San Benito driving voter turnout as school board race turning up heat

SAN BENITO — The city’s two rival factions are heating up the polls at the city’s Community Building, turning the bustling voting site into one of the hottest across Cameron County as steady flows of residents cast ballots during an eight-day early voting period.

By the close of the first day of voting Monday, residents had cast 313 votes in a bitterly contested school board election, with 300 ballots at the Community Building’s polling site, Cameron County Elections Department records show.

In the city election, residents cast a total of 259 ballots, with 254 votes coming out of the Community Building.

“We’re seeing surprisingly high voter activity in the San Benito Community Building,” Remi Garza, the county’s elections administrator, said Tuesday. “It’s turning out to be one of the more active sites in the election. It’s promising because it trends to a higher voter turnout.”

Meanwhile, in Harlingen’s school board election, 143 residents had cast ballots Monday, with 64 votes coming out of the Combes Community Center.

In the area’s hottest school board election, Ariel Cruz-Vela, the San Benito school board’s vice president, faces Theresa Servellon, the school district’s past superintendent, for the board’s Place 1 seat.

In an election that could flip the board’s balance of power, Cruz-Vela, a pharmacist who’s a leader within the board of trustees’ new majority, is vying for a second term in the race against Servellon, a former longtime district administrator who served about a year as the district’s top office, where she had worked as interim superintendent for about six months.

Last September, Servellon resigned about three weeks after the board’s majority suspended her with pay, with Cruz-Vela casting a vote.

In the heavily contested clash for the board’s Place 2 seat, incumbent Mario Silva, a sales representative, faces former board member Victor Eloy Rosas, a retired firefighter, and Crystal Hernandez, the Harlingen school district’s GEAR UP facilitator.

In the election’s Place 3 contest, incumbent Oscar Medrano faces Israel “Buddy” Villarreal III, a Navy veteran and business owner.

Controversy rises behind the city commission’s lone contested race.

In the battle for the commission’s Place 4 seat, former longtime City Commissioner Rene Villafranco, who lost his post to Commissioner Deborah Morales last year, is bidding to return to politics, facing Joe Navarro, a consultant, in the race for past Commissioner Carol Lynn Sanchez’s seat.

Last month, the commission’s majority called for Sanchez’s ouster from office, voting to declare her position vacant because she was living outside the city limits, finding her “unqualified to hold office in the city of San Benito” based on a City Charter clause.

In Place 3, Commissioner Pete Galvan is running unopposed, bidding for his second full term after first winning election in 2020.

In November 2020, Galvan, a pharmacist who serves as the commission’s mayor pro-tem, won an unexpired term which former Commissioner Rick Guerra had left open after he resigned to run for the mayor’s gavel.

Then in May 2021, he won his first three-year term with a landslide victory over former Mayor Ben Gomez and a political newcomer.

In Harlingen, the school board election spotlights a lone contested race in which Bobby Muniz, a pharmacist who served as the board’s past president, faces Benjamin Esquivel for board’s Place 4 seat.

In Places 5 and 6, board members Nolan Perez and Belinda Reininger, the board’s president, are running unopposed.