|
Only have a minute? Listen instead
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
It’s official: Ramon Segovia’s name is now on the November ballot after the Texas Supreme Court declined to wade into the morass that has been the election challenge he launched more than two months ago.
Segovia’s attorney, Gilberto Hinojosa, confirmed the news to The Monitor on Wednesday.
With no Republican challengers in the race for the Hidalgo County Precinct 3, Place 1 justice of the peace seat, Segovia is assured of taking the bench at the western county courtroom next January.
With a single sentence, the state’s highest court cemented Segovia’s coming election victory.
“Today the Supreme Court of Texas denied the Request for Emergency Relief, as supplemented, and denied the petition for writ of mandamus in the above-referenced case,” reads the notice the high court issued on Monday.
That one sentence effectively quelled the last hope that Segovia’s political opponent, Sonia Treviño, had for hanging onto the office she’s held since January 2021.
After long weeks of litigation, the outcome left Treviño’s lead attorney disappointed, but resigned.
“It’s essentially over,” Rick Salinas, of Mission, said via phone Tuesday.
“The wrong man won. I mean, I hope you can quote me on that — the wrong person won,” Salinas added.
THE CONTEST
Treviño initially emerged victorious by just 31 votes during the May 28 Democratic Primary runoff against Segovia.
But less than a month later, Segovia challenged the election results, claiming that Treviño and her campaign had cheated to win.
Thus began what would become a grueling three-week trial marred by accusations of professional misconduct lobbed against not only Salinas, but the judge presiding over the case, Jose Manuel Bañales — all while dozens of voters testified about how they had received assistance at the polls.
Their testimony slowly proved the crux of Segovia’s allegations — that the Treviño campaign had illegally provided assistance to voters who neither needed nor qualified for assistance under the Texas Election Code.
In some cases, the testimony revealed far more sinister facts — including at least three instances where intellectually disabled people were coerced to vote, including one young man who was threatened by one of Trevino’s court clerks.
Nor was that the only instance where someone with close ties to Treviño assisted voters.
Treviño’s own adult children, Michael and Jacqueline Howell, assisted 55 voters, according to a 100-page findings of fact statement Bañales issued after overturning the election.
Another Treviño campaign worker, Angelica Garza, assisted 72 voters.
Since the beginning of the election contest, Salinas — the attorney who led Treviño’s defense — has claimed that Segovia engaged in similar efforts to assist voters, but just hadn’t done it on a scale enough to win.
But when it came time to try to prove that assertion, Salinas was unable to because the judge disqualified nearly all of the 170 witnesses he had subpoenaed to testify.
Further, Hinojosa roundly denied that Segovia had engaged in any tactics to illegally assist voters.
“They (Treviño’s attorneys) were never able to offer any evidence on that. And I don’t believe that that’s true,” Hinojosa said.
“Look, you either put that evidence on, or you shut up. And they never put it on, so I think he needs to shut up,” Hinojosa said, referring to Salinas.
Bañales disqualified more than 80 ballots in the justice of the peace race. Of those, he further determined that 78 had been cast for Treviño, and three for Segovia, leaving Segovia ahead by 44 votes.
Treviño’s attorneys immediately appealed Bañales’ ruling to overturn the election.
However, last week, the 13th Court of Appeals declined to even entertain the appeal, citing the vanishingly short timeframe in which to weigh the evidence and render a decision before statutory deadlines to place a name on the November ballot.
In a last ditch effort, Treviño’s attorneys filed urgent entreaties for a hearing — either before the appeals court, or before the state supreme court.
On Monday, both of the higher courts refused to hear anything further on the matter and summarily denied Treviño’s raft of motions.
‘NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS’
The decision — like many made during the course of the contest — left Salinas stunned.
“It’s very odd. I don’t know what to tell you. It’s unheard of. The whole process, in my friendly opinion, was somewhat perverted,” Salinas said.
“I’ve never seen anything like this happen in 31 years (of practicing law). Never have.”
But what was surprising for Hinojosa was how pervasive the culture of voter assistance had been at the west county polling places — a practice Hinojosa, a career politician, said he’d never seen in four politically active decades.
Moreover, Salinas was just grasping at straws by alleging that Segovia had participated in a “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander” practice of similarly assisting voters.
“I think Mr. Salinas is just a sore loser. He got beat, and he got beat bad, and he doesn’t know how to react to that,” Hinojosa said.
Salinas, though, accused Hinojosa of bullying voters on the stand — a tactic he felt was uncouth for Hinojosa as the chair of the Texas Democratic Party, especially in an election contest between fellow Democrats.
“It played right into the hands of conservative politics,” Salinas said.
But it wasn’t his blunt questions or the subsequent ballot disqualifications that disenfranchised western Hidalgo County voters, Hinojosa said. Instead, it was the corruption that occurred at the polls.
“This kind of fraudulent conduct not only raises questions as to how elections are run and affects a democracy, but it also discourages people from running,” Hinojosa said.
He further scoffed at the criticisms that Salinas, whom he called a Republican, made regarding the intra-party legal spat.
“Whether you’re the (party) chair, or whether you’re a candidate… if you care about your party, you want to make sure that people are not abused when they go vote,” Hinojosa said.
The longtime attorney accused Salinas of having a “very warped way of looking at elections” for attempting to normalize the practice of assisting large numbers of voters.
“Anybody who cares for their community — and this man wants to be the mayor of Mission — if they’re not seeing this as fundamentally wrong to our democracy, then maybe this person should not be trying to seek office in this community,” Hinojosa said, alluding to Salinas’ own campaign aspirations.
WEB OF POLITICS
The trial left such a bad taste in Salinas’ mouth that he vowed to never litigate another election contest again.
But when asked if the trial, including the professional misconduct allegations lobbed against him, had similarly dissuaded him from seeking public office himself, Salinas gave a resounding no.
“No. F- – – no! I’m running against her, no matter what,” Salinas said, referring to Mission Mayor Norie Gonzalez Garza, whom he plans to challenge in 2026.
“The only thing is that I’m not going to engage in the same behavior that they do in order to win.”
Salinas has long alleged that the mayor is somehow connected to Segovia’s campaign and his election challenge.
As proof of the nebulous allegation, Salinas points to how Carina Garza de Luna, the mayor’s daughter, served on Segovia’s legal team.
Again, Hinojosa scoffed, noting that Garza de Luna once also served alongside Salinas during an election contest involving his late father, former Mission Mayor Norberto “Beto” Salinas, and Armando O’Caña.
Regardless of the two attorneys’ personal opinions of the other, both say their clients are ready to keep fighting.
Salinas referred to Treviño as a “true champion,” — a woman with grit and determination built from a career as a coach.
“Sonia was the right person for the job, and she’ll be the right person for the job again,” Salinas said, hinting at a future campaign.
Meanwhile, Segovia is looking forward to taking the bench in January.
“He’s happy. He’s ready to start doing his job,” Hinojosa said.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to attribute the claim that Salinas is a Republican to Hinojosa.
