PEOPLE SPOKE: CASCOS IN FOR 4 MORE, GILBERT LOSES

By Juan Montoya
If there is one message that came through loud and clear from the voting in Cameron County yesterday is that they are comfortable with Carlos Cascos as their county judge and that the way the election was run leaves a lot to be desired.
According to poll watchers and others who were awaiting the returns at the Cameron County Courthouse lobby, it wasn't until the wee hours of the morning (some say 2 a.m., some say as late as 5 a.m.) that anyone knew for certain if their candidates had won or lost.
The comparison with neighboring Hidalgo County is irresistible. While they were announcing the winners in their big races (sheriff, state reps, etc) by 9:30 pm. or so), the Cameron County tallies showed only the early voting totals until well past midnight.
Cameron County Elections administrator Chris Davis blamed the low-tech approach and niggardly administration for not providing him with the state-of-the-art touch screens that his neighbors out at Edinburg have. But even former elections bungler (and technology challenged) Roger Ortiz had the results of the varied elections before midnight.
What have we gotten from computer whiz kid Davis? Well, we had the infamous unsealed black bags from whence emanated missing votes, his obdurate intransigence to recognize that his being the son-in-law of a candidate made his being the chief counting officer an apparent conflict of interest, and then this.

So how does one explain that Cascos, a Republican won, and Oscar X. Garcia, the 357th District Court Judge, also a Republican lost to Juan Magallanes?
Cascos beat Rivera 21,128 to 18,164, a 2,966 difference. Magallanes beat Garcia 20,421 to 18,300, a 2,121 difference, almost a reverse mirror image in results.
Garcia beat on Magallanes for his intimate relationship with convicted 404th District Judge Abel Limas and had gained a momentum that faltered at the end. On the other hand, Rivera's flip-flopping on the positions with Sylvia Garza-Perez angered many Democrats. His firing of his Girl Friday Letty Perez, a mover and shaker in Los Fresnos, two months before the election didn't help either.
And dare we say it? Rivera's longtime association with Gilbert Hinojosa didn't help matters, either. 
On the BISD side, Position One winner Cesar Lopez threw tens of thousands of dollars to eke out a win over cash-strapped Luci Longoria 5,701 to 5,225, only a 476 vote difference. In fact, Lopez got just a bit over   one-third of the vote since there were 14,133 total votes cast for the four candidates that included Juan Pacheco (the Cheezmeh candidate), with 1,223 votes and surprising Roland Guerra with 1,984. This is not too impressive, but the boys who put the Big Money behind Lopez will take it just the same. It's time to do some business.
The one race where the interests that be who wanted to keep a majority on the board failed was in the race between Carlos Elizondo and Roberto Rodriguez, in Position 2. There was a bit of internecine conflict working here, however. Rodriguez was identified as running on a Joe Rodriguez, Lopez ticket, but lost anyway. Robert Rodriguez is the father-in-law of Arnold Flores, the Cameron County administrator who lost to Sylvia Perez-Garza for county clerk. Elizondo and his firefighter buddies worked long and hard on that campaign only to have Flores recede into the familial camp when he was asked to help Elizondo. Blood is thicker than hydrant water, we guess.
Coach Joe Rodriguez proved that you can still squeeze blood from a turnip with his win over Shirley Bowman and Mary Rey, besting their combined total of 5,688 (3,727 for Rey and 2,961 for "La" Bowman) by 1,534 with 7,222 votes. Elizondo's 7,411 made him the top vote-getter in the BISD races.
Someone pointed out that one of the linkages that was not apparent to too many people was the fact that BISD president Otis Powers was Joe Rivera's campaign treasurer, and the county clerk's loss effectively stopped the Democrats from having a direct pipeline to the district's $534 million budget.
Still, the biggest loser in Tuesdays' election has to be Texas State Democratic Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa and wife Cindy. They were pinning their hopes on Rivera to remove the stain of defeat and of having a Republican elected county judge in Gilbert's stomping grounds.
With the state (and national) Democratic Party getting whooped by the resurgent Republicans, some were looking to Cameron County as the consolation prize for the Hinojosas and it didn't happen. Is it over for Gilbert as state Demo chair?