Jessica Cisneros is blunt about the stakes of her race. With the expectation that the Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade within a months time, another two years of Henry Cuellar, the last remaining antiabortion Democrat in Congress, could mean the difference between passing protections for women and not. “He could very much be the Joe Manchin of the House,” she said on a call with EMILY’s List, the national liberal group that promotes women candidates, Friday, in reference to the West Virginia Democrat’s vote with Republicans earlier this month against women’s reproductive rights bill that would have codified Roe.

On Tuesday, Cisneros, an immigration lawyer, will face Cuellar (who she incidentally interned for in 2014) for the second time in three months, in a runoff election for Texas’s 28th congressional district, which spans the suburbs of San Antonio, down to Texas’s border with Mexico. There are many reasons Cisneros, who has the backing of progressive lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is taking on Cuellar: He has an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association and has a tough-on-the-border stance on immigration (he recently attacked the Biden administration for pandering to “immigration activists”), in addition to being against abortion. He’s a Democrat that feels very out of the current national zeitgeist of the party. Yet he’s been able to fend off Cisneros’s attacks before; in 2020 she came within less than four points of forcing him to a runoff. But this election has taken a different, more urgent tone; Democrats face the possibility of losing the House and the Senate in the midterms just as major Democratic priorities—several of which Cuellar is at odds with his party over—come under attack. Democrats are hoping abortion access can galvanize voters and tip the scales toward candidates in favor of reproductive rights. Cisneros’s campaign may be an early test.

Cisneros’s first television ad in the runoffs attacked Cuellar’s record on reproductive rights. And that was before a draft of a Supreme Court decision overturning Roe leaked to the public on May 2. “In a time when we desperately need a pro-choice majority, he was the last Democrat to be an anti-choice holdout in the House,” she said in the Friday call. “Like many people across Texas women who may lose their ability to choose when to start a family, I fear for what this ultraconservative Supreme Court majority can do to our rights. At this critical juncture, Henry Cuellar stood with Texas Republicans, allowing the most draconian enforcement against abortions to come down and is taking away our reproductive freedom.” Cuellar’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Currently, Texas has some of the harshest antiabortion laws in the country. Under SB-8, which has been in effect since last September, abortions are banned after about six weeks of pregnancy and private citizens are deputized to sue anyone who “aids or abets” such abortions. With nearly half of states poised to ban or limit abortion should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, women across the country could see their access similarly stripped. “This near total ban has been in place for over eight months, forcing Texans to live in a post-Roe reality with devastating impacts,” Laphonza Butler, the president of EMILY’s List, said. “The Texas law and the similar ones Republicans are trying to pass in other states are extreme and wrong and will only get worse if we don’t change the people in charge.”

Somehow, Democratic leadership in the House continues to actively back Cuellar. Nancy Pelosi has reportedly been running robocalls in the district, calling Cueller a “fighter for hardworking families.” In a press conference this month, Pelosi defended Cuellar’s seat. When asked about a recent FBI raid on Cuellar’s home, Pelosi even—unprompted—brought up Cuellar’s antiabortion stance. “He is not pro-choice but we didn’t need him; we passed the bill with what we had,” the Speaker said. (Cuellar’s attorney has said Cuellar is not the target of an FBI investigation, though the Laredo Morning Times reported that the FBI would not officially clear him of any wrongdoing. Pelosi also said, “The FBI has said he’s not under investigation.”) Leadership’s position is in line with its previous approach to endorsements: Stick with the incumbents, the practices goes. Leadership, for instance, backed antiabortion incumbent Illinois congressman Dan Lipinski in his primary against Marie Newman. (Newman beat Lipinski and went on to win the general election.)

A number of Democrats have stepped off the party line and backed Cisneros, including—but not limited to—senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and representatives Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. With Roe v. Wade very much on the chopping block, in the aftermath of yet another potentially race-motivated shooting, they are making the case that these are not normal times. Notably, last week Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal—after previously stating that she would not wade into the race—endorsed Cisneros. “At a time when our reproductive freedoms are under attack by an extremist Supreme Court, we must elect pro-choice candidates that will fight to make sure abortion remains the law of the land. Jessica Cisneros embodies the kind of progressive we need in Congress,” the Washington progressive told Politico. Sanders was on the campaign trail with her on Friday.

That a number of high-profile Democrats have thrown their lot in with Cisneros is indicative of how out-of-step Cuellar’s stance is with the rest of his caucus. Again, he stands alone on the issue. Democratic strategist Rich Luchette, who previously served as a senior adviser to Congressman David Cicilline, told me. “We’ve seen incumbents—Kurt Schrader, for example—lose because their ideology is no longer in step with the makeup of their own district.”

But it remains an open question whether Cuellar is “in step” with Texas’s 28th District. The seat, according to the Cook Political Report, is favorable to Democrats by five percentage points but is a “potential primary loss.” Its primary electorate is also different from other Democratic-leaning districts. “You’ve got liberal Democrats and you’ve got very conservative Democrats and everything in between,” Harold Cook, a longtime Democratic strategist in Texas, told me. The median age is approximately 32 years old, 51% women make up the majority of the district, and it is 78% hispanic. “It’s not your typical district you might see in other parts of America where if a Democrat is voting in a primary, the overwhelming odds are that they’re gonna be liberal. That’s not the kind of place this is.”

Perhaps that’s why a number of progressive groups and Democratic lawmakers—the usual suspects to wade into primary races—have not jumped into the Cisneros–Cuellar runoff. For instance, a number who backed Newman in her bid against Lipinski—such as representatives Ro Khanna and Jan Schakowsky, senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker, among others—have clung to the sidelines. As one senior progressive staffer told me, “The energy around the House has been, in my opinion, a wait and see kind of thing. You don’t want to jump out there too quickly…. I think it’s a calculation of whether she can win or not. I think that's the question, is she too progressive for the district?” 

Still, it is hard to not think the national focus on abortion rights won’t swing in Cisneros’s favor. “The leaking out the Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade, it moves that issue to the very top of the list…the net political gain is going to be with pro-choice candidate because the anti-choice candidates are already voting in every election,” Cook said. “Is he a cat? Does he have all nine left or what?”