Special to El Rrun-Rrun
With early voting starting today and ending April 28, the race for commissioner Place 2 on the board of the Brownsville Navigation District has split the incumbents.
Current Place 2 holder John Wood has endorsed Shariff Gonnella while longtime port commissioner John Reed is backing former Cameron County Asst. Administrator David Garcia.
Reed, whose family has been at the port for generations, is usually considered the "old guard" and the Reeds have done business there for years. Wood, on the other hand, has had a long career as a City of Brownsville and Cameron County commissioner before getting elected to the board of the Brownsville Navigation District. Whose endorsement will carry the day? A lot, of course, depends on the candidates themselves and how much energy they devote to bringing out the votes.
Some have questioned Gonnella's employment with Omnitrax, that took over the port's railroad before his tenure, as a potential conflict of interest since what the company initially promised the port in return for the purchase has been amended several times and the original pledges have not materialized. But this happened before Gonnella appeared on the scene.
Garcia, however, also carries some baggage from his employment with Cameron County as the assistant administrator where he was instrumental in testimony that resulted in the ouster of former Pct. 2 commissioner Ernie Hernandez over the employment of his brother-in-law, and later in the indictment of administrator Pete Sepulveda over the paving of a non-dedicated road in El Ranchito.
Garcia has garnered several endorsements from the political movers and shakers with the city, and he is counting on his many years of association with elected officials in Washington D.C. when he worked in the office of congressman Solomon Ortiz, blamed for the derailing of the Port's Bridge to Nowhere along with former Texas Senator Eddie Lucio.
And Gonnella has had to respond to anonymous critics online (the equivalent of yesteryear's hojas sueltas) accusing him of being a muslim with cartel ties and a foreign accent. Gonnella was born in Venezuela and has worked in the maritime industry around the world. Many local leaders have denounced the anti-muslim slurs and point out that he is a practicing Catholic and that the port has benefitted from the input of foreign-born contributors to its growth. They discard the cartel ties as non-existent and blatant lies.
The political ad below commenting on Gonnella's accent (and global vision) on behalf of Gonnella has just appeared on social media.
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