Trailblazing Republican's Yuletide Nightmare
Could Be Patrick Bounty Hunt Wake Up Call

Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside
December 29, 2020

Groundbreaking Rio Grande Valley politician Vanessa Tijerina has joined U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and the Wilks brothers on the list of Texas Republicans who've performed pirouettes in the national spotlight this month.

But Tijerina didn't get her picture on television across the USA like Paxton and Gohmert managed to do with frivolous lawsuits designed to help President Donald Trump overturn democracy. Tijerina - the first GOP nominee in Texas Senate District 27 in almost three decades - didn't hit publicity pay dirt like Patrick with a $1 million bounty fund as a magnet for evidence on imaginary voter fraud. As someone who'd been a rising star in the GOP without ever actually holding public office, Tijerina didn't have the ability to work like Cruz to get substantial sums of COVID-19 relief for right-wing billionaire donors who claim to hate big government and don't need the money.

A former nurse who resides in Raymondville, Tijerina hasn't been featured on CNN or Fox News for administering the vaccine to anyone up to now. Tijerina in contrast made her latest splash way off the beaten path where she says she was "violently terrorized, bound, gagged & tortured" on Christmas eve after being lured to a local motel by a woman in a black bra with important information on her safety.

While Tijerina made history in November with more than a third of the vote in a bid to unseat longtime Democratic State Senator Eddie Lucio Jr. of San Benito, she looked more like she'd been in the ring for a round or two at the neighborhood boxing club in pictures that she posted this week on her Twitter page @vstijerina.

Tijerina says that the con-job assault was ordered via live stream by a man who remains unidentified and at large as a consequent. But Tijerina reported on social media that a couple of men and the female who persuaded her to go into a hotel room had been apprehended in connection with the kidnapping and beating. The motives for the attack appear to still be a mystery.

The Tijerina yuletide nightmare could have a silver lining, however, if it discourages Patrick from wandering into dark places with strangers who claim to have information on electoral piracy with the possibility of $25,000 payoffs per criminal conviction.

Patrick is a big man who loves his guns. But the lieutenant governor who's the Trump campaign chairman in Texas might not stand a chance against real criminals in the underbelly of society where he could be forced to travel in the search for people who are capable of stealing presidential elections.

Patrick's biggest problems could come from Democrats like Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman who contends that his Texas counterpart owes him several million dollars for indictments that he's secured against several Trump supporters for voter fraud. Patrick's reward fund has been a blessing in disguise for Americans who are pro-democracy nonetheless by coming up empty beyond the debt that it's incurred but may never recognize.

Tijerina had given the GOP a tangible example of how the party had been expanding in South Texas border areas that have been heavily Hispanic when she filed as the first Republican candidate in SD 27 since Lucio eliminated the only GOP challenger who he'd ever faced in 34 years as a senator.

Lucio - a former Cameron County treasurer who served four years in the state House - could have been primed for an epic upset after staving off a Democratic foe in the primary runoff election in July with less than 54 percent of the vote. Lucio had been increasingly unpopular with liberals as Patrick's top Democratic ally in the Legislature's upper chamber.

Tijerina - as it turned out - proved to the ultimate own worst enemy with an arrest during the summer for driving intoxicated with her children in the car along with a crack pipe that police subsequently discovered.

While that event was a monumental buzz kill for Tijerina's state Senate quest, it was a wake up call for the GOP in the RGV that hadn't been aware of or cared about the fact that she'd been indicted in Willacy County while running for Congress as an independent in 2016 on charges involving the alleged theft of government funds through falsified Medicaid and food stamps applications.

The GOP - for the record - formally announced in the midst of Tijerina's personal woes that it would not be supporting her after all as the party's first nominee in SD 27 since 1994. But Tijerina still received almost 73,000 votes in her historic Senate quest. Her experience this past weekend slams yet another exclamation point on how 2020 has been a really bad year to be a Republican in Texas and beyond.