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EDINBURG — Trial got underway here Monday in an election contest in the Democratic Primary runoff for Hidalgo County Precinct 3, Place 1 justice of the peace.
Ramon Segovia, who lost the May 28 runoff against incumbent Sonia Treviño by just 31 votes, filed the election contest in mid-June.
The two candidates were forced into the runoff after neither one earned more than 50% of the vote during a three-way race in the March 5 Democratic Primary.
Treviño won just under half the votes with some 6,415 voters casting their ballots for her, Hidalgo County Elections Department records show.
Meanwhile, the other half of the electorate cast their ballots fairly evenly between Segovia and a third candidate, Joel Garcia. Segovia secured 3,297 ballots — or 25.5% of the electorate — to Garcia’s 3,217.
During the runoff, Segovia closed the gap significantly, but still fell short. He won 4,202 votes to Treviño’s 4,233 — a 0.36% margin of victory.
But Segovia alleges that Treviño would not have accomplished that election victory without resorting to unlawful tactics. Consequently, he’s asking a judge to either void the election and call for a new race, or to declare him the true winner instead.
The election contest lawsuit is similar to another filed earlier this year in Edinburg.
In that suit, Gerardo “Gerry” Lozano argued that incumbent David White won the hotly contested race for Place 4 on the Edinburg City Council by just 10 votes due to myriad illegal votes.
Lozano succeeded in having the election overturned after visiting Senior Judge Jose Manuel Bañales disqualified more than two dozen ballots.
But the judge did more than that. Over the course of a four-day trial in May, Bañales also determined that enough illegal votes had been cast for White to undo his win. As a result, the judge declared Lozano the true winner.
White has remained on the Edinburg council as the case is pending appeal.
Like the Edinburg election contest, Segovia alleges that votes in the west county JP race should be disqualified because some voters received assistance that they were not legally qualified to receive, while others were allegedly coerced into voting for Treviño.
Another similarity — Segovia alleges that other voters used fake or false addresses on their voter registration forms.
Testimony during the Edinburg election contest primarily focused on the illegal assistance allegations. And it was on those allegations that Bañales disqualified the majority of the 26 votes in that case.
Thus far, much of the testimony in the JP contest has also centered around voters who improperly received assistance.
On Monday alone, Bañales — who is also presiding over the current contest — disqualified the votes of five individuals whom he found had improperly received assistance at the ballot box.
Of those, he further found that at least three had cast their ballots for Treviño.
But both the judge and Gilberto Hinojosa, the Brownsville-based attorney representing Segovia, went to great lengths to reassure those voters they had done nothing wrong while trying to exercise their right to vote.
“I want to make clear to you that you have not done anything wrong, anything illegal,” Hinojosa told one elderly woman as she wiped tears away from her eyes on the witness stand Monday.
A moment later, when Martin Golando, a San Antonio-based attorney representing Treviño, asked the witness if she knew why she had been called to testify, she quietly responded, “I don’t know.”
Segovia also alleges that many of the illegally assisted voters received that assistance from politiqueras — or campaign workers — associated with the Treviño campaign, including several members of her immediate and extended family.
Indeed, the elderly woman who said she did not understand why she had been called to testify nonetheless admitted that she had accepted help from a “young man” she did not know and had never met before.
That man turned out to be Treviño’s own son, Michael Howell, who listed himself as the woman’s friend on an oath of assistance form.
“He didn’t even know her,” Hinojosa said.
Segovia’s legal team had planned to call some 200 witnesses to testify, according to court documents, but, by Monday, that number had been whittled down to just a few dozen.
Only four voters made it to the stand Monday. Dozens more waited for their name to be called outside the doors of the 430th state District Court.
Another 20 or so failed to show up at all. Hinojosa requested that the judge issue bench warrants for those individuals to compel their appearances.
Treviño herself also took the stand on Monday.
Hinojosa, who has litigated numerous election contests over his four decade long career, grilled her extensively on the layout of campaign tents at polling places and other election minutiae.
He also pressed her for details regarding her campaign workers and volunteers, including the roles played by her sisters, children and others.
But her own attorneys were stopped short of cross examining her in favor of securing the testimony of several medically fragile witnesses who had been waiting in the courthouse vestibule for hours.
Speaking after court adjourned Monday evening, another of Treviño’s attorneys, Rick Salinas, of Mission, alleged it was Segovia who engaged in illegal election activity — but just not well enough to win.
“They engaged in the very conduct that they’re talking about,” Salinas said.
“Then he (Segovia) comes in here and he cries to the judge, ‘Look what she did.’ He just didn’t do it enough. He didn’t illegally assist enough in order to be able to make the win and that’s why he’s crying,” he added a moment later.
Salinas instead claims the allegations against his client are specious and politically motivated.
“The heart of this case is politics. It’s the mayor out of Mission, because her daughter is here,” Salinas said, referring to the daughter of Mission Mayor Norie Gonzalez Garza, Carina Garza de Luna, who is serving as co-counsel for Segovia.
“It’s Mr. Segovia and it’s all an effort by them to somehow or the other secure her (Gonzalez Garza’s) reelection bid in two years, which, by the way, she’ll be running against me, ‘cause I’m gonna challenge her,” Salinas said.
This isn’t the only litigation Segovia is currently a part of.
He is still awaiting the outcome of a wrongful termination lawsuit he filed against the city of Palmview in July 2017.
Segovia served as the Palmview city manager from 2013 until the city terminated him in June 2017. That case is scheduled to go to trial in late-September, court records show.
Here’s the latest update:
