ELIA CORNEJO-LOPEZ: VOTE EARLY AND VOTE TWICE 4 ME

By Juan Montoya
Come this November 8 – and during the early voting period from October 24 to November 4 – if you live in Brownsville, you will be able to vote twice for Elia Cornejo-Lopez.
Her name will appear on the general ballot which will include the first presidential race where a national political party will field a woman as their candidate. She will be listed on the ballot as the only candidate for the 404th State District Court as the Democratic Party nominee.

On the other ballot she will be listed as one of five candidates for Position 5 on the Brownsville Independent School District.
How did we get to this peculiar moment?


Cornejo-Lopez has interpreted Texas law and the judicial canon of ethics to permit her to run for both positions even though she incumbent of the 404th. And if by some chance she wins the school board race over her five opponents (including the incumbent Catalina Presas-Garcia who she sees as her nemesis), will she have to resign her judicial position?

The law appears to say yes.
But then again, people who know the judge say she is audacious, determined and resourceful in attaining her goals. If there is a way for her to run for the school board and keep her place on the bench, you can bet that she'll find it.
And don't doubt her political clout. As the only candidate to the 404th in the primary she drew 19,962 votes.

At the same time that she is running for both offices, her husband Leo Lopez will be a write-in candidate for the Cameron County Tax Assessor-Collector's office held by incumbent Tony Yzaguirre, now under two indictments with more than 20 counts including charges of official malfeasance, bribery and participating in organized criminal activity.
As sexy as the charges sound, making them stick may prove more difficult as prosecutors have discovered.

One would think that the adage about the key to winning an election in South Texas is to have your opponent indicted would apply and give Lopez the victory hands down. But there are at least three other write-in hopefuls running at the same time and it like doesn't look like Tad Hasse will be able to dissuade any of them from uniting behind one candidate to have a  chance of beating Yzaguirre in November.

In fact, Yzaguirre won the Democratic Party primary and got 11,528 votes even after he had been very publicly indicted and arrested by a joint force of state troopers and federal agents as the cameras were rolling in front of the Cameron County courthouse only two months before the primary election.
Lopez knows it will be a hard row to hoe to defeat Yzaguirre, especially now that two of his co-defendants have had the charges dismissed against them by Cameron County District Attorney Luis V. Saenz.

The fact that his wife Elia is also running for two offices isn't going to help Leo any. Further, if anyone raises a legal issue, it could prove a distraction from his efforts to convince the voters across the county to pencil in his name below Yzaguirre's on the ballot.

Some contend that Cornejo-Lopez has to "resign to run" and vacate her district court position (and $180,000 salary that goes along with it. Others say that the law prohibits "holding" two offices, not merely running for them.
It's a fine a distinction and it may take a court to settle the matter. But until then, we have the peculiar situation where you can, as Democrats like to quip, the opportunity to vote early and (in Elia's case) vote often.