THE MARRIAGE WARS CONTINUE BETWEEN 2 BROWNSVILLE JPs

By Juan Montoya

Wonder why JP 2-1 Linda Salazar has that big smile in the photo of the blue-ribbon cutting for Cameron County's new Levee Building in the old Wells Fargo Bank building in downtown Brownsville?

Her new office, of course, but there is a something else.

Salazar is a happy warrior.

She loves the fray of fighting to serve the people of her precinct which – like JP 2-2 Jonathan Gracia and JP 2-3 Mary Esther Sorola – serve most of the Brownsville area stretching all the way to the edges of the unincorporated areas of Los Fresnos, Rancho Viejo, and El Ranchito upriver.

And most of all, this happy warrior loves to marry people, for a slight fee, of course.

A cursory reading of the marriages performed by the three Brownsville JPs in the last four years shows that Salazar leaves Gracia and Sorola way behind in the number of nuptials performed in the precinct. And now, in her new location, she is showing that she isn't about to let go of the gravy.

The cost of marriages fluctuates between $200 for a ceremony performed in the office during working hours to an agreed-upon price higher than that for weekend marriages in some other location preferred by the happy couples. At an average of $200 a shot, it amounts to real dough.

By any measure, Salazar – averaging about 600 weddings per year – stands to pocket $120,000 over her $50,983 salary plus the $5,400 annual auto allowance which brings it to $56,383.

The breakdown by JP has changed dramatically in the last three years. Before, Salazar was the undisputed Czar of the Rings, but Gracia is quickly making inroads into the nuptial racket. The last three years' numbers are below:

                        Salazar                                  Gracia                          Sorola
Jan.-Dec. 2014: 571                                        (Took office Jan. 2015)
Jan.-Dec. 2015: 682                                        64                                 95
Jan.-Dec. 2016: 676                                       196                                82
Jan.-Nov. 2017: 504                                       232                                74                             

As can plainly be seen, couples just seem to gravitate toward Salazar for some reason.

Loose tongues used to say that she had a system in place at the Cameron County Clerk's Office of staff who would steer the couples toward her office. But now we understand that county clerk Sylvia Garza Perez has instructed her staff to give the couples a list of all the JPs in the county where they can have their ceremony performed to remain neutral above the fray.

And with the new offices are in place and the county clerk's office is located in the floor above the second story where the JPs offices are, it may be a little more difficult to manipulate the couples to go to her office instead of the other two JPs there.

Not to worry. Salazar has ordered her staff to place a large bronze-plated JP office sign at the doors of the elevator of the new building so that her name will be the first one couples see when they exit the elevators.

In fact, it was reported that she took umbrage when one of her staff turned the sign backwards on the tripod after 5 p.m. Apparently, that clerk no longer works in her office.

Sorola, meanwhile, has decided that she isn't going to get into the wedding ceremony feud and has announced she will not charge for performing the ceremonies. If they want their ceremonies held Monday through Friday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., she will perform them at her office for free.

Couples who want to marry outside those hours will have to make arrangements with her office to reach a mutual agreement of location and fee.

"The judge just got tired of all the bickering going on over wedding and decided to perform the ceremonies for free," said a county staffer. "It was getting too weird for her."