EL RRUN RRUN
http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/
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IT''S GLOATING TIME AGAIN FOR THE VICTORS
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By <b>Juan Montoya</b><br />I was talking to an old political associate late Tuesday when he was asked to pass the phone to someone sitting next to him at the Cameron County Courthouse.<br /> It was Amadeo Rodrguez Jr., and he had an earful for me.<br />"That'll teach you not to mess with the Rodriguezes," he taunted over the phone with a tone of derision before my friend took back his cell.<br />Now, when I was involved in political races before as either an advisor or a manager, I learned to take winning and losing in the same manner. You win a few, lose a few. If you win, you savor the result of months of work. If you lose, you take it in stride and learn from your mistakes. And you respect your opponent.<br />I am aware that Erin and her supporters considered the blogs as enemies of their campaign because we opposed her candidacy and their campaign tactics. That's the nature of the beast. You'll never please everybody.<br />If you are a regular reader of this blog, you might remember that Amadeo Jr. was one of the individuals named in a police report from one of the local retirement apartment complexes who along with Norma Hernandez were stopped from hauling off elderly and mentally-impaired residents in rented vans and telling them how to vote by giving them pre-marked sample ballots with the ovals next to the names of their ticket's candidates already darkened.<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJSIxcrAOUTJXtpSQu4dTcuiBaDu8rbEKbPTcsXaS2ECNG3TanoorWZtKxyIVI4NYN1HS50WeDsGNnbWct92d3gnsLlG4LdzJyfKGirdJQR7EteCtNATzJnpgPNp2X0zEXNzq1mlyjvIc/s1600/nose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJSIxcrAOUTJXtpSQu4dTcuiBaDu8rbEKbPTcsXaS2ECNG3TanoorWZtKxyIVI4NYN1HS50WeDsGNnbWct92d3gnsLlG4LdzJyfKGirdJQR7EteCtNATzJnpgPNp2X0zEXNzq1mlyjvIc/s400/nose.jpg" width="400" /></a>A shouting match ensued between Norma, a politiquera and the son of a resident, Zeke Silva, who had gone there to pick up his dad as he usually did and the police were called.<br />The manager of the facility and told Hernandez and Amadeo Jr. that they were on private property and that she had not authorized them to take residents to the voting booth and had the police order them to leave. <br />Now, I have known Amadeo Jr. and his family for years. We even go back as far as when we all worked together to get Tony Garza, the Republican, elected more than 20 years ago. At the time his late mother Juanita and his dad Amadeo Sr. used to cook large pots of menudo for the campaign workers at their home off Old Port Isabel. Those were constructive (and instructive) times. We have often crossed each other on the political plain, sometimes on the same side, sometimes not.<br />Things have obviously changed since then. Amadeo Jr. has hooked up with the Hernandez and has been infected with the "win at all costs" strategy. Deceiving the elderly, the mentally-impaired and voting on their behalf to stuff the ballot boxes have become part and parcel of the Hernandezes political modus operandi and there's no room second thoughts in their game book.<br />Now, admittedly this was a cliffhanger. If it was left to the able voters who walked to the polls on election day, Yolanda Begum would have won. But she was never able to overcome the overwhelming mail-in votes harvested for Erin by her mom and the politiqueras, or the packed vans driven by people like Amadeo Jr. to coerce the elderly to vote for his candidates, or at times allowed to vote by the elections department personnel for the whole group himself.<br />If that is how success is measured in that camp, and gloating over this kind of victory is in order, then by all means go at it and savor the victory. But realize that such victories come with a cost. It is that we should accept a policy that endorses the widespread abuse of the elderly, the manipulation of the main-in votes and the disenfranchisement of all the voters whose ballots are neutralized and made meaningless by these tactics. It's basically an anti-democratic policy at its core. But to their way of thinking a win is a win.<br />Just realize while you bring out the noisemakers and thumb your nose at the rest of us that the good people of this county will not stand for this forever.<br />Felicidades, Jr.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-1513722207551538107?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/08/its-gloating-time-again-for-victors.html
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MAJORITY OF RACES SEWN UP BEFORE ELECTION DAYen
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By <strong>Juan Montoya</strong><br />Even before day broke on Tuesday, Cameron County candidates Yolanda Teran Begum and Pete Avila had already lost the election.<br />A survey of the totals cast in the local races indicates that between the mail-in votes and the early voting, the fate of the Begum and Avila candidacy had already been decided. Both came out on the short end of the mail-in ballots. In the case of Begum, her 142 mail-ins did not equal the 319 ballots generated by the well-greased and practised political forces of the Ernie and Norma Hernandez on behalf of their daughter Erin Hernandez Garcia.<br /><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiLeVAYWiyNag2nHMmO2hYo-EB6baLBBn6WitET3Yr9YpOdo_kFiykQsZ4dVXv6m3hxErFkiQhAPZZE1q2DFa_26RdIQMJebE53RVwThEiTgBzbEc8_agltPrDZq7bqbUIKeGMRM5tX2w/s1600/NRelectcasey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" eda="true" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiLeVAYWiyNag2nHMmO2hYo-EB6baLBBn6WitET3Yr9YpOdo_kFiykQsZ4dVXv6m3hxErFkiQhAPZZE1q2DFa_26RdIQMJebE53RVwThEiTgBzbEc8_agltPrDZq7bqbUIKeGMRM5tX2w/s400/NRelectcasey.jpg" width="363" /></a>That 177 deficit was one from which the Begum campaign could not recover. Even as Begum's supporters complained of the blatant voting abuses perpetrated in the open daylight in front of the Cameron County Courthouse, at the Crsito Rey Catholic Church site, and at the Centro Comunitario site at Cameron Park involving the coercion of votes on behalf of her opponent by her politiqueros, the early walk-in vote totals indicate that Begum matched Hernandez well by coming short by only 85 votes. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">That put her 262 votes behind when dawn broke on Tuesday morning. And even though she actually won the voting on election day by 110 votes, it still left her 152 votes short to cover the mail-in and walk-in totals. Erin's 177 mail-in advantage was the deciding factor.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The story was the same for Avila, who was 352 votes behind Gomez after the mail-in votes were counted. He also fell an additional 201 during the early voting period. And even though, like Begum, Pete actually beat Abel by 208 votes on election day, he could not make up the accumulated 553-vote difference he fell behind on the mail-in and walk-in votes. He behind 352 votes int he mail-in and lost by 351 votes. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Luis Saenz, in his battle with mail-in favored candidate Carlos Masso was the only candidate in these three local races who overcame the 198-vote deficit in mail-in votes. He had a 164-vote advantage in the early walk-in vote to neutralize Masso's mail-in edge and woke up on Tuesday only 34 votes behind. The turnout on his behalf on Tuesday favored Saenz and his election-day total of 3,570 not only made up those votes, but propelled him over the top by 351 votes, a slim victory for a countywide race.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Another candidate who won the election districtwide but lost at home despite huge mail-in ballots was Ruben Cortez, the victor in the Texas School Board of Education. He beat Sanchez with a huge turnout in Hidalgo County by more than 4,000 votes even though he lost by 2,000 in Nueces County, but lost in Cameron despite his 320-mail-in vote advantage here. <br />His opponent Celeste Zepeda-Sanchez beat Cortez in the walk-in early vote by 506, putting her ahead by 186 votes by election day. Combined with her 967 votes on election day, and Sanchez trounced Cortez in his home county by 1,053 votes only to lose to him big in Hidalgo (by 4,000 politiquero votes) and lose the district election.<br />Overall, Cortez edged out Sanchez by a mere 458 votes. (50%-49%)<br />Now, instead of South Texas having an educator and administrator with 45 years of classroom experience and curriculum expert, we will be represented by someone with a high school equivalency certificate and a penchant to hobnob with vendors and political favors. Lucky us. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Those, of course, are just the numbers. Hidden behind them looms a problematic future for the Cameron County Democratic Party. In the course of running their elections, they have allowed wide-scale voter abuse and fraud before the eyes of the county and the electorate of both parties.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The victories that can be ascribed to the abuse of the mail-in process and the ferrying of coerced votes before the very eyes of the officials responsible for maintaining the process fair and equitable will came back to haunt both the party and the county government charged with overseeing them to assure the process is kept clean and above reproach.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">In this, they have failed miserably and some might say, criminally. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">In allowing the Ernie Hernandez political machine to tighten its grip in local politics, the Democratic Party has shown that it is willing to turn a blind eye to the abuses described above. This "victories" could well come back to haunt the party and the Hernandezs as well as soon as this coming November.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The Begum supporters were not a known factor within the usual political equation in the Brownsville area. The core was a center of longtime Brownsville-Matamoros commercial class who had taken in interest in local politics as many of them lost interest in either living or doing business in Matamoros. They lived with us, their kids went to school here and many of them work here as well as across the river. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">They were tired of fixed elections, paid political operatives, ward heelers and the antics of the PRI in Mexico. They took a gamble and decided to enter the political fray here with one of their own.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">"And we thought Mexico was bad," is a phrase often heard in their ranks.<br />These innocents were not ready for the xenophobic, ethnocentric twist of local politics that emerged almost immediately as their candidate announced her intentions to run. And as they stood watching in amazement and anger as their votes were nullified by bought mail-in votes and paid politiqueros coercing the mentally-impaired and unwilling elderly to vote against them, many wondered whether there is really a home for them in the Democratic Party.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Belatedly, they realized that Begum was not only running against her opponent, but rather, against the entire machinery of the local Democrats. That Begum's gallant campaign was able to come within 152 votes of matching the machine's output is a testament that this group is a force that must either be reckoned with in the future, or the party risks quickly losing their support because of their disenchantment at the shabby treatment afforded them and their candidate.</div>"The new chairwoman for the Democratic Party made it known that she favored Erin over Yolanda," said one of her supporters. "She was not an honest broker to all Democrats. And after what the Hernandez camp did to our candidate, do they really expect us to embrace them come November? You know, 4,164 angry votes can change any election."<br />With the mail-in vote obviously determining the important local races, local cyberpolitiquero group Cheezmeh proved to be irrelevant. Their champion Masso was swamped not by the manufactured mail-in and hauled in vote, but rather by the turnout on election day. And in Erin's case, the 152 vote difference after Erin's 177 mail-in advantage indicates that even a nominal increase in the vote could have overturned the totals. Cheezmeh's influence? Whatever spin they want to put on it.<br />Otherwise, it appears to be negligible.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6016803033174468094-8882470967246387548?l=rrunrrun.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>
LINK: http://rrunrrun.blogspot.com/2012/08/majority-of-elections-sewn-up-before.html
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