ERNIE HERNANDEZ: A CASE OF LOYALTY MISPLACED

By Juan Montoya
When politiquera non-parallèle Margarita Rangel Ozuna, was accused of a carrier envelope action and assisting voter violation during the 2010 Democratic primary, she was harvesting votes for the Ernie Hernandez campaign ticket for Cameron County commissioner for Precinct 2.
Ozuna was indicted by a state grand jury for “knowingly depositing the carrier envelope of Ricardo Liceaga Alonso in the mail without providing the defendant’s signature, printed name, and residence address on reverse side of envelope.”
Further, the indictment charged that Ozuna “knowingly prepared the ballot without direction from Ricardo Liceaga Alonso and assisted him to vote.
Count two accused Ozuna of failing to provide a signature, printed name, residence address on the official carrier envelope while assisting him.
Count two accused Ozuna of failing to provide a signature, printed name, residence address on the official carrier envelope while assisting Liceaga-Alonso, the indictment showed.
Ozuna, through attorney Carlos Masso – also a candidate in the primary who benefited from her vote-harvesting – entered a written waiver where she agreed in her no-contest plea to plead guilty to the lesser offense in her indictment “in exchange for 12 months in county jail, which will be suspended and Defendant will be placed on community supervision for 12 months and pay a $250 fine.”
Judge Janet Leal ordered that during that supervision period, Ozuna would not be allowed to participate in election-related activities.
According to Ozuna's friends, when she approached Hernandez and his daughter Erin Hernandez-Garcia for help to pay her $250 fine, she was told that business was slow and that they couldn't help her.
Angered that the very people who profited from her actions that netted her the sentence handed down by the judge, she and her friends in politics vowed to do everything in their power to make sure neither the commissioner nor his daughter get reelected this coming 2014 primary.
And when former Brownsville resident Sonia Solis was indicted in federal court for obtaining multiple mail-in ballots by forging applications on behalf of people she said were disabled, she was also aligned with a local politiquera Tomasita Chavez who was harvesting the vote of the elderly and disabled on behalf of the Erin Garcia-Hernandezes and their political clique.
Solis pleaded guilty to voting more than once in the 2012 primary runoff election in Cameron County in early November and will be sentenced sentenced on Feb. 5, 2014, in front of U.S. District Judge Hilda Tlagle. She faces up to five years in federal prison and a maximum fine of $10,000.
What did Ernie or Erin do in that case on behalf of Solis? Nothing.
Fast forward to November 2013 when  six-woman jury all of 40 minutes to agree with Cameron County Asst. DA Gus Garza that they send a "loud, clear message" that local residents would no longer stand for political corruption when they found finding Ernie Hernandez's administrative assistant Raul Garza Salazar guilty on three indictments.
Salazar was convicted of helping Roberto Cadriel, Ernie's brother-in-law to get hired by the county by having someone take the civil sdervice exam for him after he failed to pass it twice and then providing him with the answers to another exam for a security-guard position. Hernandez told the local daily that he only learned about his brother-in-law's hiring and resignation when he read their online edition on the Internet. During Salazar's trial, Cadriel told the jury that the commissioner had told him he would get him a job with the county after he heard Cadriel talk to Norma Hernandez, Ernie's wife and Cadriel's sister, about having trouble finding work. He said Hernandex told him to talk to Salazar at his Pct. 2 office so he could help him.
The person who could have most defended Salazar's actions was his boss Hernandez, but he opted to take the Fifth Amendment and refused to testify in the case claiming he could have been indicted for perjury if he deviated from the testimony he gave before the grand jury who issued the indictments.
The jury found Salazar guilty on two counts of official misconduct and one count of tampering with a government document in the 445th District Court presided by visiting judge Federico Hinojosa. He is scheduled to be sentenced December 11. Salazar, a convicted felon, could receive up to a year in jail on that conviction.

This Thanksgiving Day, Hernandez posted on his FB page thanking everyone for their "confidence and loyalty."

Judging from his past action on behalf of those who have been thrown under the bus to further his and his daughter's political careers, that loyalty seems a wee misplaced.
(P.S. We have just learned that Hernandez is no longer employing  Ed Cyganiewicz as his legal representative and has hired counsel from Corpus Christi in anticipation of legal troubles in the near future. Does he know something we don't?)