SANCHEZ LETS OUT ALL THE STOPS WITH TSC'S RIVERA

By Juan Montoya
Once again, Capt. Bob (Robert Sanchez) has pulled a rabbit out of his hat and caught people's eyes.
It's not the alligator gar he advertises on his restaurant on Price Road.
And it's not the stuffed mako shark he used to put up on it. In fact, it's not even Mr. Shrimp waving at the passing traffic.
No, today the Captain got political. He has allowed Ed Rivera, the incumbent for Texas Southmost College trustee to place a campaign sing way on top of the marquee and below the Capt. Bob's sign.
We knew Sanchez was supporting Rivera – who is facing Brownsville Independent School District employee J.J. De Leon – in the current election for the community college trustee.
Now, unless you know some of the Sanchez family history with TSC, it might seem strange that Bob would go out of his way to state his support so publicly for a candidate. The fact of the matter is that Sanchez has a personal attachment to the college going way back to his late uncle Henry Sanchez.
Henry was a 12-year state representative before returned to Brownsville. Henry was originally from San Benito and his wife, the late Maria Luisa Tijerina, hailed from the Premont-Alice area where the family has a large spread lying atop oil and gas.
When Henry returned to the Valley, he took umbrage with the "partnership" forged between TSC and the University of Texas because he said that the pact did not include any money from the state like the rest of the university system. In fact, he was the first one to point out that the UT System had exclude TSC and Pan American in Edinburg from the Permanent University Fund (PUF) which funds the rest of the system institutions.
"There's no money in it," he said of the "partnership."
Toward that end, Henry started a weekly tabloid called "Crossroads" that weighed in heavily against the partnership and resolved to get it terminated. He even protested that the legislature's approval of the sale of the old president's house to Julieta and Oscar Garcia was not on the up and up since there head been $100,000s spent on improvements and the house had been sold for a mere $125,000 to the Garcias, partly, he thought, because she had been a staunch supporter of the partnership and TSC's exclusion from the PUF.
It was 18 years ago Charro Days that Henry passed away from a burst aorta in the family's South Padre Island Condominium after a day of buttonholing people at the SombreroFest that the partnership was a bad idea and that the college should go back to its original mission of providing the first rung on the ladder to education by keeping tuition and fees low.
After a time – and a dismal performance by the UTB-TSC partnership as far as fees and academics – a majority of the trustees on the TSC board decided Henry had been right and voted to terminate the union. One of their first moves was to lower tuition and fees. They also voted to take back the college to providing technical and vocational certification classes in the trades, as the college gad provided before.
In a sense, Henry had been vindicated.
So when he put up the sign for Rivera, Sanchez was motivated by maintaining Henry's efforts and to help a candidate with his views. But there has always been a bit of the political in both Henry and Bob. In fact, some may even say they both had a bit of the political prankster in them.
Remember when on the floor of the state house Henry took a large mailbag that he said contained thousands of letters from his constituents supporting some measure for which he was voting?
Well, his opponents discovered that although the bag did have some letters, it also contained wadded up newspapers to make it appear it had more than were really there.
In Bob's case, it just so happens that the placement of the sign is clearly visible from the BISD main office where Rivera's opponent De Leon works as a personal secretary for district administrator Bertha Peña.
Every time De Leon looks out the window, he can't help but see Rivera's sign atop the Capt. Bob's sign.