ON LAST DAY OF EARLY VOTING, DON'T WASTE YOUR VOTE ON GARZA

  

By Juan Montoya

"A stalking horse candidate is a person put forward in an election to mask the candidacy of another, test public support for a policy, or divide the opposition. Operating as a political decoy, this candidate rarely has a genuine chance of winning but serves to conceal a third party's true intentions until a safer time."

That, boys and girls, in a nutshell, is what the candidacy of former – and failed – Cameron County Sheriff Eric Garza is all about.

Garza, whose novice management of the sheriff's department caused the feds to pull out their prisoners from county jails, cost the county $3 million, and the prisoners didn't return until new sheriff Manuel "Manny" Treviño cleaned up the mess the former sheriff left behind. 

When Garza left, he left a demoralized department, numerous lawsuits caused by his rampant mismanagement, and a trail of favoritism that divided the department's personnel. He sued the commissioners court. And veteran law enforcement officers lost all respect for the man in charge. 

Garza lost to his successor Treviño – no relation to Eddie Treviño, the incumbent county judge – during the Democratic primary in 2024, and then, in the November general election, hosted Republican nominee Jimmy Manrrique at department events and endorsed him in social media despite having run for the Democratic Party nomination.

Then, all of a sudden, he reappeared this year and filed to run as the third candidate for Cameron

County judge as a Democrat after Brownsville Navigation District  chair Steve Guerra announced. Reports by eyewitnesses indicate that both men were seen conversing at a local eatery prior to Garza making his announcement. Garza is a de facto stalking horse to cover for Guerra and get him into a runoff with incumbent Treviño. 

Documentation published by the U.S. Treasury and Mexican federal investigators indicate that Guerra owned a fuel company (Warrior Fuel Traders LLC)  which was doing extensive business with a Mexican fuel supplier Pyrodiesel Del Cento SA de CV, named by the Federal Criminal Intelligence Center of Mexico as a principal in the smuggling of fuel products into Mexico. 

That relationship came to light only after Guerra was sued by a Navasota, Texas-based fuel supplier for more than $300,000 in unpaid fuel. 

A U.S. advisory in May called huachicol schemes “the most significant non-drug illicit revenue source” for Mexico's cartels, which have become a prominent Trump administration target. But the cartels often rely on affiliated individuals and firms—including along the Texas border—to pull them off."

If by chance Garza should get the nod as the Democratic nominee for the general election, he would be in charge of determining the sheriff department's budget over sheriff Treviño, clearly an untenable situation. Ditto for getting along with the other commissioners on the court, who he sued.

"Voters should remember that Garza is a candidate running to be the Democratic Party nominee for the November general election against the Republican party candidate," said a longtime Democrat. "After he lost the primary to Treviño, he supported his Republican opponent Manrrique openly. He was a Democrat only when it suited him. 

"Good Democrats should bear that in mind when they vote either in the early voting or on election day March 3. A vote for Garza means you're voting to give Guerra a chance to get into a runoff with Eddie Treviño. It's really a wasted vote."