HERALD CONVENIENTLY MISSES THE POLITIQUERA STORY

By Juan Montoya
If the Brownsville Herald had sent a reporter to the sentencing of Sonia Solis, the politiquera who was convicted of voting five times for "disabled" voters allegedly living in the same one-room apartment on Shidler Drive, that reporter would have heard her presentencing report.
In that report, federal agents said that Solis had told them she had been told how to fill out the bogus applications and send them in someone else's name by at four other politiqueras who met and taught her how to do it at Cameron County Pct. 2 commissioner and wife Norma's place of business Fiesta Graphics.
The initials of these four "voter assistance" specialists were TC, HB, MO, and NH.
They assured her, the agents reported, that the women had told her not to worry about getting in trouble because "they had done it for years and never had any trouble."
Now, no matter what anyone says about the gullibility of federal agents and Asst. U.S. Attorneys, it is highly implausible that Solis would have made up these initials on her own.
The average political pundit would have guessed that TC was none other than politiquera Tomasita Chavez, that HB referred to Herminia Becerra, that MO meant Margarita Ozuna, and that NH was none other than Queen Politiquera herself Norma Hernandez.
Federal Judge Hilda Tagle knew Solis was not being truthful when she said she didn't know what she was doing was wrong and that she hadn't gotten paid for doing it. In fact, all Solis admitted – besides voting five times – was that she had been given use of a car to use for the elections and then many months later. Agents discovered the name on the registration was AG, which many guessed to be Abel Gomez, then involved in a runoff for constable. In fact, Erin Hernandez Garcia was also locked in a runoff battle with YTB (Yolanda Teran Begum).
Garcia Hernandez was trailing by some 500 votes in the race and the Hernandez's and their allies pulled out all the stops. In fact, they were so embarrassingly sloppy that they left a trail a mile wide and allowed the government – guided by research done by CAVA and the Begum team – simply followed behind and picked up the telltale pieces.
But all this was missed by the local newspaper readers because the Brownsville newspaper (in Cameron County) was more concerned with the resignation of Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño and had him cover that story instead of one of the most politically revealing sentencing hearings here.
Here we had a county commissioner who is currently under indictment, his wife, who federal prosecutors confirmed was under a federal investigation, and their daughter, one of the candidates for which all these skulldrudgery was being performed all playing a part in the Solis drama.
But, apparently, all this was lost on the head honchos at the Brownsville Holler.
In fact, all this information is contained in the presentencing report to which Solis' attorney Rey Cantu objected to and which Tagle overruled.
We will try to get a copy of that report in the abeyance of the local watchdog.