What will be under the tree this Tuesday for some of our local political stars?
If you're Chuck Mattingly, who lost to Luis Saenz as Cameron County District Attorney this last November, you're hoping that your stocking will be stuffed with a judicial appointment by your friendly state governor Rick Perry.
Mattingly represented the Republican faithful in the last go-round but came up short. However, that doesn't preclude his appointment by Perry who has a history of appointing local judges only to see them lose when they run for the position on their own. Witness, for example, Rolando Olvera, a true-blue GOP who was twice appointed to local courts only to lose in an election.
If and when Mattingly gets the nod, all he has to do is switch parties near the end of 357th Distrct Court term left vacant by Leonel Alejandro and take the Democratic pledge. Worked for Rolano O. Why not for Chuck?
However, Chuck may be disillusioned and find a lump of coal in his stocking if the gov'ner decides that his role in letting convicted killer Amit Livingston walk out of the courthouse with his boss DA Armando Villalobos and Chuck looking on may backfire on his own political fortunes. The honorable thing would have been to resign on the spot and accumulate the accolades that might have resulted in an election win. Instead, Chuck took the easy road and costaed along. He paid the price.
There are, it is said, a handful of candidates on the GOP side whose supporters might have the governor's ear aside from Chuck.
If you're Pct. 1 Constable Horacio Zamora, you are hoping that all you ducks are in a row and that the reestablishment of the Cameron County Parks Police will mean a safe harbor for your political ambitions until Pete Delgadillo messes up somehow in the next four years and the way may be open for a next run at the position. The parks police was a kind of musical office for candidates and supporters of defeated candidates in the past.
And now that we're talking about vacant seats on the bench, how about the Barack Obama administration's choice for the federal judgeship being left vacant by federal judge Hilda Tlagle? Rumors are out there that there would be nothing more welcome to the Tony Martinez household than to have Trey Martinez be handed that plum in consideration for the political and financial support his father has shown the Prez in his primary battle against Hillary Clinton four years ago.
Of course, the fact that Trey has been ambulance chasing to file suit against the AFT and the Department of Justice's Attorney General Eric Holder for the Fast and Furious weapons that might have resulted in Jaime Zapata's shooting death in Mexico might throw a wet towel on the idea.
If you're his dad Tony Martinez you might want to search around the city to recruit opponents for your colleagues on the city commission who may suddenly have second thoughts crowning him Emperor of the Realm on the Border, by the Sea. Now, it appears that everytime there's some revelation about the free and easy way Hizzoner spends the people's money Martinez believes that there is a conspiracy of leakers who have it in for him. In private law practice there is no such thing as a Freedom of Information Act or other pesky bothersome sujetos trying to find out what elected officials are doing behind the scenes.
If you're Juliet Garcia, this might well be the Winter of Our Discontent after a fearsome year when all your dreams of empire and manipulation came to naught. Try as she might with the help of her overpaid underachieving cabal of schemers, she couldn't force a majority on the TSC board to give away the community college and all its assets to the UT System. In the process, she showed the Regents that she couldn't deliver the goods and the reorganization that had been placed aside was dusted off and brought back as Plan B.
Now the administration of the combined health school (to be finished in bits and pieces by sometime in the year 2100 or so) and UTB-Pan-Am will be moved to Hidalgo County, the redundancy in administrators will be a thing of the past, and Juliet will have to live on her measly retirement after making ends meet with a paltry $350,000 annual salary.
But wait! There is still hope for our precocious Julia. There is, the golden parachute of educational consultant for United Brownsville, the phantom government structure created by her lender and bud from way back Fred Rusteberg. Even if Juliet signs on for 10 or 15 hours (a la Armand Mathew) at say $200 per hour, that still leaves a little candy money. Yeah, that's the ticket.
At the other end of the spectrum, things go well for Ernie Hernandez, the perennial cat of nine lives who has risen from political death so many times that he is a feature character of the Walking Dead episodes so popular on commercial television. Now with daughter Erin at the JP 2-2 and political ally on Linda Salazar at the other court, he has established the stage for political patronage and favors that he so long desired. Need a favor with a judge? Call Ernie. Need a job shoveling dirt in the mess that's going on with the colonia program at Cameron Park? Call Ernie. Need someone out of jail? Call Ernie.
This will be a banner year for the Hernandezes if the feds' cleaning up of the judicial system doesn't spill over to the way elections have been controlled and manipulated by the vote-harvester machine the family operates. But until then, keep taking while the giving is good.
0 comments:
Post a Comment