PERSON: Veronica Escobar

U.S. House of Representatives

Member of Congress

Veronica Escobar (born September 15, 1969) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for Texas’s 16th congressional district, based in El Paso, since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she served as an El Paso County commissioner from 2007 to 2011 and the El Paso county judge from 2011 until 2017.

Escobar is a native of El Paso, where she was born in 1969. She grew up near her family’s dairy farm with her parents and four brothers. Escobar attended Loretto Academy and Burges High School, before getting her bachelor’s degree at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) and her master’s degree from New York University.

Escobar worked as a nonprofit executive and as Raymond Caballero’s communications director when he was mayor of El Paso. When Caballero failed to get reelected, Escobar—along with Susie Byrd, attorney Steve Ortega and businessman Beto O’Rourke—considered entering public service; they started to discuss grassroots strategies with the goals of improving urban planning, creating a more diversified economy with more highly skilled jobs, as well as ending systemic corruption among city leadership.

Escobar was elected as El Paso County Commissioner in 2006 and as El Paso County Judge in 2010. O’Rourke, Byrd and Ortega also all ran for office and won; they came to be collectively referred to as “The Progressives.” She also taught English and Chicano literature at UTEP and El Paso Community College.

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