A text message obtained by the New York Post shows that Regina Santos-Aviles, a regional director for Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), admitted to having an affair with the congressman months before she doused herself in gasoline and set herself on fire in the backyard of her Uvalde, Texas, home.
Santos-Aviles, 35, a wife and mother of one, died of her injuries the following day, on Sept. 14, 2025. The text, sent to a colleague in the early morning hours of April 28, 2025, was blunt:
"I had [an] affair with our boss and I'm fine."
She was not fine. And the people around her knew it.
The affair was not a closely held secret. According to a former colleague who provided the text message screenshot to the Post, the relationship became known among Gonzales's staff during the spring of 2024. In May, Santos-Aviles' husband, Adrian Aviles, discovered text messages between Gonzales and his wife that confirmed the affair. He then texted a group of local staffers to expose it.
Santos-Aviles called the former colleague in tears after her husband's discovery. What followed was not accountability but distance. The former colleague told the Post that Gonzales "just avoided" Santos-Aviles after the spring of 2024, canceling meetings she had arranged and no longer having her accompany him on visits to Uvalde.
A former colleague told the San Antonio Express-News that Santos-Aviles "went from the number one employee in the office to nothing." Another recalled that she "talked about Tony every day."
By June 2025, the former staffer brought concerns about Santos-Aviles' mental well-being directly to Gonzales' district director, Jalen Falcon. Three months later, she was dead.
Gonzales has denied the affair repeatedly. In a November 2025 interview with KSAT, he called the reports "completely untruthful" and described the allegations as "people throwing rocks at me, saying I'm doing nasty things."
When the Post reached him for comment on the text message, his response pivoted hard to politics. Gonzales said he was "not going to engage in these personal smears and instead will remain focused on helping President Trump secure the border and improve the lives of all Texans."
He then aimed directly at Brandon Herrera, his primary rival in the March 3 GOP primary:
"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."
Notably, the Post report does not include any statement from Herrera. The accusation stands unaccompanied by evidence connecting Herrera to the story's publication.
Gonzales also offered words about his late aide:
"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."
Praising a woman's professional contributions while denying a relationship that multiple former staffers say was an open secret in the office is a difficult needle to thread. The text message makes it considerably more difficult.
In December, the Texas Attorney General's office under Ken Paxton moved to seal 911 calls, police reports, and video related to Santos-Aviles' death in response to media requests. The article does not specify whether any formal investigation into her death is ongoing, nor does it cite an official cause-of-death determination from a coroner or medical examiner.
Adrian Aviles, through his former attorney Javier Guerra, has expressed concern about his late wife's private records being released. Santos-Aviles' mother told the Post in October 2025 that reports of the affair were "completely false," adding, "I don't think it has any merit." Her denial specifically referenced accounts claiming the affair took place after Santos-Aviles had split from her husband, though the precise scope of what she was disputing remains ambiguous.
The sealing of records may protect a grieving family's privacy. It also, conveniently, removes from public scrutiny the details surrounding the death of a congressional aide whose own words now contradict her boss's public denials.
The timing of this story's emergence is impossible to ignore. Early voting in the March 3 GOP primary began the same day the Post published its report. Gonzales, who received President Trump's endorsement in December, is seeking a fourth House term representing Texas' 23rd Congressional District, a sprawling border district stretching across west Texas.
The San Antonio Express-News withdrew its endorsement of Gonzales in the primary, stating the congressman "has questions to answer."
One detail from the sourcing deserves mention: the former colleague who provided the text message screenshot has since moved to Los Angeles to work on Democratic campaigns. That doesn't invalidate the text message, which speaks for itself. But it is the context a reader deserves to have.
Gonzales wants this story to be about political opponents weaponizing a tragedy. His critics want it to be about a congressman who carried on an affair with a subordinate, discarded her professionally when it became inconvenient, and then denied it all after she died in the most horrific way imaginable.
What it actually is, at minimum, is a story about a 35-year-old woman who sent a four-in-the-morning text admitting to an affair with her boss, who was later described as deteriorating in the workplace while colleagues watched, and who ultimately took her own life in her backyard in Uvalde, Texas. A community that already knows what it looks like when institutions fail to protect people.
A woman is dead. The congressman says it's all smears. The text message says otherwise.
