SEASON OF THE WITCH: AT-LARGE-A CANDIDATE SUSAN RUBALCAVA LASHES OUT AT OPPONENT TINO VILLARREAL FOR P.U.B. ABSENCES IGNORING PARENTS WERE CANCER-STRICKEN

 Special to El Rrun-Rrun

Even though the filing period for city commission candidates isn't even over yet (Feb. 17), one of the candidates vying for the At-Large-A position now held by commissioner John Cowen has already lashed out at her opponent Celestino "Tino" Villarreal's attendance record as a member of the Brownsville Public Utility Board.

Susan Ruvalcaba, who lists herself as Owner/Administrator/ and Director of Nurses at Mesquite Home Health LLC, took to her Facebook pages to criticize Villarreal for his absences from the period from October 2017 to January 2019. Obviously, that attendance record is part of an information request that Rubalcava made to the PUB.

"Commitment is important," she warns her social media followers. "Think twice before you vote...We need real members of the community to protect each other."

That sounds legitimate. 

What isn't legit and perhaps a deliberate oversight on Ms. Rubalcava's part is that other PUB records – readily attainable from PUB  at the time –  show that Villarreal had written PUB CEO John Bruciak that as an only son, he was dealing with the fact that his parents had been ill for some time and that they both had been diagnosed with stage 4 and stage 3 cancer. 

His mother eventually succumbed to the disease and his father is fighting as a cancer survivor.

Rubalcava is right. Talk about commitment being important. And members of the community to protect each other.

"Both my parents have been diagnosed with cancer," Villarreal wrote Bruciak when he resigned effective immediately March 6, 2019. 

"They will be having hospital visits and procedures over the next months. As an only child my responsibility to attend to them is going to be my main priority...I believe our city needs individuals who can attend all the meetings and serve the interests of our citizens better than I can due to my present circumstances."

If an only son removed himself willingly from the BPUB to attend to his cancer-stricken parents, what kind of compassion and "commitment" is she demanding from him, or any child whose parents have been stricken with a terminal disease and need his help? 

And just to stir the pot, she mentions that he was there when the Tenaska debacle was closing. In fact, by 2015, two years before Villarreal came on the PUB board, Bruciak and then-mayor Tony Martinez already knew the plant was not going to be built. Tenaska officially removed itself from the project in 2017, the same year Villarreal was appointed to the PUB.

Villarreal wrote in his Facebook page that he apologized to Rubalcava and Brownsville citizens for serving only two years of his four-year term and did miss the meetings she cites on the record.

"You see, what is wrong in politics today is that candidates lower themselves with ruthless attacks and fail to to research issues properly," he wrote. 

"They only grab one part of the story and transpose ill-intended lies into the narrative...In a matter of three months, my life as an only child changed completely. I became a care giver and the only source of support for both of them...

"It sickens me that I have to go back and remember those terrible days just because a cold-hearted campaign wants to use this as a political banner. It is shameful not having empathy for others...I visited my mother's grave not too long ago and asked her for guidance...What I heard was what she always yelled at me from the stands before I put my helmet on and ran into the field: "Tu Puedes Mijo.