The Media Hasn't Figured it Out, But Me & Willie Gandara Have...

There's a reason I posted the information about the amendments to the constitution. There is also a reason that County Commissioner Willie Gandara is toying with the idea of getting his behind out of the County Commissioner's race and jumping in to the HD 75 race.

From The Lion Star Blog by Jaime Abeytia

I doubt the media has figured it out yet, so here it is.

Willie is a business man and wants to have his cake and eat it too. The filing deadline is in December of this year. Since that is before January, then a rule kicks in that has come up before. Its called resign to run.

Since the deadline puts Gandara more than a year before the end of his term, if Gandara wanted to run for State Legislature, he would have to resign from County Commissioner's Court. This came up before a couple of times. In the case of Jose Rodriguez when he resigned to run for State Senate and Jo Anne Bernal was appointed as the County Attorney.

When County Judge Veronica Escobar was thinking about running for County Judge, she waited until it was less than a before the end of her term because the filing deadline was different in that election. She didn't have to resign.

Gandara sees that he will get beat in the Commissioner's race. Especially with two strong candidates like Perez and Quintanilla. He also sees that its a weak field of candidates so far in the HD 75 race.

But as the rule stands now, he would have to resign from Commissioner's Court to run. That means the County Judge would appoint a replacement.

Word on the street is that both Gandara and Hector Enriquez (candidate in HD 75) were both at the congressman's fundraiser earlier this week. Apparently the Gandara camp wasn't happy about Enriquez being there. Why would they care?

Well, I'm glad you asked. The only reason they would care would be if Gandara was going to run for HD 75.

Here's where the constitutional amendments come in to play. One of the amendments, number ten, has to do with the resign to run rule. If that amendment passes, and there are no indications that it won't, it would create an exception and allow Gandara or any other candidate to serve as an elected official and run for another office, more than a year before the end of their term. 

So Gandara will be telling his people to vote in favor of the 10th Amendment. Quintanilla's team probably wants Gandara out of the race so that its down to just Perez and Quintanilla and neither would be running against the incumbent. Although I wouldn't expect Quintanilla and Gandara to endorse one another for their former seats.

I think there is still bad blood between them. Lets not forget, I think Quintanilla put something on his signs about being endorsed by the Gandara family on his signs. (If you recall, there are factions of the family). When something involves family, its hard to forget, especially in politics.

Don't expect an announcement for HD 75 until after the November election and Gandara finds out what the voters have to say about it.

Then again, maybe Gandara will resign early and put County Judge Escobar in the position of having to appoint a replacement. Then he sticks it to everybody...

See...and who says constitutional amendment elections are boring?