Republican hopefuls for Hidalgo County judge had their shot to address issues posed during a candidate forum Monday night.
The event was hosted by the advocacy group Futuro RGV, which has held several forums in lead up to the March primary, including the candidates’ Democratic counterparts earlier that same evening.
GOP candidates include Esmeralda Flores, who is running for office for the first time, and Jane Cross, who is making her second bid for county judge.
During the forum, which can be found on Futuro RGV’s Facebook page, moderator J.D. Salinas, himself a former county judge, asked the candidates about numerous important topics for Hidalgo County, like drainage, infrastructure and new laws, including one concerning mail-in ballots.
However, unlike his questions to the Democrat candidates, Salinas also asked Flores and Cross how they would have handled the coronavirus if they were the judge at the time the pandemic began, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.
Both candidates believe the presidential election was stolen, despite there being no evidence of widespread voting fraud.
For openings, Salinas asked each candidate to identify the greatest asset and concern for the county.
Cross, who said she has a masters degree in communications and has been involved in business for longer than she said she cared to say, believes the county’s residents are its best asset.
“We’ve got some awesome people with some awesome credentials who have done some awesome things,” Cross said, adding that she believed the county has been stifled a lot.
Her greatest concern are coronavirus mandates from Hidalgo County, even though most of which have since been rescinded.
“The concern is I think our freedoms are being taken away, just by not opening up the courthouse, by mandating things that don’t need to be mandated,” Cross said.
Cross did not specify that mandates she was referring to and the courthouse has always been open, though masks are required as are temperature checks and each judge follows social distancing protocols in their courtrooms, which is allowed by the Texas Supreme Court’s COVID-19 emergency orders.
She did say that she is concerned about masks, though.
Cross also complained about the county’s justices of the peace, saying the husband of one of her friends died and a JP did not show up for four hours.
“I would centralize the justice of the peace because if the county pays you then you should do your job, and then the taxes are the problem,” Cross said.
Flores said she wants to make a difference in the community and is concerned about poverty.
“I would like to see different things in this county. First of all, infrastructure,” Flores said, without specifying any details.
She also believes taxes need to be lower and that people need better educational opportunities. She did not specify an asset.
On how to address poverty in Hidalgo County, Flores said that as a former educator, she believes education is the biggest equalizer there is and that earning a bachelor’s degree makes you middle class.
“So, in my opinion, I say that’s one component. Another very, very important component is to go out there into the trenches and find out what the people are thinking, finding out what they need,” Flores said.
Cross said she knows that Hidalgo County has several entities that help with grants for electricity and groceries and that she believes those programs are well managed.
Asked how they would build coalitions with neighboring counties to address problems from a regional perspective, Cross said to meet with the county judges in Willacy, Cameron and Starr counties and for all to address drainage.
Flores said the county judge should reach out to different counties, cities and water districts to form a coalition to stop the region’s drainage problems.
Regarding their approach to the pandemic, Flores said “no lockdowns.”
“I am conservative. I am running Republican,” Flores added. “We don’t believe in the prosperity of the county being stopped. I would not have handled it in the way it was handled.”
Cross said if she did lockdown, it would have only been for the first two weeks and said she would have let Hidalgo County develop herd immunity.
The Mayo Clinic says herd immunity is achieved when enough of a country’s population becomes immune to a disease and says the best chance of the United States reaching herd immunity is through vaccinations, which were not available when the pandemic began.
Cross also repeated a misleading claim that India reduced its coronavirus cases through the use of ivermectin.
Poynter, a nonprofit journalism institute, published a fact check on this claim after it began to surface online last year.
While it’s true India did promote ivermectin it later rescinded that guidance, and while it’s true case numbers did go down, Poynter pointed to a decrease in testing rather than ivermectin use.
Both candidates also agreed that commissioners court meetings should be held at 5 p.m. to accommodate the working public, and that a dedicated veterans hospital is needed.
When it came to endorsements, Cross said she does not anticipate receiving any while Flores said she has been given two donations.
Although Flores and Cross said they believe the election was stolen from Trump, the Associated Press reported in December that of the many widespread voter fraud claims that have surfaced since the election, the nonpartisan news agency has only identified 475 instances of potential voter fraud in six states contested by Trump, which would not be enough to impact the final election results.
The moderator also asked about a new Texas law that requires mail-in ballots to include a social security and driver license number, and what steps they would take to cure absentee ballots with problems.
Cross said the election administrator should check each voter to find out whether they are dead. Flores agreed. Neither said how they would resolve absentee ballot problems created by the new law.
Salinas then asked them whether they thought the new law’s requirements provided the right amount of security for mail-in ballot voting, to which Flores said she would call and ask the bill’s author. Cross indicated only people who are invalid should be able to vote by mail, adding that people should show up because voting is a privilege.
Voting is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Limitations only include legal permanent residents, some people convicted of a felony, those with certain mental disabilities and residents of U.S. territories.
Addressing infrastructure concerns, Flores said she believes Hidalgo County needs to get Elon Musk to invest here while Cross said drainage is the county’s biggest problem. Cross also said county employees need to clean out the drainage ditches.
In response to Salinas’ question about their top priorities, Cross said to lower the tax rate, get JPs to answer “the damn phone,” and drainage.
Flores said she agreed with Cross and that the county needs more infrastructure to bring more business, and that taxes need to be lower.
The candidates said they are qualified to be county judge with Flores citing her 34 years of experience as an educator and Cross pointing to her communication degrees and experience as a business owner.
Cross and Flores said they would also be full-time judges if elected.
With regard to a new law allowing for tax increment financing bonds to address transportation redevelopment projects, or to try to help unproductive or blighted areas, Cross complained of the compound nature of the question and said she was not familiar with tax increment financing.
“You know, you can’t know everything. It’s impossible,” Cross said. “That’s why you surround yourself with people who are brilliant.”
She said it would be ludicrous to not use every available tool to benefit the county.
Flores did not answer the question and spoke about helping veterans.
The moderator also asked them what role they believe the county judge plays in the immigration debate.
Flores did not answer the question and said “go back to the policies that Trump had.”
Cross said she doesn’t think it’s right that Richard F. Cortez, the incumbent county judge, has met with Catholic Charities because she’s heard thousands of children have disappeared from the agency that aids migrants showing up in Hidalgo County.
This false claim may be based on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ trip to McAllen last year, where he made a video claiming to catch a human smuggler taking children outside of Catholic Charities.
That person was, in fact, taking migrants to get tested for the coronavirus and Sister Norma Pimenthal of Catholic Charities has decried these conspiracy theories.
Salinas asked each candidate how they would use American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA funds to bridge the digital divide.
Cross wasn’t familiar with the term but when Salinas explained it refers to the lack of internet in poorer households, the candidate claimed that libraries at schools were closed and suggested going back to teaching without the internet.
Flores said she does believe that the divide needs to be closed and hadn’t previously considered that, saying she would ask the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley for advice on how to handle it.
In closing, Cross said she believes people are living in fear.
“I just want to say how blessed I am and as my last closing statement I think God wanted us to have a spirit of freedom and a spirit of knowledge and not a spirit of fear, and as I go out I want to instill the spirit of freedom and not fear,” Cross said. “I’m just so tired of being fearful. I think we just need to start being brave again.”
Flores said she agrees with Cross and believes everything behind COVID-19 was fear, adding that she published a YouTube video on the topic and claimed the World Health Organization took it down and told her if she puts it back up she’ll be find $10,000 and jailed.
Google, the parent company, removes COVID-19 misinformation or blatantly false information about the virus from YouTube, and consults with the WHO on what information is false or misleading. After three strikes, a user’s account is permanently disabled.
Google cannot send people to jail for expressing opinions guaranteed under the freedom of speech, the same right that allows it to remove misinformation and falsities from the platform it owns.
The Republican primary is March 1.
