SAENZ-MASSO MEDIA WAR GETS HOT; TAKING NO PRISONERS

By Juan Montoya

The given and take of the early days before the Democratic primary has morphed into push comes to shove as supporters of two Cameron County Attorney's office candidates have demonstrated they are ready to take off the kid gloves and come out swinging.

For the last week, Brownsville Herald readers (and a few residents in the subdivisions off Alton Gloor), have been the recipients of a recurring ad ostensibly paid by Erasmo Castro primarily identified with the Internet blogspot Cheezmeh which was the voice of a group by that name. In the last week Castro has run a series of five 1/4 page color newspaper ads bashing former Cameron County District Attorney and now candidate Luis Saenz.

Among other things, the ad claims that Saenz was investigated by two grand juries and then goes on to list a number of "facts" that include potential criminal deeds attributed not to the candidate, but rather to underlings in his office. It also delves into Saenz's personal life saying that the Herald wrote that Saenz had had an affair at the time.

Saenz's supporters felt that was below the belt and have charged that it's really one of his DA office opponents – former DA and current Brownsville Navigation commissioner Carlos Masso – who has funded Catstro's media attack. Aside from the print media front, there has been an ongoing hot war on the cyber battlefield as well.

Masso, Castro, and Zeke Silva (an avid Saenz supporter) have carried on a lively "yes you do, no I don't" banter that sometimes strays into the ballistic. It is getting to a point where one of the enraged participants chides a reader who complained about his use of vulgar language that the page "was meant for adults."

A political action committee PAC then paid for a half-page ad in Sunday's paper to question Masso's qualifications and his relationship with the Head Cheez (Castro).

The Concerned Citizens for Cameron County (CCCC) countered with an ad against Castro's where they tied Masso with Castro (at right), and charged that Masso "uses Erasmo Casto of Austin, Texas to do his dirty work (the ad?).

In the ad, the group's name is parodied as "cheezeMASSO."

"We've outlined the evolution of the Cheezemeh internecine feud in a previous posting where we noted the fragmentation of Castro's Cheezmeh when "disgruntled" (disenchanted?) individuals left the group. Saenz supporter Silva used to post his candidate's campaign events on the group's website and so did other supporter of other candidates. When Castro decided that Silva could not publish the photos and closed off access to the site, the original designers of the website – Gilbert Velasquez, Sr. and Jr., , also Saenz supporters – demanded Castro pay them some $3,000 in fees for designing and maintaining the site that their firm had provided pro bono when the site was opened to everyone. When Castro would not pay, they said they pulled the plug on it.

From there on, things started getting ugly.
Before long, the ads against Saenz started appearing regularly in the newspaper and the Great DA Primary of 2012 Media War was on.

Masso has gone online to offer his explanations for the charges made in the CCCC Sunday ad, a basically "ain't true" defense on the "facts" raised against him that he had not trial experience, "lost $23 million of the taxpayers dollars for the Brownsville Navigation District as board chairman, and is the "godfather of the 8-liner industry."

Castro has defended his online and newspaper claims saying that they were produced as a result of Silva and other bunching up on him and has demonstrated in his online postings he will adopt a "take-no-prisoners" policy toward his perceived enemies, namely Zeke and Saenz, or anyone else who may disagree with his opinion of the candidate for that matter.

Saenz, a former DA and special prosecutor has not responded personally to the Castro attack on his candidacy, but he did comment recently at a political get together that he finds it incongruous for someone who has been convicted of a felony theft charge (and was given probation), and of two more subsequent theft by check convictions, can conclude he would be the "wrong choice" for Cameron County DA.

"I was thoroughly vetted by not one, but two, grand juries and special prosecutors and neither found the evidence to issue a true bill against me," Saenz countered. "I seriously doubt that just anyone would be able to say that. Mr. Castro certainly can't. My past marital problems were between my wife and me."

In a previous posting we outlined some of Castro's legal troubles as outlined in a local blogspot. The website p://www.carebrownsville.blogspot.com/ published a post on April 27, 2011 that cited the three cases outlined in the previous post.

Under a "Regular Posts' section, appear the dates and charges attributed to Castro. So far, no one has challenged the convictions cited as untrue.

The ad at left is attributed to the carebrownsville website that is associated with Accion America activist Carlos Quintanilla, from Dallas, who was the chief proponent of FlyFrontera, a regional air service airline. At the time Castro, Cheezmeh, as well as some local bloggers and cyber opinion leaders were united to defeat the FlyFrontera applications for financial support from the city and other economic development entities.

One of the charged the groups' members repeated often was the Quintanilla was a "convicted" felon" and that support should not be given an organization that had such a person at its head.

Carebrownsville countered with the "pan calling the kettle black" response ad above.

(As a courtesy to Castro, we agreed to remove the Austin address listed to him in the ad.)

Since then, it has been learned that Castro and some of his relatives, including sister Linda, a Cheezmeh banner carrier, are named in two lawsuits in federal court where numerouns plaintiffs charge they have maintained a continuing criminal enterprise in violation of state and federal law when they helped immigrants from Mexico and U.S. citizens fill out immigration applications and forms without the required government certification.

The plaintiffs charge that the defendants in their lawsuit – by continuing their activities outside the duties of a notary public – can be considered in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

One blogger http://www.brownsvillevoice.blogspot.com/ went as fa as to offer the links to the federal cases online.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/119987865/castro1

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/119987961/ErasmoCastro2

The level of the tempest indicates that as we get closer to the start of early voting, Cameron County – which has been the target of hurricanes before – will probably have to weather the fierce political storm in this race, if not in a few of the others.