FREAK SHOW TENT A DIVERSION FROM BISD Pl. 4 RACE

By Juan Montoya
This November, voters in the Brownsville Independent School District Place 4 races will have a choice between Coach Joe Rodriguez, Shirley La Bowman and Mary Rey.
Despite the lame bleatings emanating from the freak-show tent and its main occupants – blogger Robert Wightman and side kick Mary Rey – the district will print the ballots as the candidates filled out their ballot applications.
That would seem to be pretty cut and dried except for the delusions of conspiracy buff Wightman who imagines a nefarious plot against all that is good and decent in the Western world (foremost himself, of course) and his reams of obscure legalistic citations.
This is the same guy who was willing to overlook all the tangible and material wrongdoing by former Cameron County Pct. 2 commissioner Ernie Hernandez and his daughter Erin, the Justice of the Peace for Pct. 2, Place 2 to concentrate instead on their opponents' peccadilloes and run to the Texas Ethic Commission to denounce them as Great Deceivers because they had forgotten to put the word "for" in their campaign signs or online announcements.
(That's Wightman at right getting the inside scoop from trustee Minerva Peña.)
He was willing to overlook the fact that Hernandez was caught manipulating the Civil Service process to have his brother-in-law hired by the county and that Erin was caught manufacturing and selling waivers to the state's mandatory 72-hour waiting period between the issuance of a marriage license and the performance of the ceremony.
In Ernie's case, the tangible gain was a county job attained by cheating. In Erin's it was the $150 to $250 fee for performing the ceremony. In either case, it was wrong.
But Wightman's craft lies in diverting the readers' attention away from issues germane to the question at hand and distorting the issue to some arcane – and ludicrous – legalistic minutiae of the realm where he exists.
Such is his desire to be relevant to this community's social and political life that he invariably inserts himself in the processes so that all may gaze in marvel at his eminence, the legal scholar.
In the Place 4 race for the BISD, he has – in so many weasel-worded ways – accused both "Coach" Joe Rodriguez and "La" Bowman of brazenly violating the sacred code of popular and democratic elections by asking that their name appear on the ballot with their local nickname.
Obviously he was not privy to the fact that when Rodriguez and Bowman were putting their names on the applications to be on the ballot, it was Rodriguez who objected to Bowman inserting the word "La" because it was not her name.
When BISD officials told him that his self-given title "Coach" was not his real name either and that both would be off the ballot if he did not agree, Rodriguez desisted.
That is the truth.
But Wightman, smelling a "gotcha" kill, has gone even further.
He has – in so many weasel-worded ways – accused Bowman of offering Rey $5,000  for her race against Rodriguez and Bowman. (We stand corrected. Ms. Rey allegedly told Wightman that the mystery man who came to her house was offering her $5,000 as a campaign contribution and that she saw the money.)
By his own twisted deduction, it could not have been Rodriguez who offered Ray the money. So it must have been La Bowman. It's called plausible denial if it turns out to have been a mere fabrication of his addled brain.

Uhh?
It's instructive that Ms. Rey – whose most public deposition performance has been dusted off the shelf and brought back to the public glare – always seems to be in some way connected to some fabulous sum of money.
(That's her besides Carlos Quintanilla in happier times when they were allies in protesting the cost of items in the jail commissary run by Rick Zayas and Ruben Cortez.)
You remember the deposition. It was taken by none other that Rick Zayas, the former BISD trustee who is licking his wounds because Lucy Longoria beat him like she caught him stealing chickens in the 2010 elections. Rick hasn't gotten over that humiliation and rejection by the voters at the polls at the hands of that Little Woman.
 At the time that Zayas and Rey made the deposition (one-sided and unsubstantiated, of course), Wightman was Rick's pal. The two later had a falling out and the scorned blogger turned on him and accused him of (gasp!) being a money-hungry lawyer who was for the resurrection of the HealthSmart lawsuit in hopes of some financial gain.
And speaking of money, Ms. Rey agreed to be listed as the president of the defeatzayascortespowers PAC in the hopes of making a little dough in the bargain and getting some free legal representation for her two sons, both of who were charged with murdering a Las Prietas man over a $500 marijuana deal gone bad. Well, that's not quite true. It seems that they got the wrong guy (his brother) and shot a soon-to-graduate college student in the back as he entered his home instead.
According to the Brownsville Herald's Laura B. Martinez (August 17, 2011):
"Two years after Aaron Castillo was shot and killed outside his Garden Park home, a third suspect has been arrested in connection with the shooting, police report.
Court documents show that Rodolfo Bolivar, 32, was arrested by Brownsville police July 28 on a murder warrant. Bolivar remains jailed at the Carrizalez-Rucker Detention Center in Olmito in lieu of $1 million bail.
Bolivar, along with his brother Randall Bolivar, 25, and Rolando Garza, 32, allegedly shot Castillo over a dispute about $500 that Castillo’s brother owed to Randall Bolivar back in February 2009.
The physical confrontation began at a convenience store and as Castillo attempted to flee, his car was rammed by an unknown vehicle, police have said.
Castillo, 30, managed to drive to his home in the 200 block of Garden Park Street and as he was getting out of his pickup, he was shot multiple times by two gunmen."

Wightman, who is fond of quoting Scripture to buttress an argument, would do well to heed the Word in Matthew 7 16-20

16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit.19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits."
Ms. Rey – and who can blame a mother?  – was willing to be named president of the PAC in return (she thought) for $50,000 worth of legal representation for her sons. There was a dispute about that as well between members of the PAC and her and she turned on them and went with her tale of woe to Zayas, who was still smarting from the drubbing at Longoria's hands, and who welcomed her story in hopes of somehow getting even with the Little Woman who beat the Big Important Guy.

Well, that got nowhere. Yet, here she is being used again but this time by the likes of a disbarred lawyer on his absurd life's quest to find a way to make himself relevant.

This is standard Wightman. He'll make noise and bluster and then issue a veiled threat of filing a lawsuit if folks don't heed his wisdom.

Take it from someone who has been there. Wightman can't sue. If he does, a motion to have him declared a vexatious litigant will put a quick stop to that. It has happened before and it will happen again if he does. The last time such a motion was filed in a case, he challenged the constitutionality of the statute all the way to the Texas Supreme Court – and lost every step of the way. The insurers cut their losses and gave him a pittance to do away with the nuisance lawsuit about two years into the legal hellhole crated by Robert Beelzebub.

Anyway, Wightman has no business criticizing Bowman for using the article "La" as a ploy to – as he charges, again, without any proof – attract the Hispanic vote.

Read what the Dallas Observer said about how he acquired the last name Cervantes with which he now hyphenates his last name.

"In his quest to unseat a powerful incumbent senator, he attempted to place his name on the Democratic primary ballot as Bobby Wightman-Cervantes. But after a complaint was lodged with the state Democratic Party claiming his true last name is simply Wightman, the party chair dropped the Hispanic portion of his surname from the ballot. Wightman-Cervantes then sued the party. He believes Tejano Democrats, the official Hispanic caucus of the Texas Democratic Party, are undermining his candidacy."

If it is true, as it apparently is, that Wightman and Rey have become a tag team to derail the BISD's election process under the delusion that a legal subterfuge will somehow catapult Bowman and Rodriguez off the ballot and have Ms. Rey waltz in without a vote being cast, they are in for a rude awakening. No one will have any of it, thank you. We say let the voters decide.

As far as Wightman and Rey, we Hispanics have a saying that fits them like a glove: "Dios los hace, y solos se juntan."