ON DEC. 2015, A CLUE OF SYL AND GIL'S DEMO PRIMARY SLATE

By Juan Montoya
By now those of us who have seen the election time publications know what they are about.
Whether an independent organ or one associated with the different parties, it is basically the slate that the particular faction is supporting or, as the case may be, not supporting.
When we were in journalism school we could take a graduate level course called Content Analysis and predict the future coverage of many publications. Let's apply that to this first issue.
Someone pointed out to us that we had missed the first signals for the upcoming Democratic Party primary on March 1 (early voting began Tuesday through Feb. 26).
Even though Luis Saenz had long announced that he was running for reelection for district attorney, the magazine of Texas Democratic Party chairman (and mentor of county chair Amber Medina) Gilberto Hinojosa,bears no mention of him at all in the entire premier issue of Dec. 2015.
His opponent, Carlos Masso, had also already announced prior to the mag's publication deadline of Dec. 4 and did make it. Why?
Likewise, county judge candidate Dan Sanchez had announced his resignation as Pct. 4 county commissioner to run for county judge as far back as Nov. 10, and then "officially" less than a week later.
His name also doesn't appear among the announced candidates for the Demo primary.
But former Brownsville mayor Eddie Treviño's name (and photos) do appear plastered all over the Filemon Vela fundraiser photo pages and he bought a half page ad with a :Yes, we can," slogan similar to the popular Rosie the Riverter poster in WWII.  Eddie even strikes the pose, minus the bandanna.
The front page of the magazine features three Demo rising stars: Judge Migdalia Lopez, JP Mike Trejo, and Cameron County Clerk Sylvia Garza-Perez. Each of them has a full-page feature inside the glossy magazine.
This is, obviously, Hinojosa and Garza Perez's slate to push.
In fact, the 'founder" and CEO of the magazine is someone named Silvestre "Silver" Aguilar Treviño, Jr. He is also a contributing writer, ad salesman and chair of the Demo Party Media Committee. Like the popular furniture store advertiser, he probably is also the handyman and janitor at the plant.
With that in mind, it should have been easy for anyone who saw the magazine to deduce that Garza-Perez is supporting Treviño over Sanchez and Masso over Saenz.
Behind it all, of curse, is the cleft between the two factions of the party which chair Medina alludes to in her letter from the chair.
"Ultimately, the primary is about deciding which candidates we support over another candidate(s), and other times hard decisions have to be made," she writes. "But this does not mean we cannot all come together in unity after the primary is over."
\Wishful thinking Amber. Ask your mentor Gilbert Hinojosa what happened that drove Democrats to cross the street and support the Republican candidates for county judge since way back when Tony Garza and Carlos Cascos controlled the roost.
"Sometimes," as John F. Kennedy used to say, party loyalty asks too much."