon Herrera explicitly and frames the reporting as election interference. That framing is convenient, but it doesn't answer the question the text message raises.
President Trump endorsed Gonzales in December for re-election to a fourth House term. The San Antonio Express-News, for its part, withdrew its endorsement of Gonzales in the March 3 primary, saying the congressman "has questions to answer."
The former colleague, now working for Democrats, told the Post on Wednesday that Gonzales' team is in damage control mode: "They're trying to contain all this."
Conservatives rightly hold their own to account when the facts demand it. That's not a weakness. It's what distinguishes principled governance from tribal loyalty. The question here isn't whether Gonzales' political opponents are trying to weaponize a tragedy. Of course they are. The question is whether the underlying facts warrant serious answers from the congressman himself, answers that go beyond accusing rivals of "personal smears."
Strip away the primary calendar, the opposition research, the sealed records, and the political maneuvering. A 35-year-old mother walked into her backyard in Uvalde, Texas, doused herself in gasoline, and struck a flame. She died the next day.
No article has established a direct causal link between the alleged affair and her death. The source material doesn't draw that line explicitly, and neither should anyone else without evidence. But the trajectory described by those who knew her, from trusted staffer to sidelined employee to a woman whose colleagues feared for her mental health, is a trajectory that someone in leadership should have interrupted.
The former colleague says they raised concerns to Gonzales' district director in June. Santos-Aviles was dead by September. Whether anyone acted on those concerns, or whether they were absorbed into the same institutional silence that now surrounds the sealed records, is a question that deserves more than a campaign statement.
Regina Santos-Aviles cannot speak for herself. The text message she sent at an early hour on an April morning speaks only to a single fact. Everything else, the why, the what-could-have-been, the accountability, remains locked behind sealed files and careful press statements.
Uvalde has buried enough.
