BLANCHARD: "I HAVE A PASSION." WHY NOW? AND "SOLOMON WHO?"

By Juan Montoya
for the last 20 years that we have known Denise Blanchard, we never knew (and she never let us know) that her maiden name was Saenz.
Now, as she makes a run for the Democratic nomination for the Congressional District 27 race in the party's primary, she is saying that it's her "passion" that is driving her to join the fray. Now, suddenly, she touts her Latin ethnicity and remembers that her dad was a long-time cop in the city and that her family (on the Saenz side) taught her the values he needs to achieve her goals.
We ran into Denise at the VFW Hall in Brownsville and listened to her spiel about being for job creation, turning the economy around, veterans’ affairs and homeland security. And we also asked her if her former boss – Solomon Ortiz – was supporting her bid.
"He is not supporting me," she said, apparently distancing herself from Ortiz who was defeated in South Texas (of all places) by Republican Blake Farenthold. She now says she considers him part of a "machine."

We find this very hard to believe, and even harder still that she is stressing her devotion to public service as the driving force behind her bid for congress.

We remember the Denise Blanchard of the previous two decades: uppity, unapproachable, and distant. When questions arose about her boss' jaunts to all parts of the globe on the lobbyists' nickel, she would be evasive, putting off the reporter's questions and sometimes not even getting back to you.

When the news reports of Ortiz and his administrative assistant Lencho Rendon's involvement in the disappearance of $21 million in the Port of Brownsville's infamous Bridge to Nowhere, it was all media people could do to get anything out of Denise. In fact, we got nothing.

She was, a good foil for Ortiz at the expense of the truth getting to the people.

She also wants to come across as an outsider and claims she has no money to run a congressional campaign but is counting on the grassroots support she will garner to prove the "cynics" wrong, she says to anyone who will hear her.

And if winning makes her the first Latina member of Congress in South Texas, it would be a “secondary effect” of winning, she told Steve Taylor of Rio Grande Guardian.

“Really, we are all created equal. It is about what you are willing to do with your life. Are you are willing to give of yourself. You have computer experts, medical people. Everyone has a calling in life. I have always had something in my heart that has pulled for me to be concerned, to be caring towards other people,” Saenz Blanchard told Taylor. "I believe now, it was just my calling,” she said.

Blanchard for Solomon for 20 years. When Ortiz was rejected by the voters, he said she planned to retire. Now she claims the desire to help others won out over retirement and she set up a consultancy business to help the small communities of South Texas.

“I could move anywhere in the world. I do not have a dog, a cat, a parakeet, not even goldfish. I can literally pick up and move anywhere I want. But, there is so much need here. I was ready to retire and go off and do my own thing but I saw the need,” Saenz Blanchard said.

Even though Ortiz paid lip service to veterans, each year dutifully introducing  a bill to build a Veterans Administration hospital to service veterans, the introduction got to be a cynical ritual because the effort never got past that, just the introduction.

Blanchard now says that veterans’ issues are a key issue for her and admitted that even though she didn't know much about veterans' needs when she first started working for Solomon, she now considers herself "something of an expert" on the plight of many South Texas veterans and the benefits they are entitled to but often do not receive. 

And although she has never in her professional life, or while working for Ortiz, used her father's name, she now says she wants to honor him during her campaign in Hispanic South Texas.

"I want to reflect that and honor my Dad for the person he helped me to become. It is honor. That is why I am including Saenz in my name, I am honoring my father.”

Yeah, Denise. Right.