Local Democratic Party Navigates Issues At Monthly Meeting

Skaggs, Medina, Masso, Saldivar

Cameron County Democrats, a close, but dysfunctional family, met Saturday in a meeting room at Comfort Suites on Sunrise Blvd., awaiting the availability of their temporary office at 1805 E. Ruben Torres Blvd., Suite 27-B, courtesy of Representative Eddie Lucio III.  The local party hopes to locate permanent quarters in Brownsville by March or April, with occasional meetings at different localities in the county.

Amber Medina, the party's new chairperson, cheerfully steered the meeting through several issues; finding 60 more precinct chairs, fundraising and identification cards for party members.  Medina patiently listened to slightly off-target comments from Linda Gill, a probing complaint from Letty Garza-Perez and a reminiscence from a Mr. Villarreal.

The aforementioned Villarreal remembered when a meeting of the local party filled Jacob Brown

Visitors Signing In

Auditorium in 1960, resulting in the election of John F. Kennedy.  "We won!" Mr. Villarreal remembered.  Crusty Treasurer William Skaggs, one of the few in the room besides Nena and I old enough to remember those days, recognized the slight dig at current leadership and met it head-on:  "That was a different era, Mr. Villarreal, with a party chairman called the 'Mayor Daily of Cameron County.' These are different times with different officers."

Jaime Rodriguez, a Washington D.C. party operative with roots in Cameron County, shared a prototype I.D. card his company could produce for party members at a cost of $5.00 per card. Rodriguez's best received suggestion was leaving the card blank on the back to allow for "party friendly companies" to purchase advertising, estimating that displaying 10 company logos on the back of each card could generate $5,000.

After Treasurer Skaggs reiterated his "We're broke" statement of last month, Chairwoman Medina mentioned securing financial commitments of $100 per month to the party from three elected officials;  District Attorney Luis Saenz, Judge David Sanchez and County Commissioner Daniel Sanchez.  She plans to secure financial commitments from all elected Democratic officials. Discussing the progress planning the proposed chicken plate fundraiser and raffle, Mayor Tony Martinez, the only elected Democratic official in attendance, suggested "setting a goal" for each fundraiser.

Actually, participation may be the local party's biggest challenge.  With the exception of Mayor Martinez, no elected Democratic officials were present; no judges, commissioners, clerks, justices of the peace or the district attorney.  No declared candidates were present and only 13 precinct chairs.

One prospective precinct chair fumed in the parking lot that he'd just "wasted 1 1/2 hours. Because one precinct chair left early(Tony Martinez?), we did not have a quorum and could not take our oath," he complained.

On the critical issue of recruiting more precinct chairs, Amber Medina reported that "12 applications had been filled out, 8 that were new."  There are 109 precincts in Cameron County.