She’s Filipina-American. She’s also openly lesbian, and while Texas political analysts told me that they weren’t sure whether that would affect her bid, Jones has figured out precisely how to handle it: with brief acknowledgment and no special focus.

At a recent house party in San Antonio where she introduced herself to a few dozen of the district’s voters, she mentioned that she “served under ‘don’t ask don’t tell’” but didn’t spell out the significance of that.

She talked more about it during an interview with me the next day, comparing her time in the military with the anxiety and vulnerability of many minorities, particularly immigrants waiting to see what happens with the DACA program.

“I don’t know what it’s like to be a Dreamer,” she told me. “But I do know what it’s like to have worked hard for something and to live in fear that it can be ripped away from you. When I was in R.O.T.C. at Boston University, I lived in fear every single day that if they found out I was gay, I would lose my scholarship. My opportunity to get an education — my opportunity to serve my country — would be taken away.”

Image Colin Allred Credit... Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times

Democrats also have an excellent shot at victory in the 32nd District, a collection of Dallas neighborhoods and suburbs. Its Republican incumbent, Pete Sessions, has been in Congress for two decades, but the district has become more diverse and less white over those years, and his likely opponent, a black civil rights lawyer named Colin Allred, should benefit from that.

Allred is 34. Like Jones, he’s making his first run for office. Also like her, he has an unconventional professional biography. Before getting his law degree at the University of California, Berkeley, he played professional football for the Tennessee Titans, and before that he was a football star at Baylor University in Waco and at a high school in his Dallas district. Many of its voters remember watching him play.