When Running Out The Clock Almost Cost the Election: The Cost of Having the JV on Staff

 By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon

State Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr. 

Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys in 1989. Almost immediately after buying the failing football team, he fired legendary coach Tom Landry, replacing him with University of Miami coach Jimmy Johnson. Johnson would build a team that would go from 1-15 to back-to-back Super Bowl victories in 1992 and 1993. As a reward, and due partly to Jerry Jones' large, bruised ego, Johnson was replaced as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys by Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer. Switzer would not be the strict disciplinarian Johnson was. The Cowboys would fall to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game in Switzer's first year as coach, but would bounce back to win the Super Bowl for the final time in the team's history in 1995. The Cowboys have been on the hunt for their elusive sixth Super Bowl championship for the better part of a generation.

The Cowboys weren't coached particularly well in the 1995 campaign. Many football experts argue the Cowboys were able to make a Super Bowl run in 1995 due mainly to raw talent. The Cowboys were able to put a far superior team on the field to anything any other team could that year — that's why they were able to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in Super Bowl XXX in Tempe, Arizona.

The bottom line is this: The Cowboys were the Varsity playing among the JV-Light.

The same can be said about Texas' State Senate in District 27. For almost three decades, the seat that covers a large swath of South Texas has been held by Brownsville native Eddie Lucio, Jr. The Democrat got his start in Cameron County politics before being elected to the Texas House of Representatives. He was then elected to the Texas Senate in 1991.

Say what you will about Senator Lucio, and there has been plenty said, one thing has held true over the past three decades — Senator Lucio's election to the state senate is almost always a foregone conclusion. Republicans hardly ever put up a serious candidate to go up against Lucio (this election cycle is no exception — the Republican candidate is a Willacy County scofflaw who is a Republican in name only and used the fact that no serious Republican would mount a challenge against Lucio; a fact that has several Rio Grande Valley Republican Party chairs telling Republicans not to vote for her), and there has hardly ever been a Democrat to mount a serious primary challenge to the incumbent senator's candidacy.

Perhaps it is this level of hubris that has caused the Senator's staff to become complacent and assume their path to the Capitol Building in Austin would never seriously be challenged. Maybe that's why it took the Lucio campaign so long to get this year's campaign rolling. Maybe that's why Lucio's campaign staff convinced the Senator to skip this year's ACLU candidate forum. Why bother attending an event that could only diminish your candidacy by putting you on the same stage with pretenders?

It turns out this year's primary wasn't filled with pretenders after all.

A local Brownsville attorney, Sara Stapleton-Barrera, ran against Lucio in the Democratic Primary. Several local pundits dismissed the candidacy much like they dismissed the candidacy of a third opponent who serves on the State Board of Education, but Stapleton-Barrera was able to take her grassroots campaign of upstarts and mount a serious challenge to the incumbent, eventually earning endorsements from several political action organizations around the Rio Grande Valley. Lucio would eventually emerge victorious in a runoff. The final result was Lucio capturing 53.5% of the vote to the respectable 46.5% Stapleton-Barrera was able to pull in.

This article isn't a commentary about the Senator, or his record. His political opponents did plenty to attack his accomplishments and what he has, or hasn't, done for the people of South Texas. I am simply pointing out how the changing political landscape caused someone who should have been able to go through his primary challengers like a hot knife through butter came within a couple of thousand votes of starting an early, forced retirement from state politics.

Incumbents are not as safe as they used to be. Grassroots campaigns, technology, and social media are all giving voices to the voiceless, and many are beginning to wonder if entrenched, establishment politicians are noticing the change among the electorate. 

Name recognition isn't what it used to be, and the fact that a political newcomer like Stapleton-Barrera was able to come within a nose-length of victory should have Senator Lucio's staff and his political team glaring at the proverbial writing on the wall.

The simple fact is this: The Senator did not suit up a formidable starting team to take on his primary challengers. Whether it was a false sense of security, or the fact that the Senator has not had to suit up a formidable team against anybody of any seriousness for the past three decades, the truth is the Senator's political advisors were punching above their weight. The Senator's Chief of Staff convinced the Senator to appear on a Facebook live event two days after early voting has already begun after advising the Senator to skip a candidate forum hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union before the Democratic primary election was held. 

Sources close to the campaign mentioned political signage and advertising pieces were delayed due to signs being ordered way after the political season began. When the most important thing about a political campaign is getting your candidate's name out in public, why were the tools designed to accomplish this goal delayed?

Louie Sanchez, Senator Lucio's Chief of Staff, is not a wartime consigliere. It's quite possible he is an effective office manager, and is able to handle the day-to-day operations of the Senator's office, but he was outmatched when it came to running a tough, legitimate campaign. If the Senator is going to continue his tenure in Austin beyond this next term, he needs to seriously recognize future campaigns will no longer be the cakewalks he was used to in the past. He needs to put a professional face on his campaign if he wants to hold back challenges from any Sara Stapleton-Barreras in the future.

Senator Lucio was fortunate his talent was able to carry him to victory this time. If he does not take a long, hard look in the mirror and seriously consider bringing in a seasoned, experienced campaign staff in the future, this term may very well be his last.

Politicians are beginning to understand they can no longer afford to sit in their Corinthian leather executive chairs behind their antique desk in their office building at the State Capitol and ignore their constituents. The winds of change are blowing, and if they had blown just a little more to the left, District 27 would have had a new state senator.

I hope Senator Lucio realizes just how close his campaign staff and their decisions came to sinking his efforts. I hope he realizes talent alone might be able to get you one Super Bowl victory, but eventually the upstart expansion Carolina Panthers are going to bounce you from the playoffs the following year.