OP 10.33 VS. DR. TONY ZAVALETA: HOW NOT TO MAKE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE (AND FUTURE ELECTIONS)

By Juan Montoya
Even after its spokesperson announced that messianic millionaire car salesman Mike Hernandez III did not have a horse in the Texas Southmost College race, OP 10.33 is showing it's still smarting from the complete rejection by voters of its candidates.
At the Brownsville Navigation District, its two candidates – a Harvard Business School graduate (Ed Rivera)  and a banker (Raul Villanueva) – were soundly defeated even after Hernandez poured a sizable amount of cash their way to defeat Tito Lopez and Ralph Cowen.
And after vacillating in their support for their candidates Daniel Pizaña, Bea Hockaday and Evelyn Cantu, they withdrew and hitched their wagon to incumbent Trey Mendez in the hopes of ingratiating themselves to the new TSC majority.
In their mission statement, OP 10.33 stated that they would vet candidates to the local boards and commissions and support those who followed the party line. The others, which they decide are "detrimental" to their aims, would receive the full measure of their wrath. Using their own words, they have stated that they would root out "corrupt" office holders and replace them with their hand-picked candidates.
The ass whooping they received in the elections must still be smarting, because now the OP 10.33 group has resorted to infantile cartoon renditions against Dr. Tony Zavaleta, who beat Cantu in the recent runoff for Rivera's old seat on the college board.
In a running cyberdialogue, OP 10.33 portrays Zavaleta a dinosaur

whose ideas belong in the 1960s and asks that he discuss his plans for the community college. After seeing himself caricatured as an old fuddy duddy, who can blame Zavaleta for engaging them in a like manner, to the point of calling whoever was posting for OP 10.33 a "pendejo" and posting a parody of their logo?
Just as they said they were targeting "corrupt" politicians and then funded candidates against Lopez and Cowen, this group seems to find just the wrong things to say and the absolute disastrous strategies to entice voters to support their aims of uplifting South Texas from poverty by October 2033.
We understand that OP 10.33 has new rules for its adherents and "volunteers."
All cell phones have to be left at the door to prevent anyone filming or recording what they say or do. No flash drives are permitted to be used on their computers to prevent the filching of voter data and other private information. And everyone is prohibited from disclosing the inner workings of the group.
If this sounds cloak-and-dagger to you, it sure looks that way to us as well.
Ridiculing a newly-elected member of the TSC board who has six years left on his term and is part of a loose majority there is not a winning strategy. At the port, you can count on a strong four (majority) to counter any efforts they might make to get at some of the architectural, engineering and construction projects underway or in the planning.
City elections are not until next year, so the next logical battleground would be the Brownsville Independent School District. Will they filed a slate against the four "corrupt" incumbents Otis Powers, Jose Chirinos, Minerva Peña and Catalina Presas-Garcia?
Remember, OP 10.33 set the parameters of the battle using their own terminology. The voters are to assume that if this group fields a candidate against an office holder, it is part of their effort to root out corruption. This irked the supporters of straight-shooter Lopez at the port to no end and lit a fire under those adherents to Cowen.
Now, in calling Zavaleta a has-been and a dinosaur, they just seem to be digging their hole a bit deeper. Got any plans for the college or the port Mike?
"Forgetdaboutit!!!!