AS OP.1033'S MOTIVES ARE QUESTIONED, FEWER ANSWERS

By Juan Montoya
By now you've seen them.
Numerous billboards throughout Brownsville feature a watchdog shield and complain about corruption living with opportunity being incompatible.
They also demand good jobs now in English and Spanish.
And of you followed their directions and go to their website, they they they will support (and fund?) candidates who use their positions to advance the creation of jobs and ensure all government assistance provided reaches the people of Brownsville."
They are the OP.1033 group funded by car-lease millionaire Mike Hernandez who has assembled a cadre of unlikely bedfellow from the founder of La Raza Unida to a gaggle of local politiqueros to achieve his plan of ending poverty in Brownsville by October, 2033 by providing OPportunities (therefore OP.1033)
That sounds benign enough, we thought. But when pressed on the candidates they are supporting now to achieve those admirable ends, the conversations descends into bland generalities.
Just ask local developer Bill Hudson, no lightweight when it comes to creating jobs and opportunities for local building contractors, for a profit, of course.
Hudson asked the OP.1033 group to speak up on which candidates they were supporting in the current elections (port and TSC?).
"Why not speak up? "
"When we choose a candidate we will speak up," was the evasive reply.
This was after it was revealed in the pages of the cyber media (the Herald has been, as usual, missing from the discourse) that at least two candidates for the Texas Southmost College board have been associated with their organization at their headquarters on the corner of  Alridge Avenue and Boca Chica Blvd. (across the street from Taco Palenque).
One is Beatriz Hockaday who filed to run against incumbent Trey Mendez. Hockaday is a clerical assistant in the OP.1033 payroll.
The other is Daniel Pizaña s who filed to run against candidate Ruben Herrera. Both are running for the position now held by Kiko Rendon who chose not to run for re-election.
Pizaña was a frequent visitor to the HQ on the days before he filed.
Yet, the OP.1033 group say they have no candidates in the TSC race.
The same applies to the Brownsville Navigation District where TSC trustee Ed Rivera filed to run first against John Reed and then against Tito Lopez after someone reached out and touched him. Another candidate – Raul Villanueva – denied any ties to the group after filing to run against Ralph Cowen.
Those actions drew a further question from Hudson who asked if they had "zero political organization nor funding of movements?"
The response to Hudson (and Zeke Silva's) inquiries into whether the funding they sought would go for studies that "never create any jobs" instead of "giving small business incentives to create more jobs" was a bland "please check out website."
If Hernandez up in Ft. Worth will call all the shots and denies running candidates in local races despite their association with his local HQs, does this mean that the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing? And if it is true that future campaign reports will show that he and Carlos Marin support Mendez financially, does this not also show a disconnect with their local office which is fielding opponent against him? Or is this just a balloon fed to a local pandering blogger to cover their snafu?
So does OP.1033 expect local residents to support and follow it as an act of faith to be an "Army for Good" in the Rio Grande Valley?