Hidalgo County Judge Richard F. Cortez sailed smoothly to victory Tuesday night as the voters signaled their support for his second four-year term.
Cortez, a Democrat, easily beat Republican challenger Esmeralda Flores Tuesday night. With nearly 90% of Hidalgo County precincts reporting Tuesday night, Cortez secured 63.79% of the votes with 73,270 ballots cast in his favor compared to Flores’ 36.21% or 41,600 votes.
Cortez, who was first elected to the seat in 2019, said he was happy with his strong early voting lead that sat at nearly 30,000 votes.
“It appears that Republicans voted party and not individual. It’s what it seems to be like because I believe that I have much more experience than my opponent. But that’s my opinion. I could be wrong,” Cortez said when reached for comment Tuesday night.
Voters first elected Cortez as Hidalgo County judge in 2018. He is a retired certified public accountant and also served as mayor and city commissioner for the city of McAllen.
Cortez said his job is to serve everyone and that he will continue to make the necessary adjustments to provide the best services, efficiently and effectively at the lowest cost to taxpayers.
Speaking directly to his constituents, Cortez said it’s impossible to always agree, but when disagreements arise, they should be handled respectfully and in a way that seeks to collaboratively work out those differences.
“We live in a county that has very diverse ideologies, and that’s existed since day one of our country. So for us to believe in things that our ideologies are going to change where we are all going to think the same is not a reasonable goal,” he said. “If we’re going to coexist together and build a better society and build a better environment for all of us to enjoy, then we have to learn to work together.”
Remarking on current political division, Cortez said he saw a lot of hatred, and in his experience, talking about hate only leads to bad results.
“I hope that everybody will realize that we don’t live in a perfect world. I’m going to try to make, with the rest of the commissioners, the best judgements that we can to move our county forward,” Cortez said. “I hope to work with everybody so that we can do that together.”
As for his next term, Cortez said in a Futuro RGV forum in January that if he was re-elected, his first three priorities would be making Hidalgo County a healthier community, attracting outside investment and continuing with ongoing drainage projects.
In his June 18, 2021, announcement about him seeking a second term, he said it was his honor to serve Hidalgo County residents and honed in on the decisions the county took in 2020 to address the COVID-19 pandemic by placing restrictions on businesses and residents in an effort to curb the spread of the deadly virus that killed more than 4,000 people here.
“The last 15 months have tested our community in ways most of us have never been tested before,” Cortez said at the time. “But we have emerged a stronger, more unified community and we have demonstrated the power of working together as we battled to contain COVID-19.”
On Tuesday morning, the county sent out a press release announcing that it had scaled back its emergency operations level as the pandemic eases here.
For the first time since March 5, 2020, the county is again at a Level 3 status, the Hidalgo County Health and Human Services announced. The lowest level is 5.
Staff writer Francisco Jimenez contributed to this report.
