Bobby Pulido, the Tejano musician and Democratic nominee for Texas's 15th Congressional District, has given shifting stories and conflicting information surrounding his child molester bandmate, casting doubt on his claims that he didn't know of the man's sex crimes.
Pulido has faced intense questions about his relationship with accordionist Frankie Caballero after the New York Post reported in April that he toured for years alongside the registered sex offender, including just a few months after Caballero was freed from prison for molesting an eight-year-old girl. Pulido has said he didn't know Caballero had a criminal history. He more recently acknowledged he knew Caballero was jailed but was not aware of his most heinous crimes.
It's the sort of shifting story Pulido has offered for decades when discussing Caballero, who, before facing the child molestation charges, walked free of a sexual assault charge thanks to Pulido's great-uncle, Rene Guerra, a former district attorney in South Texas.
Pulido said in 2019 he helped Caballero get "out of jail" in the mid-'90s, then said he didn't know his accordionist had a criminal history. Over the summer, Pulido said he was only aware of Caballero's drug problems, only to later say he also knew Caballero had done jail time for transporting an illegal alien and had "violated a lot of his paroles." Pulido said he first fired Caballero in 1996 for drug abuse, but his albums list Caballero as a contributor through 1999. And Pulido's management team said it fired Caballero again after learning of a 2020 domestic violence charge against him, but Caballero kept playing with the band for more than a year after the arrest. His January 2021 booking for the crime, meanwhile, listed a violation of his sex offender registry and another child molestation charge, calling into question whether Pulido had learned of Caballero's sex pest past five years earlier than he's claimed.
The controversy has taken center stage in Pulido's tight race against Rep. Monica De La Cruz. Pulido has accused the Republican of falsely portraying Caballero as his "buddy" and dismissed concerns about their relationship as a "desperate" narrative spun up by her campaign "because they're losing in the polls."
But a former Hidalgo County prosecutor who worked for Guerra at the time of Caballero's sexual assault case said Pulido "is the last person in Hidalgo County who can claim he did not know of this man's crimes."
"Mr. Pulido has repeatedly lied about his ties to Caballero," the former prosecutor, who requested anonymity because "crossing the Pulidos carries a cost" in Hidalgo County, told the Washington Free Beacon. "An honest man tells the same story every time and Bobby Pulido has told at least four different versions of what he knew about Frankie Caballero's criminal past."
Pulido's contradictions date back to the mid-'90s at the outset of his career when Caballero first joined his band. Last year, he said he first pulled Caballero into the studio to record his breakout hit, "Desvelado," which was tracked in January 1995, when his keyboard player didn't show. But he told the McAllen Monitor in July that he poached Caballero from another band in early- to mid-1995 because he wanted his "music to be accordion driven, and I was a very big fan of his work."
Caballero, meanwhile, was arrested in July 1994 on a sexual assault charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, but was released on a personal recognizance bond of $75,000. The former prosecutor said that's unusual for such a serious crime by a repeat offender and would only happen with consent from Guerra, the district attorney at the time. A grand jury indicted Caballero a month after "Desvelado" was recorded, but the case appears to have stalled after that. He continued to earn credits on Pulido's albums through 1999, even though Pulido told the Monitor he fired the accordionist in 1996 for substance abuse.
While Pulido hasn't weighed in on the 1994 charge, he said during a May 2019 YouTube show that "when I started out, I went to get him out of jail," though he didn't indicate why Caballero was locked up, the New York Post first reported. A campaign spokesperson told the Post that Pulido meant he'd given Caballero a chance to perform and didn't "post his bail or pick him up from jail or prison." Pulido later said he was being "hyperbolic" and told CNN he made the comment on "a comedian's show and we were drinking."
In 2000, Guerra—who in recent months has lavished praise on his nephew and donated $3,500 to his campaign—dismissed the case and a burglary charge "in the interest of justice," even though Caballero skipped three court dates, causing him to forfeit his bond, court records show. The former Hidalgo County prosecutor said, "Three failures to appear in a felony rape case would have landed any other defendant in jail."
Pulido said the two lost touch until Caballero rejoined him on stage in December 2017. That was just a few months after Caballero finished a three-year prison stint for indecent sexual contact with an eight-year-old, a conviction that earned him a spot on the sex offender registry. During the intervening years, the accordionist had racked up a lengthy arrest record, including cocaine possession and forgery charges, but avoided state prosecutions thanks to dismissals from Guerra and his office—though in 2009, he was convicted in federal court for transporting an illegal immigrant across the southern border.
Guerra even gave Caballero what the former Hidalgo prosecutor called "a lenient plea deal" in the 2014 child molestation case, considering it carried a maximum 20-year sentence. At the time, the district attorney, who had been in office since 1982, was a lame duck after voters ousted him in favor of an opponent who ran on an anti-corruption campaign.
Guerra told the Free Beacon he doesn't "have any knowledge" of Caballero and hadn't heard of him until Pulido started his campaign. He said Pulido "would not consciously hire a child abuser" and that there were a number of factors that would lead to dismissals that may not appear in court filings. He denied ever meeting Caballero at Pulido family functions, at which Caballero regularly appeared, or at any concerts or other events.
A Pulido spokesperson told the New York Post in April that the Democrat only knew Caballero "long struggled with addiction issues," and in July, Pulido said he had no knowledge of Caballero's criminal history after he left the band in the '90s. Three days after that, he said he knew his bandmate "had been in jail"—then a month later said he knew Caballero had "violated a lot of his paroles" and told him he went to prison for "transferring illegal aliens."
Pulido also said his manager and uncle, Jimmy Montez, hired Caballero for his second stint in the band and that it isn't industry standard to do a background check.
Pulido's campaign declined to say if he signed off on rehiring someone he fired for substance abuse issues or why he felt a background check wasn't necessary for a musician with an arrest record. A spokesman didn't answer any questions regarding the contradictions and instead pointed to De La Cruz's voting record on Jeffrey Epstein and former Rep. Matt Gaetz, among other allegations.
"These are serious questions involving a sitting member of Congress, her congressional voting record, and the use of taxpayer dollars," he said. "We would welcome the same level of scrutiny you've dedicated to the personnel decisions of a Tejano band from the 1990s."
Critics have pointed to another comment: In 2018, Pulido joked that Caballero "went to Penn State," which was famously roiled by a child molestation scandal. Pulido said he was referencing the state penitentiary. "They call the penitentiary 'the Pen,' and people say 'Penn State,'" he told Bloomberg.
A South Texas musician, meanwhile, told the Post that Caballero's child sex conviction was a known fact in music circles and called the Tejano scene "a very tight-knit industry."
Caballero continued playing with Pulido, including at a 2018 middle school benefit concert with children present, until 2021, when he was "fired immediately" after Pulido's management company learned the accordionist "engaged in domestic abuse," a campaign spokesperson told the Texas Tribune.
Questions remain surrounding that timeline, as well.
Caballero was arrested in May 2020 for strangling his daughter, a charge that ultimately landed him a five-year prison sentence. Yet in June 2021, more than a year later, the accordionist was still playing on stage with Pulido, Axios reported.
It's unclear how Pulido's team learned of the assault charge, but if it was from the January 2021 booking, his staff would have seen that he'd been accused of failing to update his sex offender registry—and another child molestation charge. In fact, records show he was indicted for sexually assaulting two additional children, though those charges were eventually dropped.
A company called South Texas Bail Bonds posted Caballero's bail in February 2021, with its owner, Norman Cordova, signing the surety oath. In January, Cordova hosted a campaign rally for Pulido.
