Bad elections and payback
Florida had the hanging chads of 2000 that were crucial in deciding the outcome of a presidential election.
Brownsville has the missing tally sheet at Burns Elementary School that has become central to determining who will be the next Cameron County judge. Al Gore and George W. Bush were separated by a few hundred votes in Florida a decade ago. There is no light in the vote gap between Carlos Cascos and John Wood. The difference is five votes.
In Florida in 2000, there was a ditsy elections administrator named Kathryn Harris who appeared to be more concerned about her looks on camera than getting to which presidential candidate really won her state’s vote. In Cameron County, there is the deer-in-the-headlights elections administrator Roger Ortiz, who needs an entourage of courthouse bailiffs to escort him in and around the building.
Why? Maybe courthouse officials fear rogue politiqueras might get a bit rowdy if they have clear access to the shaky elections administrator. Even worse, a reporter may point a question Ortiz’s way, which could cause a meltdown of poor explanations.
Ortiz and his elections office badly botched an election recount of the Cascos-Wood race, in which the incumbent, Cascos, was first told he had won by fewer than 100 votes, only to be told hours later, never mind, Wood actually won by five votes. It seems the before-mentioned tally sheets from Burns Elementary in North Brownsville weren’t properly counted, and when they were (supposedly), the Democrat Wood had prevailed by five votes over the Republican incumbent.
Ortiz went into seclusion after the big mess-up and has been actively looking for places where he can dump this crisis. First he tried the Texas Secretary of State, but nope, that office said deciding the race’s outcome was a local issue. Now, apparently, Ortiz will dump all of the documents on the County Commissioners Court, which is hopelessly compromised given two of its members are the candidates embroiled in this mess.
This saga has some months to go before its outcome becomes a matter of record. In the meantime, conspiracy theories abound and word of evil plots of political takeovers bounce around the blogosphere.
In Brownsville, though, even when elections are over they’re really not over, especially when it comes to school board politics. Brownsville is a company town, and the company we speak of is the Brownsville Independent School District, with its 7,000-plus employees. Getting elected to the local school board isn’t about the children, as the campaign slogans go.
It’s about these three things:
- Who has the majority vote in deciding which firms get BISD insurance contracts and other big ticket items?
- Which voting bloc has the majority pull in deciding who the superintendent will be?
- When inevitable conflicts of interest are raised about board members and their relatives and close friends who are BISD employees, will those issues carry enough weight to generate the heat and anger that will give rise to election challenges?
The just-concluded school board races had all of these factors. One faction was furious with the ouster of a former superintendent and vowed revenge against the board majority that forced said ouster. The board incumbents under siege from the angry voices said it really wasn’t about the superintendent issue, but about insurance contracts, and attempts by their political enemies to give big business to preferred companies of influence.
After the local political battles were decided (for this round anyway), it was time for the winners (challengers to former ruling majority) to rub it in. Someone from the victorious camp sent an anonymous letter to a local educator who is related to a former board member that ended like this: “Payback is a —–!”
You may you use your imagination to choose the appropriate word to end that sentence. The letter’s envelope had a heading that said, “Citizens of Brownsville,” and the return address was 1135 E. Van Buren. That’s the address of this newspaper. Cute — not terribly clever, but cute. Payback apparently includes hiding behind generic names and falsely using the addresses of businesses that have no connection to the tribal wars.
Oh well, it won’t be long until the next school board races come around. Local forces are surely gathering to prepare a fresh challenge to the new board majority, and soon enough, Brownsville may well have the latest rendition of “meet the new boss who’s a lot like the old boss.”
Payback, meanwhile, in county politics might have to wait a bit. The elections administrator and his bodyguards are still conferring on which candidate won county judge’s race. Five votes and no hanging chads. It could be a long wait.
This column is one of many online commentaries about Brownsville and Rio Grande Valley life that can be found on brownsvilleherald.com. Click on ‘Blogs’ on the Web site to access the commentaries.
