AT SOLIS' ARRAIGNMENT, WHETTING THE SCANDAL APPETITE

By Juan Montoya
By all accounts, the arraignment of accused serial mail-in abuse voter Sonia Leticia Solis was a ho-hum affair.
She and her attorney Rey Cantu pleaded not guilty, the bond was set, and everyone went on their merry way.
But the real story lurks just beneath the miasma of nonchalance and perfunctory attention to due process. The ugly head of entrenched corruption of the electoral process by ambitious politicians paying brazen abusers of the voting rights of the elderly, mentally impaired, illiterate to gain and remain in elective office.
These tendrils of corruption and deceit were not apparent in the pleading of Solis on Wednesday. In fact, they will only become evident as prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Texas Attorney General's Office began to peel back the layers of concealment that has protected the perpetrators of these purchased votes that have made a mockery of the democratic process and have imposed upon South Texas a distorted view of what the democratic process really is.
It isn't a vote for a tray of sweet bread during early voting; it isn't a half-dozen tamales in return for an open and signed mail-in ballot; a vote in return for a promise of a BBQ chicken plate; etc.,
It also isn't a blank mail-in ballot for a rise to the store, a good word to the sheriff for favored treatment for your incarcerated son, a justice of the peace to dismiss a traffic ticket, etc.
It has gotten to be so bad that any candidate that didn't figure the bought mail-in vote in the election equation knew he couldn't win because they would determine the outcome of any election in south Cameron County. As a result, politicians like Ernie Hernandez and his fixer wife Norma felt entitled to a position on the public dole. Anyone who dared to question their entitlement to the public through became a life-and-death enemy to their interests. With their Ponzi pyramid scheme of politiqueras and capos, they felt they could just about crown any candidate they wished.
In their daughter Erin's election, it became personal if anyone expressed even indifferent support for any other candidate.
"You know how mothers are," Ernie told a county worker after Norma hit up on him when she appeared at the Dancy Building seeking financial support.
But it was precisely this desperation to place their daughter in office that made them reveal their hand so blatantly and out in the open.
All this will be peeled back, layer by layer, and will reveal that the pretty peacock politicians indeed have muddy, scum-stained feet and talons with which they keep their stranglehold on the levers of power and patronage. The best is yet to come.