A SEASON OF MAKING NICE: OLD FOES BURY THE HATCHET

By Juan Montoya

It's incredible how time can change some things.
We recently posted that Cameron County Pct. 2 Commissioner Ernie Hernandez would never vote for Kip Van Johnson Hodge to finish out the term as Justice of the Peace left vacant when Tony Torres passed away.

We then went on to recall the bad blood between the two harked back to an incident involving Ernie's brother-in-law Joe Cadriel and wife Anna when a politiquera accused them of throwing down her sign at a voting precinct during the 2002 school board election.

At the time, Hodge was a municipal judge and John Shergold was a prosecutor with the city. Jim Goza was city attorney.

Hodge appointed John Blaylock, fresh from his stint on the Cameron County District Attorney's office as special prosecutor and dumped the case in Ben Neece's court.

Then both took off on vacation to Aruba.

The outcome was that Hernandez thought Neece was out to get his relatives. However, Neece and Goza determined that the case did not warrant the appointment of a special prosecutor and got the case came back to Goza, where it died a peaceful death.

Well, none other than Ernie called us yesterday to tell that he had voted to appoint Hodge to Torres' old position.

"Even after what he tried to do to your bother-in-law Joe and your sister?" we asked.

"I'm willing to forgive and forget," Hernandez said. "That's in the past. He has the experience as a judge that is necessary for the position and he promised not to run for the position after the term ends."

Well, we have to eat our words then.

Just down the street and around the corner, another pair of antagonists squared off in a courtroom and came out smiling.

Accion America activist Carlos Quintanilla and former Brownsville Independent School District board member and local attorney Rick Zayas decided enough bloodletting was enough and non-suited each other over allegations (and counter allegations) of defamation and libel.

The litigation are rooted in the past BISD board election where both camps (Quintanilla with the defeatzayascortezpowers.PAC) and Zayas (through his campaign ads) waged a take-no-prisoners campaign.

The bad blood led Zayas and his fellow board member Ruben Cortez to file the lawsuit against Quintanilla for posts that appeared in the carebrownswville website alleging that things were shady under the old board at BISD and urging voters to dump the pair and reject Powers.

After the voters elected new members (Luci Longoria and Christina Saavedra) and re-elected Enrique Escobedo, the litigation continued.

Yesterday, in a face-to-face encounter between both men and Zayas' attorney in a courthouse corridor, both men decided the thing had dragged on too long.

"You did your job and got your candidates elected," Zayas told Quintanilla. "If you want to, we can end this now."

Quintanilla, who had to travel to Brownsville from Fallas for the case hearings was agreeable and told Zayas he wished him well and signed the consent form sent by Zayas' attorney to visiting judge Don Witing.

Afterward, both men shook hands and walked out of the courthouse and went their separate ways, Zayas to his lawyering and Quintanilla ton fight yet another election, this time in Irving against an anti-immigrant mayoral candidate.

Time, as the saying goes, apparently does heal all wounds.