PINK APE ONCE AGAIN IS THE 800-LB. GORILLA IN THE ROOM

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

How do you measure success? 

How about you manage a campaign for mayor and your candidate – John Cowen, generally recognized as  Republican-leaning white guy in overwhelmingly Hispanic South Texas – beats out his three opponents, and one of them, a woman who had the endorsement of the Texas Democratic Party through their statewide Project LIFT?

Now, granted, municipal elections are supposed to be non-partisan affairs, but the two parties' contest for the hearts and minds (votes) in South Texas has obscured that fact. In fact, one of the candidates for the At-Large-A commission seats in the upcoming runoff is Susan Ruvalcaba a Trumptite who welcomed the former president to South Texas six days after he incited the January 6 insurrection.

Cameron County Democratic chair Jared Hockema has made it clear that the choice of who Project LIFT endorsed in the mayoral race – in this case current District 2 commissioner Jessica Tetreau – is not up to the local Democratic Party leadership, but the directors of the project in Austin. To muddle things up even more Project LIFT endorsed Tino Villarreal over Ruvalcaba, the Trump flag-waving, right-wing ideologue. Who's on first?

All of South Texas is, for all practical, purposes, locked in the Democrat-Republican struggle, the former to retain its primacy among local voters, the other to chip away at it. For example, the GOP has made it clear that they will target Democrats at every level and have targeted Vicente ("Con la Gente') Gonzalez after their standard bearer – Latina gun-toting, border wall lover Mayra Flores –  failed miserably as did numerous Republican candidates across the country during the midterms.

Pink Ape President and CEO Rodrigo Moreno fielded Cowen and Villarreal in their races. One, the current At-Large-A city commissionerCowen, won the mayorship outright over three other opponents, one of them Tetreau, the Demos endorsee. 

But Moreno not only engineered a win, he politically stage-managed a massacre. Of the 8,797 votes cast in that race, Cowen garnered 4,961, a whopping 56.39 percent. Erasmo Castro got 1,429 (16.24 percent), Tetreau got 1,965 (22.34 percent) and Jennifer Stanton, whose eligibility has ben questioned since she is not a city resident, got 442 (5.02 percent).

His other candidate, Villarreal, will be in a runoff after none of the three candidates – the third was former city commissioner William Garza – could garner the 50 percent plus 1 vote required to win.

Despite the apparent Demo-GOP struggle over local races, Moreno says the intrusion of the major parties does not bode well for the area.

"Now that the parties have targeted local, non-partisan elections, the importance of local needs will take back seat and the intrusion of scorched-earth strategies by the parties' handlers in Austin and Washington will cloud important local issues which are what matter to local residents," he said. "They will just keep raising the ante and run over local concerns. It's a new dynamic we will have to work with."

Perhaps personifying the adage of the gorilla – Moreno, no lightweight himself who has several national and international awards for his experimental films – has been able to maneuver his candidates through the morass of local politics and reach the jungle canopy in his recent races. 

Now we know who the 800-pound gorilla is in local politics.