Bobby Pulido, a Democratic congressional candidate in Texas' 15th District and a Latin Grammy-winning Tejano music artist, previously defended a graphic music video that depicted acts of sexual violence and murder. The resurfaced defense comes as Pulido challenges incumbent Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz in one of the country's most competitive congressional seats.
In 2016, Pulido defended Gerardo Ortiz's music video for "Fuiste Mía" (You were mine), which shows a singer enacting revenge on a cheating girlfriend. The video's narrative includes the singer shooting the lover, then handcuffing the woman, blindfolding her, groping her, placing her in a car trunk, and setting it on fire.
Pulido, at the time, called the video a matter of artistic direction, stating, "I've made videos with suggestive images; some have stayed, others have been edited, and still others were never used. That's the decision of the artist and their team."
Pulido's campaign has also faced scrutiny for other past actions and statements. These include posting links to explicit websites on his personal X account and a social media post that appeared to show him urinating on President Donald Trump's Hollywood Walk of Fame star. Pulido has characterized the former as an unavoidable consequence of using Twitter and described the latter as pouring water on the star as a joke.
Additionally, Pulido has been criticized for bringing a registered sex offender to a Texas middle school benefit concert in 2018, though he has denied knowledge of the associate's status at the time and dismissed the coverage as a "nothing story."
Regarding the music video defense, Pulido had previously argued that viewers had become accustomed to increasingly graphic content, drawing a comparison to people slowing down to observe car accidents. "Traffic doesn't flow because people slow down or even stop to see what happened; something similar happens with the regional Mexican genre when these kinds of incidents occur," he said.
Zach Kraft, a spokesperson for the Republican National Committee (RNC), criticized Pulido's past defenses, stating in a statement to Fox News Digital, "Bobby Pulido has spent his entire adult life defending perverts and predators while lashing out at members of law enforcement who keep Texans safe. He is a truly sick individual who is morally rotten."
The Pulido campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding his defense of the video and whether he had a track record of downplaying potentially problematic conduct. Pulido is best known for Tejano songs like "Desvelado" and "Se Murió de Amor," and has received multiple Latin Grammy Award nominations, winning Best Tejano Album in 2025 and 2022.
He filed to run for Texas' 15th District, a seat previously won by De La Cruz in 2024 with 57.1% of the vote over Democratic nominee Michelle Vallejo.