PORTILLO: "TRANSPARENCY MATTERS!" (WHEN YOU GET CAUGHT)

By Juan Montoya
The $30,000 campaign chest that City of Brownsville District 3 candidate Deborah Portillo has been hoarding for just such a moment has been opened like a Pandora's box to lash out against an opponent she claims has besmirched her political maidenhood.
Portillo's wrath has been aimed at opponent Martin Sarkis who, along with Rosalio Rosales and David Belleperche are vying for the seat left vacant by commissioner Melissa Zamora when she left to take a public relations position with newly-elected Cameron County DA Luis Saenz.
Mayor Tony Martinez has made it no secret that he would like Portillo, along with incumbents Rose Gowen  ( At-Large-B)   Rose Gowen and John Villarreal (District 4) to join him on the city commission as rubber-stamp votes for his secret United Brownsvlle nonprofit.
Her out-of-town campaign consultants and pollsters must have discovered some unpleasant news because for the past two nor three days they have purchased thousands of dollars of newspaper space in the local daily assailing Sarkis for having the unmitigated gall of filing a complaint withe the Brownsville PD. Sarkis gave the local cops (whose union members endorsed Portillo) a copy of the Texas Election Code prohibiting corporate contributions and a copy of her own contribution and campaign report showing she had accepted at least one $250 contribution from a corporation.
In her ad, the offended maiden said she would "not sit idly by while my opponent takes pot shots at my reputation."
And in a mass mailout to voters in District 3, Portillo accuses Rosales of committing the un-American act of filing for bankruptcy and Sarkis of having a dispute with the Cameron County Tax Assessor-Collector Tony Yzaguirre over back taxes Sarkis says are owed by the former (and now deceased) owner of the property where he does business.
Injured, she says she is different because her "parents taught me the value of honesty and integrity, along with owning up to my mistakes."

Apparently, they didn't include civic responsibility in her life lessons because as the campaign wore on we learned that she has never voted in a City of Brownsville election and that the only job she has ever held outside the family business was a a Girl Friday for the sham United Brownsville organization that is funded by "donations" from publicly-funded entities. She then inherited a jewelry store from her parents' business. Oh, yeah, we have another Rockefeller in the making here alright.
In response to the mayor's intervention in this city's races, the local chapter of the Brownsville Fire Fighters Association are distributing "La Voz," a newspaper that outlines the organization's role in subverting the electoral process to have her former boss, United Brownsville, usurp the democratic process and govern from behind the scenes. Thousands of copies were distributed up until today in anticipation of Saturday's election.
If she was honest, she would tell voters that she indeed committed a third-degree felony when she took the corporate contribution and would have not said a word had not one of her opponents pointed it out. "Transparency Matters!" when you get caught, indeed.

Then her political benefactor Mayor Martinez and his city administrators harass his (and her) opponents using the public resources to do it to the point where police hound their campaign workers and cards bearing the city attorney's name and a supposed city ordinance are handed them to keep them away from the central public library polling place.
Who is "clouding" the issues with campaign jargon here, Little Debby?