NORMA FEELS NOT-SO-LITTLE ERIN HAS BEEN VICTIMIZED

By Juan Montoya
If anything, Norma Hernandez – wife of Pct. 2 commissioner Ernie Hernandez and mother of JP 2-2 Erin Hernandez Garcia – has chutzpah.
In a letter to the editor of the Brownsville Herald published Sunday, Mama Norma defends her not-so-little baby girl.
Now, before she mistakes that word for an insult, let's make sure she understands its meaning. Chutzpah refers to someone having nerve, or as cartoon characters pronounce it "noive."
First she admits that politicians and elected officials – by seeking the public scrutiny and a salary from the public treasury – rightfully come under closer scrutiny than the average citizen. The First Amendment guarantees it and they accept it when they seek the office and accept the perks of office (like salaries, retirement, and car allowances) from the taxpayers.

Ms. Hernandez is apparently miffed because her daughter has been the source of scandal and controversy over the issuing and personal profiting from the sale of fraudulent waivers to the state-mandated 72-hour waiting period between the granting of a license and the performance of the ceremony.
She complains that po' li'l Erin was named in a "frivolous" lawsuit in federal court (since withdrawn) where a couple's attorney was trying to make sure their residency applications before the Immigration and Citizenship Service was not rejected because their same-day marriage was based on the above-mentioned fraudulent waiver.
The, without attributing the source of the chisme, she blames a "person" for going next door to JP 2-1 Linda Salazar's office to file a case and in the course of doing business quips that the office should have more marriage ceremony business "now that Erin Garcia is getting all this bad press."
She says this "person" was "kicking someone who is down is horrible, and kicking a young woman when she is down is horrible in my book...Picking on a young educated lady will not win a person many points."
But why do you say Erin is "down?" The wicked flee when no man accuseth, the Scriptures say. As far as we knew, no one has been indicted or convicted on this matter, yet, although Erin is certainly the only target we know of in this affair.
Well, we think we know who this horrible "person" might be that you refer to. It has to be local attorney Alex Dominguez who just happens to be running for Pct. 2 commissioner against, you guessed it, your husband Pct. 2 commissioner Ernie Hernandez.
Dominguez just happens to be a successful young attorney who has handled more cases in the local courts than Erin has the entire time she has had her practice. And the fact that he quipped with a clerk in the court of the neighboring JP about the wedding ceremonies is because it is an open secret that there is a fierce competition between both JPs to perform the ceremonies which can being from $150 to $250 each.
In fact, the fighting for the cash to perform the wedding ceremonies goes right to the heart of the matter.
Erin was the only JP who issued a written waiver (she had the form manufactured in her own office), charged couples for it, and then married them on the spot. In fact, of the 13 or so marriages she performed based on these waivers, a majority of them were performed less than 1 hour after they had acquired their licenses from the county clerk. And 10 of the 13 were people born in Mexico who were in the process of improving their immigration status.

In short, Erin and her staff were lying in wait for the couples as they made their way to make an appointment for the wedding ceremony to be performed after the mandatory 72 hours. But why let a live customer go when you can issue the fraudulent waiver and take his money on the spot? In less than a year in office, Erin has performed some 300 weddings that (at a discount) at $200 has netted her some $60,000 that go straight into her pocket. Campaigns, we agree, are expensive things.
But surely she can stand a little scrutiny for all that cash, can't she Mama Norma?
The discovery that Erin was issuing these waivers has caused a grand jury to seize the marriage records of her daughter's office and prompted Cameron County Luis Saenz to seek an opinion from the Texas Attorney General to determine whether she is authorized to issue the waivers in the first place, whether she can charge for them, and who should keep the cold, hard cash.
In other words, the reason for Mama's indignation was that her daughter was caught red-handed taking ill-earned money and pocketing it for her own self. Her neighbor JP surely must have thought it was unfair competition when Erin introduced the waiver scheme.
But Mamas being what they are, "these actions" on the part of your daughter have not "opened your eyes to the types of campaigns people will run, and the kind of people they are."
May we remind you that as you read this, there is an ongoing joint state and federal probe into the massive mail-in and walk-in early voting fraud that generated enough votes for Erin to overcome a 500-vote deficit in the 2012 primary and then win the runoff? You might want to reflect on your own actions, Norma.
And as far as that goes, the clerk who was recently arraigned for taking money to sign off on community service so the defendants did not have to comply with the sentence, has said she knows loads about how that office is run and is willing to take people under the bus with her if push comes to shove.
In fact, we have learned that some of those defendants who sought to avoid performing the community-service sentences were often referred to your daughter's office from other courts, including the JP 2-1 office, the same office from which you say the chisme about that awful "person" emanated.
That should give "people" something to talk about.
At this stage of the game, Mama Norma ( no stranger to vote harvesting, we understand), one should learn that someone who lives in a glass house should not throw stones. The threat of a grand jury indictment is hanging over your po' li'l girl's head through actions which she personally chose to take. Perhaps there was some dysfunctional parental instruction given her and her sibling that led them to become "the kind of people they are."