3 Harlingen commissioners heading for Dec. 14 runoff

HARLINGEN — Topping the Tuesday election’s crowded field of candidates, three city commissioners are facing challengers in runoffs set for Dec. 14.

The Secretary of State’s office is setting the early voting period from Dec. 2 to 10 for the Saturday election, Remi Garza, Cameron County’s elections administrator, said Wednesday.

On Tuesday, voters sent Commissioners Michael Mezmar, Frank Morales and Rene Perez into runoffs in Harlingen’s most heavily contested election in decades.

The election marked the city’s first regular November election.

In 2022, voters pushed the city’s elections from May to November, part of the previous commission’s plan to boost turnout.

On Tuesday, Harlingen voters cast about 21,000 ballots, turning out the Cameron County election’s highest numbers, Garza said.

The election drew the county’s second highest voter turnout, with 49% of registered voters going to the polls, compared with a record 52% in the 2020 election, he said.

In one of the hottest local elections, Mezmar, a financial analyst running for his fifth term for the seat he’s held since 2013, won 1,196 votes, or 28.3%, to top a field of three challengers.

Now, he’s facing Frank Lozano, an attorney, in next month’s runoff.

In the election’s tightest race, Lozano drew 1,106 votes, or 26.2%, to enter the runoff, while Jennifer Vasquez Colten, Texas State Technical College Foundation’s executive director of advancement operations, fell short, taking 1,038 votes, with Steven Ritter, a pilot, picking up 874 votes.

In the District 4 race, Morales, a semi-retired former salesman running for a second term to the post he won in 2021, pulled 1,071 votes, taking 39.7% of the vote in a four-man scramble.

In a rematch of the 2021 election, Morales is facing former City Commissioner Basilio “Chino” Sanchez, a retired newspaper production technician who served on the commission from 2012 to 2015.

While Sanchez pulled 683 votes in Tuesday’s election, Beto Pena, an investigator with the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office, fell short of the runoff with 566 votes, with B.T. Vargas, a business owner, finishing with 378 votes.

In the race for the District 5 seat, Perez, a schoolteacher bidding for a second term, was the election’s biggest vote-getter, winning 2,047 votes, or 46.8%.

In the runoff, he’s facing Nikki Alvarez Daniell, a Cameron County Precinct 5 reserve deputy constable who pulled 1,455 votes, while Ruben De La Rosa, a Texas Southmost College instructor who served on the commission from 2015 to 2021, fell short of the runoff, taking 871 votes.

In a special election, voters passed all 23 propositions on the ballot in the city’s most sweeping City Charter revision since at least 2006.

Up and down the ballot, Proposition C, asking voters to decide whether the city should give the mayor a vote on the commission, turned into one the election’s hottest issues, with Mayor Norma Sepulveda pushing for the measure.

While 12,392 voters, or 66.1%, cast ballots in support of the proposition, 6,346 voted against the measure, with some residents claiming the proposal could spur deadlocks in cases of tied votes.

While denying the claim, Sepulveda, noting the mayor runs at-large, argued giving the mayor a vote would better represent residents while giving them insight into the mayor’s position on issues.

One of the charter’s new amendments stems from Proposition F, which asked voters if they wanted “candidates for public office … not (to) be delinquent in any indebtedness to the city.”

While 16,757 voters, or 89.5%, cast ballots in favor of the proposition, 1,951 voted against it.

Meanwhile, 16,909 voters, or 90.5%, supported Proposition G, requiring candidates live within their districts for at least a year before elections, while 1,765 voted against the measure.

Previously, the charter required candidates live in districts for at least six months prior to elections.

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