A campaign ad for Rep. Monica De La Cruz featured a South Texas deputy who had been fired from a prior sheriff’s office job after an internal probe concluded he sexually harassed two female colleagues. The endorsement spot cast Democrat Bobby Pulido as “anti-cop” and accused him of standing with criminals.
The New York Post reported that the ad identified Deputy Zachary Garcia of Goliad County and used his on-camera attack on Pulido. Campaign officials said they shot the spot in June and did not know the deputy’s employment backstory at the time. Public reports about that backstory surfaced in August.
The race is competitive. Cook Political Report has labeled the contest a toss-up. That raises the stakes of every endorsement, every personnel history, and every countercharge now flying between the campaigns.
Garcia previously worked at the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office. That office fired him last year after accusations that he harassed a female dispatcher, according to records later obtained by the Hawk’s Eye and described in the Post’s account.
While the two were in a relationship, records stated, Garcia had allegedly studied cellphone location data she shared with him, rode past her home while on duty, and called her repeatedly until she shut her phone off. The dispatcher ended the relationship on Aug. 30, 2025. Over a two-day period he allegedly placed some 20 calls to her.
GPS data showed a marked patrol unit waited outside her home for more than an hour on Aug. 31, 2025. There were no known calls for service in the area. Garcia later admitted making the repeated calls, including calls with blocked caller ID, and admitted waiting outside her residence while in uniform.
The same internal investigation also recorded a separate accusation from a female supervisor. She alleged that after she helped him with groceries, he invited her into his apartment and urged her to get closer and sniff his cologne. Garcia denied that claim. Wilson County concluded he committed sexual harassment against both the dispatcher and the supervisor.
No public criminal charges against Garcia arising from the Wilson County matter appear in the available account. The recorded consequence was employment termination after the internal findings.
Garcia now serves at the Goliad County Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff Roy Boyd defended him in statements to the Post and framed the scrutiny as political.
Boyd said Garcia has been a valued member of the office since 2018 and a deputy since 2022.
"Deputy Garcia has been a valued member of the Goliad County Sheriff’s Office since 2018 and has served as a deputy since 2022."
Boyd added that staff and local residents respect him. He then tied the criticism to Pulido and to activists he accused of doing Pulido’s bidding.
"[I]t is unfortunate that partisan activists are smearing a man who risks his life to protect our community at the behest of a corrupt celebrity who endangered it by bringing a child sex predator around children and families."
Boyd closed with a free-speech point and a show of institutional backing.
"We will not be intimidated, and we fully support Deputy Garcia’s First Amendment right to speak his mind."
Attempts to reach Garcia were unsuccessful.
De La Cruz campaign manager James Shook told the Post the congresswoman stands with officers who keep South Texas safe and that everything in the ad is true. He also turned the dispute back on Pulido’s associations.
"If Bobby Pulido doesn’t like cops calling him out for bringing a serial pedophile around little kids, then he shouldn’t have brought a serial pedophile around little kids."
That line refers to Frankie Caballero, Pulido’s former longtime bandmate. Caballero was convicted in 2014 of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl and served a four-year prison term. Prior Post reporting said Pulido later toured with him. Pulido’s campaign manager has said Pulido was never made aware of Caballero’s sex-offender registration and would never knowingly associate with anyone with that history, and extended sympathies to victims.
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Christian Martinez went further in comments to the Post, citing Pulido’s own past social media language about police.
Martinez said: “Bobby Pulido is a depraved scumbag who calls the law enforcement officers keeping Texans safe ‘abusive a******s.'”
He also called Pulido “a morally rotten fraud.” In a past social media post rendered in the reporting, Pulido wrote that half the officers he dealt with had been courteous, “even when ticketing me,” and that the others were “abusive a******s.”
Pulido’s side has disputed the characterizations aimed at him. His campaign has also aired its own attack material. A recent Pulido ad mentioned De La Cruz’s ex-husband, Juan Gabriel Hernandez.
Hernandez was charged in 2022 with assault of a peace officer or judge and with impeding breath or circulation. He pleaded guilty to the assault charge and received five years of community supervision. During the divorce fight, a temporary restraining order issued against De La Cruz. That order ended, and a court never substantiated the related claims. De La Cruz’s team objected to the ad’s use of that history.
Investigators and voters are left with parallel tracks that the campaigns now treat as fair game: an internal sheriff’s office misconduct finding that cost a deputy a prior job, a current sheriff’s public defense of that deputy’s right to speak, a convicted child sex offender in a candidate’s musical past, and a guilty plea by a congresswoman’s ex-husband on an assault charge. None of those threads is abstract in a toss-up South Texas race.
Authorities have not publicly described any new criminal case against Garcia tied to the Wilson County findings beyond the employment action already taken. Investigators and the public record have not filled in the full on-camera script of the De La Cruz ad beyond the reported attack lines calling Pulido “anti-cop” and accusing him of standing with criminals.
The campaigns have also not released a complete primary archive, in this account, of every Pulido social media post now being used as ammunition. Procedurally, the employment conclusion in Wilson County stands as an internal finding paired with a firing. Goliad County’s elected sheriff has chosen to retain and defend the deputy. Those are institutional decisions already on the table for voters to weigh.
James Shook’s bottom line for the De La Cruz campaign remains blunt: the congresswoman stands with the officers who keep South Texas safe, and the campaign says the ad’s content is true. Martinez’s NRCC line is harsher still toward Pulido. Boyd’s line is that his deputy will not be run off the air by activists.
In a district rated as a toss-up, personnel history is no longer a back-office HR file. It is campaign inventory. So is every old association, every old post, and every old court paper the other side can find.
When campaigns put badges on camera, voters get to ask who got fired, who got convicted, who got defended, and which institutions still mean what they say about law and order.
