Early Total
Charles "Tad" Hasse REP 123,681 47.09% 176,530 46.20%
Ruben Cortez, Jr. - (I) DEM 138,957 52.90% 205,520 53.79%
By Juan Montoya
People looking at just the counties along the Rio Grande or the urbanized areas could say that Charles "Tad" Hasse, was soundly beaten by incumbent Ruben Cortez in the State Board of Education District 2 race.
But a closer look at the numbers indicates that Hasse not only gave it the old college try, but in fact won 12 out of 17 counties in the district that stretches from the Rio Grande river to just east of Austin and San Antonio encompassing Corpus Christi and Victoria.Out of a total of 382,050 votes cast in that election, the difference between Hasse and Cortez was only 28,990, a little bit over 7 percent of the total.
When you take into consideration that Hasse campaigned on a shoestring, that Cortez spent thousands to get out the vote, and that the Democratic incumbent was boosted by the last year of the palanca and the Betomania effect on this year's elections, the results should give Democrats room for pause.
In fact, out of the 17 counties in District 2, Hasse beat Cortez handily in 12. The only counties Cortez won were those along the river (Cameron. HIdalgo), neighboring Cameron (Willacy) and Kleberg and Nueces.
Those river and urban areas were enough to give Cortex the win. Hidalgo alone gave Cortez 71,305 compared to Hasse's 27,624. We should not forget that Cortez is a member of the Region One board and as such has cultivated friendships among countless vendors and school district administrators.
Put another way, Hasse got more votes than the number cast in the whole of Cameron County (146,121). More tellingly, there were 30,044 straight-ticket (palanca) Democratic votes cast in Cameron County, more than the difference between the two (the 28,990) enough to have swamped Hasse from the get-go.
That he wasn't and still came within some 7 percentage points of a victory gives you an illustration of how close he came to winning.
The tragedy of it all is that we will have Cortez ,– a GED graduate known for his penchant for twisting vendors' arms for cash contributions and milking the system with very slim ties to education – instead of someone who truly wanted to improve our kids' education.