COMING TO AN ELECTION NEAR YOU: OP.13-RAZA UNIDA-UNITED BROWNSVILLE FORGE UNHOLY ALLIANCE

By Juan Montoya
Well, don't say he didn't tell us.
From far off in Dallas, Texas, self-made millionaire and St. Joe grad Michael Joseph Hernandez III – through his surrogate political operatives – has moved in to take control of the boards of the Brownsville Navigation District and Texas Southmost College during the 2016 elections.
The plan, to get rid off all the existing members of those boards and elect candidates who will pledge to follow his agenda

Micheal Albert Hernandez III, Owner of D&M Leasing

To do so, he has hired the likes of former Chicano political activist and founder of La Raza Unida Party Jose Angel Gutierrez and sent him down to Brownsville to do the political organization. He also has enlisted the aid of Ambiotec president and United Brownsville architect Carlos Marin.
Both men are listed as board members of OP.1033, Gutierrez as a community organizer and Marin as a "job development director."
Gutierrez, for his part, has said he is here ostensibly to run the Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic Party nomination for president.
But he makes it no secret that as part of Hernandez so-called OP.1033 master plan, one of its components is "to form a political action committee to a political action committee to fund candidates and support ballot issues and measures that are congruent with our larger goals and objectives. We also will use those funds to oppose those candidates and ballot issues and measures detrimental to our goal and objectives.
"We will vet any and all candidates running for office in Cameron County. Ensure that every candidate we support follows our ethical standards and not waver from them" and "offer support to each candidate who plans to use their position to advance the creation of high paying jobs."
Gutierrez comes to Brownsville with impressive political credentials.
He was a trustee Crystal City Independent School District (1970–1973), Urban Renewal Commissioner for Crystal City, Texas (1970–1972), County Judge for Zavala County, (1974–1978, re-elected 1978-1981), Commissioner for the Oregon Commission on International Trade (1983–1985), Administrative Law Judge in Dallas, Texas, and member of the Dallas Ethics Commission (1999–2000).
To help him make Hernandez III's dream to lift Brownsville out of poverty by October 2033 come true, he has assembled a gaggle of followers and candidates that have left many people scratching their heads.
Prominent among this is the group are adherents of United Brownsville, a self-appointed organization which draws $200,000 a year from charging $25,000 memberships to eight publicly-funded entities. The executive director of United Brownsville is Mike Gonzalez, the former mayor of Kyle, Texas, and a well-known Tea Party adherent. The coordinating board of United Brownsville is IBC President Fred Rusteberg, former UTB President Julieta Garcia and UTB VP Irv Downing. The architect of United Brownsville is none other than Marin.

So far, Rusteberg, Garcia and Marin have been fairly successful at hijacking the assets and direction of economic development in the city and steering it toward the direction that they and their cronies want to reap the profits of public works and development by co-opting local government officials to do their bidding. So far, these eight entities have given United Brownsville more than $1.2 million in protection money known as "memberships."
Hernandez, 55, a resident of Colleyville, a Dallas-Fort Worth bedroom community, owns D&M Leasing, an extremely successful high end auto leasing firm.
His promises include $1 million the Brownsville Independent School District, a rather minuscule offer considering BISD has a $500 million budget. A local blogger has said that BISD could squander that amount in a year's time on legal fees from lawsuits.
Hernandez has also pledged $1 million to Guadalupe Middle School, the pet entity of Brownsville Mayor Tony Martinez, and $2 million to United Brownsville, the shadow government described as "controlled by elitists hell-bent on steering the region's development to their profit."
So how do a car-lease millionaire, a radical Chicano activist whose presidential candidate is a self-described Democrat-Socialist, the shadow government United Brownsville, and an assemblage of political activist and politiqueros plan to seize control of the Port and TSC?
This year, they are fielding candidates to the Texas Southmost College and the port of Brownsville board of trustees to replace board members whose terms are up.
We now know that Place 5 trustee Kiko Rendon and Place 3 incumbent Ed Rivera are not running for reelection. Place 4 incumbent Trey Mendez is.
Hernandez, in far-off Dallas has heard that the graduation rate for TSC is about 6 percent, a claim that has since changed after the dissolution of the so-called UTB-TSC partnership. TSC was just accredited as an independent institution in December and a true picture of its graduation rate is unknown.
However, Hernandez has directed the Brownsville office that he wants to replace the entire board of the college and start implementing his agenda at the port. This kind of take-no-prisoners startegy ignores the fact that some embers of this board worked hard to rid TSC of the UTB Garcia's dominance, and by allying itself with United Brownsville – where she is one of three members of its coordinating board – it would hand back control to the same bunch who attained those dismal graduation rates and charged university-level tuition fees to community college students.
Since then, tuition has been lowered by more than $1,000 per semester and the graduation rates have improved.
Based on that dated graduation rate, the OP.1033-Gutierrez-United Brownsville organization has targeted Mendez and has submitted candidates for Rendon's old seat.
Beatrice Hockaday is their candidate to run against Mendez and local attorney Daniel Pizaña will contest Rendon's old seat against attorney Ruben Herrera. Pizaña is a frequent visitor at the Sanders campaign headquarters on Boca Chica Blvd.
There are four candidates running for Rivera's old seat. They are CPA Tony Juarez, UTRGV instructor and former City of Brownsville commissioner Tony Zavaleta, BISD clerk J.J. De Leon, and BISD employee Evelyn Gomez.
At the port, the candidates of the  the OP.1033-Gutierrez-United Brownsville organization are Beatriz Hockaday, a staffer at the Sanders campaign with Gutierrez, and Ed Rivera, who is running against Tito Lopez. Another candidate for Lopez's spot is Elliot Patrick Anderson, of Los Fresnos, a candidate not associated with the Gutierrez bunch whose main issue is to prevent the construction of LNG terminals at the port.
Rivera had first filed to run against John Reed, but a few words were spoken in his ear and he switched the same day to file against Lopez.

As the  OP.1033-Gutierrez-United Brownsville agenda emerges in the form of candidates to the different boards, it is apparent that Hernandez – and his Brownsville cadre – don't know the facts on the ground here. United Brownsville's director, for example, is still not a registered voter here and can hardly be seen as an example of civic participation.
United Brownsville will take Hernandez for all they can as far as it furthers their aim to steer development toward their ends. And his scorched-earth, latent-anarchy strategy will find few adherents here who have a good memory and remember how things were at the college before Garcia and her United Brownsville allies were ousted by the popular vote.
In other words, he should be careful that in his zeal to establish his dominance over local folks and dictate the political agenda he doesn't throw out the baby with the bath water.