PORT RACES GET INTERESTING

By Juan Montoya
Brownsville Navigation District commissioners Carlos Masso and Martin Arambula woke up today with a familiar headache.
Masso found out that he will have to contend with Argelia Miller in the port election in May. You remember Argie, she lost handily to Edward Camarillo in last year's city commission election.
Masso, head of the white-collar crime unit with the Cameron County District Attorney's office, will now have to deal with the pesky Ms. Miller. On the other hand, Arambula will not only have Luis Melendez – a warehouse and forwarding company businessman – to contend with, he will also have to deal with local gadfly Moses Sorola.
If you remember, Sorola single-handedly derailed the Carlos Cisneros candidacy for the city commission, only to have Melissa Zamora waltz in the back door and beat Cisneros in the runoff. "If we had known that Melissa was going to enter into a consultanship with a vendor doing business with the city, we would have gone after her, too." Sorola now rues.
"We were so busy dealing with Cisneros that Melissa came in through the back door." Arambula believes that the Melendez candidacy is being encouraged by local adult day-care mogul Juan Carlos Torre as a result of him turning down an offer from the self-described politiquero par excellence to discourage Melendez from running for a measly $10,000 fee.
"Cinco pa mi y cinco pa ya," Torre reportedly told Arambula. "I think that may be where it's coming from," Arambula said.
Ms. Miller's peculiar style of campaigning is probably her biggest downfall. A U.S. Air Force veteran, she is under the impression that a nice smile and thanking providence will win her the support of political operatives and the voters.
During the city commission campaign, she is best remembered for trying to get people to do things for her and expected that a simple handshake and a "Que Dios lo bendiga," would take care of matters. Arambula knows different.
"This is an industry," he said. "Everything costs money and everyone asks for money. It's getting very hard to gather donations because we just had a primary election. A kind of contributor fatigue has set in."
Sorola and his supporters think that Arambula's close ties to Corpus Christi-based Solomon Ortiz may work against him. They said that Ortiz and the port have to answer – at least partly – for the now-famous $21 million lost trying to build the Bridge to Nowhere. "Arambula is one of the Ortiz tentacles that is reaching into South Texas," said the acid-toungued Sorola.