LA PRENSA, Austin’s oldest bilingual newspaper, has issued a strongly worded endorsement of Margaret Gomez.
Yes, we need a change in Precinct 4, but we don’t need to exchange Margaret Gomez, who has lived and worked her entire life in the precinct, with someone who has moved into positions of power and money by capitalizing on an unfair election system and an error in judgment.
No, Gomez doesn’t deserve to be replaced with Raul Alvarez, someone who moved here a dozen years or so ago to take advantage of an unfair system, i.e. at-large elections, defeat a candidate endorsed by the Hispanic community, and win the seat on the City Council set aside for an Hispanic through the gentlemen’s agreement. The at-large method of electing council members in Austin interacts with the current and past history of discrimination to perpetuate an ongoing lack of access to political empowerment by providing less opportunity to Hispanics than other members of the electorate to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.
It didn’t take Alvarez long to figure out that if he positioned himself with the enviro-liberal Democrats who vote as a bloc to control the outcome of any election that he could beat the local Hispanic candidate. There exists a white majority voting bloc in the central urban core West of I-35, that unites to vote for similar candidates and propositions. Their unity enables the group to elect environmental candidates, enact or defeat propositions, and choose minority representation. It is the usual predictability of their majority success that provokes low voter turnout and the defeat of preferred candidates in the Hispanic community, or for any other candidate or group in Austin.
Alvarez appealed to this group and owes his ascension in politics to them. For two council terms the Hispanic community had to endure a lackluster council member identified, chosen and elected for them under the at-large election system. Not accountable to the Hispanic community, his decisions, more pro-environmental than pro-Latino, reflected his lack of allegiance to and understanding of our community.
For the record, the Holly Power Plant was well on its way to being closed because of years of advocacy on the part of people like Susana Almanza, El Concilio, the late Robert Donley, Gus Garcia, Sabino Renteria and so many other individuals and community groups. But policy decisions during Alvarez’s tenure on council actually delayed its closing. As for East Austin representation, Alvarez ignored the pleadings of the neighborhood groups to rollback the old zoning laws from LI (Industrial) to a mix of neighborhood business zoning and more single family and multi-family zoning. Instead, he voted in favor of the Single-Family-Mixed Use (SF-MU) zoning which favors developers eager to develop lofts and upscale apartment buildings, which has produced the displacement of minority-owned businesses and homeowners. We can thank Alvarez for the gentrification of East Austin. We can thank Alvarez for the loss of community stores, restaurants and clubs replaced by a disproportionate amount of land speculation and development by outside investors to alter the cultural and historical landscape of East Austin and render it almost unrecognizable.
Austin is the only city in the United States of America with a population of over 500,000 that opposes single-member district voting, and allows voters in the central city disproportionate control of elections by virtue of their relatively high turnout. With this kind of resistance to fair representation, it’s essential that Hispanic voters elect a strong leader.
Yes, her leadership lapsed when a senior Latina employee came under fire last year and the Latino community is right for expecting a higher level of responsiveness and leadership from Gomez because she is elected from a single-member district. But voters should also remember Commissioner Gomez for her fifteen years of steadfast and constant representation of Precinct 4. She has worked for decades on voter education and registration. LA PRENSA is endorsing Gomez because we think she’s gotten a needed wake-up call and will be more accountable to the Latino community from which she was born and raised, than Alvarez, who is too easily influenced and swayed by one interest group or another.
