Category Archives: 2012 Profiles

The Texas Democratic Party is set to begin the next phase of the Promesa Project, a program designed to engage young Latinos with the purpose of recruiting them to become Democratic messengers.

In this second phase of Promesa, Texas Democrats will launch a Fellowship Program and place fellows in at least eleven campuses across Texas, including: UTEP, UT-Pan Am, UTSA, UT, U of H, A&M-International, UT-Brownsville, UT-Arlington, UNT-Dallas, UH-Downtown, and A&M CC.

“These universities were selected because they have a large Latino enrollment and is perfectly located to provide the opportunity to affect several local competitive races,” said TDP Deputy Executive Director Anthony Gutierrez.

The Promesa Fellowship program will include a training program conducted by experienced campaign professionals. Fellows will then work to register voters, recruit Latinos to the campaign, organize campus events, get out the vote and much more. All the work done by Fellows will be geared towards turning out young Latinos in the Democratic Primary who would likely not participate otherwise.

“Several races across Texas are decided by a small number of votes every cycle,” said State Representative Rafael Anchia (D-Dallas). “We believe this project has the potential to have far-reaching electoral ramifications, including potentially at the statewide level.”

It is great to see this coming about. Let’s hope that this smacks to hell the notion by a republatino group that they are going to tell Latinos to vote for Newt in open primary states because he’s the “Latino-friendly” candidate. Democrats are going the extra mile with a diverse ballot that includes Latin@s who are actually Latino-friendly, unlike the republinuts’ Rubio and Ted Cruz, among others. Why the republatinos would want to support Newt of the Ghetto  is beyond me.

Anyway, Promesa is one of those projects that is giving me some hope regarding the young Latin@ vote in 2012.

Oh just one thing:  Maybe include Texas State University, too.

After he was handily elected in 2008, I had a feeling that Sheriff Adrian Garcia would get a Republican challenge in 2012. Heck, it was a given since all any tea party candidate would be able to say is, “I’m not the guy Garcia beat.”

Now, even though I (and many of my pro-Migrant friends) didn’t give up on lobbying and criticizing the Sheriff for some of his immigration-related policy choices, the bottom line is that he’s done a good job at running one of the largest county jail systems in the country.

Pat Hernandez at KUHF has an interview and write-up on the Sheriff’s 2011.

Since becoming sheriff in 2009, Adrian Garcia’s goal was to eliminate the jailing of inmates in cells outside Harris County, which was costing some $20 million a year.

“We no longer have to send inmates to Louisiana, as was the practice when I got here, nor do we have have any more inmates in other county jails in the state of Texas.”

That was a fairly easy accomplishment, but with the money saved, expect the Sheriff to make a formal request for more guards before Harris County Commissioners. Meanwhile, Garcia and his staff set off to finally put to use, the processing center located in the basement of the Criminal Justice Center.

“Our staff worked extremely hard to put that facility back on line for its intended purposes, and we have found that it has supported our operations, and it’s also helped us to save some money by removing certain logjams within the process.”

Sheriff Garcia wants to ensure that his department keeps up with the latest tools, like the new phone app called iWatch Harris County.

“This is where folks can download to their Droid, their Blackberry, I-phone, the “I watch Harris County” app, and they can text to us or digital pictures or video, about suspicious activity or crime activity that’s occurring in their communities. They can remain anonymous. We have a very active partnership with Houston Crime Stoppers. There’s a link to Houston Crime Stoppers they can go to directly.”

At last count, more than 4,000 citizens have downloaded that app. Things have certainly changed since 1981, when Garcia was a Houston Police officer and the number of murders topped 700, to 198 murders last year. He says
he wanted to make sure that with today’s economic challenges he didn’t want to visit the crime concerns a generation ago.

“That’s why working to leverage technology approaches, and utilization of our data, as a way to keep crime in check. There has been a new attitude, a new approach. But obviously this is a trend that’s occurring across the country, so I’d like to think we are doing things extremely well here, and we’ll continue to stay focused to keep the citizens as safe as we can.”

Garcia says last year’s accomplishments put wind in the sails of the department looking into 2012.

Any opponent really doesn’t have much to counter the Sheriff. And in a conversation with some activist friends, I did bring up some of these accomplishments, but also this particular one–fewer inmate deaths.

All of this is in just three years as Sheriff.

The Harris County Democratic Party gave a good spotlight to my friend and local attorney Kathy Cheng. Here’s the story.

This week’s candidate spotlight is Kathy Cheng, candidate for the 1st Court of Appeals. Kathy holds a BS in Science from LSU and a JD from South Texas College of Law. She is a first generation Asian American who grew up in the Cajun heartland of Louisiana. Her law practice has been well diversified in many areas but she now focuses primarily on business law, real estate, tax and probate. However, she is often helping Neighborhood Centers with their Immigration and Citizenship Forums, volunteering to assist folks filling out their application for citizenship, helping the League of Women Voters registering new citizens to vote and speaking to various community groups about the importance of voting.

She became interested in law after seeing people harmed by the system we call “justice.” As Kathy states, “we have been taught that if things are not working, we have a duty as Americans to vote and fix it. Currently, the First Court of Appeals has 8 Republicans and 1 Democratic Justice. Where is the balance that our forefathers envisioned for our country? There is a reason why a system of checks and balances was put into place. With the current panel, balance is lacking. Check? What check? That is why I see the dire need to run. As an attorney I have been the voice for my clients. More importantly, as an Asian American female, I have learned that I have the civic duty to educate people on the importance of having a voice. Because it is through education that we empower our citizens to have a voice.”