THE BRADHSHAW TAPES: DISSING ADELA AND THE GOP UNDER THE RADAR...DOES JESSICA HAVE AN EVIL TWIN IN AUSTIN?

By Juan Montoya
Politics can be a dirty business.
Just ask any candidate who's thrown his or her hat or bonnet into the political ring. It has often been said that if you want to know who your ancestors were all you had to do was to run for office an you'd soon find out.
Nowhere is this more true than in the current race for the Republican nomination for the newly-created Congressional District 34.
We have come across transcripts of conversations between Jessica Puente Bradshaw and some of her supporters where she states her impressions of her opponent, Adela Garza, currently a Texas Southmost College trustee, Cameron County Republican chairman Frank Morris, and Humberto Zamora, president of a Harlingen development corporation, her campaign worker Roman Perez and others.

Morris wants to stay out of it, Zamora wants his due, Adela's shady business...Well, does Adela have influence or not?"...Frank (Morris, Cameron County Republican Party chair) wants to stay out of it cause he doesn't want to step on any toes. But you have to stand your ground. With Humberto Zamora he's very nice. He is a nice man. He's never done anything wrong to me. Pero, right now he's supporting the other candidate...I really believe that this candidate all the lies that she's making up. She's overstating her influence. You know like, oh I have connections here, I have connections there...so she has some people thinking that that's the case and I'm telling you right now, it's not true. As a matter of fact she has some very shady business going on where she used some of her influence locally to fire some very good people from some very good positions where they would have helped a lot of minorities...Pero she did it for herself because she likes to be smart. She's those kinds of people that will keep you down to maker herself be higher and we don't need people like that...compadrismo is what she's about."

Zamora demands a payback, doesn't do anything for free...
"Humberto Zamora, you know I've been to him and he's nice, but here's the thing, he'll say 'I'll give you money' but he wants it back... And he'll tell you, 'I'll do that but I expect something...'"

Poor Jim Tipton and Frank Boggus feel left out in the cold? Since when? "
And I'll tell you what. I talk to a lot of people in Brownsville and Harlingen who are very well established people...Jim Tipton from Tipton Ford, Mr. Frank Boggus...these are very, you know son gente con dinero, pero even they've have been left out in the cold through the compadriso. See, so money does not equal favors because these people...have told me nobody pays attention to us nobody pays attention to us nobody speaks to us and they have money...So it's not money, it's the power that people want to have over others..."

"Oh, that Roman Perez: "You don't have to mention him by name..."
"What his (Morris') worry is that that everything is getting so heated and so passionate that depending on who the nominee is they won't get the support of the other person... Then he mentioned you without mentioning your name about how it didn't help with what you were doing and I said Roman is now part of my campaign and I understand that. But you know...So he said you just need to make sure people know that then...So he said you don't have to mention him by name..."

Meanwhile, the race in the newspaper ads is also heating up, with Adela running an ad questioning Bradshaw's claim that she lives in Cameron County by displaying her application for a place on the Republican ballot where she asserts that she has resided in Cameron County for the last eight years and displays a photostatic copy of the application.

"Who is Jessica Puente-Bradshaw..aka Jessica Robinson..." the ad asks.
"She swears that she has lived in Cameron County for 8 years...and was registered to vote in Cameron County since January 1, 2012 (four months ago)...yet...(in an Federal Election Commission Form 2 photostatic copy) "here she swears that she lives in Austin and is registered to vote in Travis County for eight years.
"Two names? Two voter registration? Two false affidavits? Hello! Where is Voter ID when we need it?"

For those of us accustomed to the vigorous races between Democrats in South Texas, this inside view into the Republican nomination process is a new wrinkle in local politics with much more to come, we're sure.