Editor’s note: The Supreme Court on Feb. 27 denied Ahumada’s request for a stay against the city secretary’s determination.
A district judge has denied former Brownsville mayor Pat Ahumada’s latest attempt to secure a place on the May 6 General Election ballot for mayor.
Senior Judge Jose Longoria, presiding over the 404th state District Court, on Thursday said no to Ahumada’s petition and request for a temporary restraining order and temporary and permanent injunction against Brownsville City Secretary Yolanda Galarza-Gomez, who deemed Ahumada ineligible to run for mayor again under the city charter’s term-limit rules.
Ahumada filed with the city secretary’s office on Feb. 15. Galarza-Gomez, in a Feb. 16 letter, informed Ahumada that his application was ineligible due to a May 2021 amendment to the city charter, approved by voters as a ballot proposition, that stipulates a “lifetime term limit” for mayors and other city commission members.
The amendment includes this sentence: “Any time served prior to the approval of this amendment shall count toward the lifetime term limit.”
The ordinance goes on to say it “shall not prohibit any Mayor from completing their current term or a term that begins 2021, but would prohibit any other candidate from running for a term they cannot complete because of term limits.”
In the letter to Ahumada, Galarza-Gomez wrote … “I calculate 73 months of previous elected service as Mayor of the City of Brownsville, in December 1991 to January 1994 and June 2007 to May 2011, which counts as ‘Any time served prior to the approval of this amendment shall count towards the lifetime term limit.’
“Therefore, I determine that your application for a place on the ballot for the position of Mayor for the May 6, 2023, General Election in the City of Brownsville, is not qualified because the Charter prohibits a ‘candidate from running for a term they cannot complete because of term limits.’”
In a Feb. 16 email Ahumada wrote, “This effort to disqualify my candidacy for mayor is political to give John Cowen the mayorship, which I am going to do everything to oppose this improper and illegal shenanigans to deny me my constitutional right to run for mayor and my civil rights.”
Cowen, currently serving as city commission at-large “A,” announced his candidacy for mayor on Nov. 17. Also on the ballot for mayor are Erasmo Castro, Jennifer Stanton and District 2 City Commissioner Jessica Tetreau.
Ahumada wrote in a Feb. 27 email in response to Longoria’s ruling that applying the term-limit amendment to him retroactively 32 years after he was first elected mayor is “dirty politics” and “ludicrous and very obvious political.”
Ahumada said he had filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court based on Article 1, Sec. 16, of the Texas Constitution, which states: “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, retroactive law, or any law impairing the obligation of contracts, shall be made.”
