WHEN THE LIGHTS COME ON, SAVEBISD PAC ROACHES SCATTER

Special to El Rrun-Run

That Bobby Wightman Cervantes, the on again/off again blogger of The Brownsville Voice is openly gay is not only well known, but is a source of endless amusement to the Brownsville Blues' Jerry McHale. But what Wightman Cervantes won't come out about is his connection with the nefarious political group, Save BISD.

That group is supporting several candidates running for places on the BISD Board of Trustees, and WC is speaking out on behalf of one of its candidates, Butch Barbosa.

When WC writes, you can see the gears turning. As he has commented on this election he has said that his only goal is to defeat the incumbent, Caty Presas-Garcia. His screeds have followed this line: there are three people in the race and if all three stay in the race Presas-Garcia is guaranteed to win, because an "anti-Caty" vote will be split and diluted between her two opponents. Therefore, he says, one of the two opponents of Presas-Garcia should drop out of the election.

If it stopped there, a reader could actually think WC is sincere. But WC repeatedly calls for the candidate who is not Butch Barbosa to drop out. His real plan: to get Save BISD's Barbosa into one-on-one race with Presas-Garcia.

And if that was all he was doing that might be even be okay. But he won't admit he's working with the Save BISD PAC. So, Bobby, if you won't come out on your own, we'll just have to help you.

1. I'll let you FOI that, I guess

2. Bobby says he never has had anything to do with Save BISD, but our investigation has lead us to believe he goes by the real estate motto of politics, "Deny, deny deny."

When we first looked into this his blog was still open to the public. A google search showed he had the Save BISD group plugged right into his blog address at savebisd.brownsvillevoice.blogspot. When we followed the link, the page appeared to be under construction, but the background picture of books on a bookshelf was the same as on his full blog site.

Although the blog is closed to the public now, google search still shows that he was talking about Save BISD in the fall of 2011. Those old blog posts featured this awkward and inelegant motto for the PAC: "There's too much BS in BiSd."

Wow. Hold your nose and rally the troops? We just don't see that working.

 WC took his blog private, but Save BISD has shown up in a couple of other places on the internet.

 3. SAVE BISD has a Facebook page, although it looks like it has been not too active lately. It is, like everything associated with this group, cloaked in secrecy. The page has an anonymous host: no name, no photo. But a leisurely scroll through its past postings unwraps this group's naked ambitions. Repeated several times is the banner, "Tony Fuller for Board President."

Fuller was the Chief Financial Officer at BISD during the Rick Zayas / Ruben Cortez DRAIN OF TERROR that depleted the school district's savings by $96 million in just five years. Fuller was the numbers man during that time and served as the guiding hand for that profligate spending.

A further scroll down the SAVE BISD page reveals the group's hypocrisy about lawsuits, which it has made a major campaign issue, when it says, "As a taxpayer, I want our money to be safeguarded but I hope Fuller sues the pants off anyone and everyone he can."

And finally, this little nugget from the page speaks for itself: "Wish we could get Zayas and Cortez back." (Why? Because there's still ten cents left in the district's coffers?)

4. SAVE BISD also makes an appearance on the internet as a registered domain name with godaddy.com. As with the Facebook page, there is an attempt at secrecy. But here, the amatuerish nature of the attempt becomes comical.

The godaddy registration page, reported by the internet's "whois," lists the domain's contact person, and organization name, address and phone number. Say hello to Kimberely Dale of savebisd@yahoo.com (see Kimberley Doll Dale on FB). She is recorded as the contact person for SAVE BISD Political Action Committee. Kim Doll gives the address for the PAC as 123 Main Street, Brownsville, TX 78521, with a phone number of 956 555-5555.

This would be the perfect place to make a joke at poor Kim's expense, but a disturbing thought arises: Are there legal consequences for misrepresenting a PAC?

So after all the secrecy and skullduggery and taking blogs private the Save BISD PAC has emerged from the shadows in the final days of this election season. It's out, but it's not open. As reported earlier, the PAC is fronted by a vote stealing politiquero as treasurer. And it has WC disingenously trying to pump up his man, Butch.

Is this the end here?

 It could be said all's fair in politics, and that being a secret operative who takes verbal sniper shots at opposition candidates is just a part of the game. After all, most elections are stolen anyway, the sniper might say.

But there are candidates who step forward, into the light, to try and serve the public. They believe in the part of democracy that calls for people to speak up and be heard and step up and be seen. They have the courage and the conviction. They haven't given in to cynicism or shortcuts.

As for the others, flip the light switch on and watch them scatter like cockroaches.