I was talking to an old political associate late Tuesday when he was asked to pass the phone to someone sitting next to him at the Cameron County Courthouse.
It was Amadeo Rodrguez Jr., and he had an earful for me.
"That'll teach you not to mess with the Rodriguezes," he taunted over the phone with a tone of derision before my friend took back his cell.
Now, when I was involved in political races before as either an advisor or a manager, I learned to take winning and losing in the same manner. You win a few, lose a few. If you win, you savor the result of months of work. If you lose, you take it in stride and learn from your mistakes. And you respect your opponent.
I am aware that Erin and her supporters considered the blogs as enemies of their campaign because we opposed her candidacy and their campaign tactics. That's the nature of the beast. You'll never please everybody.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you might remember that Amadeo Jr. was one of the individuals named in a police report from one of the local retirement apartment complexes who along with Norma Hernandez were stopped from hauling off elderly and mentally-impaired residents in rented vans and telling them how to vote by giving them pre-marked sample ballots with the ovals next to the names of their ticket's candidates already darkened.
A shouting match ensued between Norma, a politiquera and the son of a resident, Zeke Silva, who had gone there to pick up his dad as he usually did and the police were called.The manager of the facility and told Hernandez and Amadeo Jr. that they were on private property and that she had not authorized them to take residents to the voting booth and had the police order them to leave.
Now, I have known Amadeo Jr. and his family for years. We even go back as far as when we all worked together to get Tony Garza, the Republican, elected more than 20 years ago. At the time his late mother Juanita and his dad Amadeo Sr. used to cook large pots of menudo for the campaign workers at their home off Old Port Isabel. Those were constructive (and instructive) times. We have often crossed each other on the political plane, sometimes on the same side, sometimes not.
Things have obviously changed since then. Amadeo Jr. has hooked up with the Hernandezes and has been infected with the "win at all costs" strategy. Deceiving the elderly, the mentally-impaired and voting on their behalf to stuff the ballot boxes have become part and parcel of the Hernandezes political modus operandi and there's no room for second thoughts in their game book.
Now, admittedly this was a cliffhanger. If it was left to the able voters who walked to the polls on election day, Yolanda Begum would have won. But she was never able to overcome the overwhelming mail-in votes harvested for Erin by her mom and the politiqueras, or the packed vans driven by people like Amadeo Jr. to coerce the elderly to vote for his candidates, or at times allowed to vote by the elections department personnel for the whole group himself.
If that is how success is measured in that camp, and gloating over this kind of victory is in order, then by all means go at it and savor the victory. But realize that such victories come with a cost. It is that we should accept a policy that endorses the widespread abuse of the elderly, the manipulation of the main-in votes and the disenfranchisement of all the voters whose ballots are neutralized and made meaningless by these tactics. It's basically an anti-democratic policy at its core. But to their way of thinking a win is a win.
Just realize while you bring out the noisemakers and thumb your nose at the rest of us that the good people of this county will not stand for this forever.
Felicidades, Jr.
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