Lourdes Galvan vs. David Medina For San Antonio City Council Person District 5

Update:  As you can read from the comments of this article, no one can get a clear cut answer on why anyone should vote for David Medina.  This is better than a novela, it's a down right circus and feud between the Mexican Hatfields and McCoys.  Needless to say, attempts to contact David Medina have gone unanswered so I suppose my vote nor those of my family and neighbors don't matter much.  This leaves me no choice but to delver those votes towards Galvan.   

District 5 City Council Candidate  David Medina has a lot of questions around his bid for the seat including residency, lack of understanding of the issues, and some domestic sqabblings between his family and others.   The supporters of both candidates have turned this campaign into a good old fashioned novela as you will read below.  Neither is really a good candidate for city council but if I were to choose between the two I would have to go with the safe candidate Lourdes Galvan.  Moving to District 5 under the clueless Galvan watch  from the fast deteriorating Dist. 1 under the "doesn't have a clue" Mary Alice Cisneros watch may prove to be interesting after all.   

District 5 rematch getting ugly
By Tracy Idell Hamilton - Express-News

Accusations of lying, stealing and unemployment have overshadowed any substantive policy debates in the District 5 grudge match between current Councilwoman Lourdes Galvan and challenger David Medina Jr.

Medina, now 23, fell 275 votes short of beating Galvan in a runoff two years ago. And, as he promised just days after that election, he's determined to take the seat away from the one-term councilwoman this time around.

Real policy differences are difficult to discern between the fresh-faced newbie who says he'll bring change and the seasoned veteran who wants to finish the work she's begun.

Medina often speaks in broad terms, saying he'll speed up road repair, bring more jobs and reduce crime in the West Side district. He's even less specific when it comes to how he'll do that while the city faces a budget deficit.

"I believe in setting priorities," he said. "I don't want to cut anything."

He says he would have voted for CPS Energy's conservation program, which Galvan opposed, fearing her constituents could ill-afford the increase in their bills. He also disagrees with the council's decision last month to delay street maintenance by six months and instead would have cut Animal Care Services.

But otherwise, the pair agree on big issues: no to toll roads, conditional support for additional nuclear plants and a cautious approach to Mission Verde, former Mayor Phil Hardberger's 11-point plan to make San Antonio a greener city.

For Galvan, 62, the issue is experience.

"I have 40 years of proven leadership," she says. "We don't have time for training wheels on City Council. District 5 can't afford to go backwards."

Galvan, who worked for then-Councilwoman Patti Radle for three years before winning the seat after Radle ran up against term limits, says the district is making progress that only she can carry on.

She allocated $2.4 million of the district's discretionary funds for additional street maintenance, more than anyone else who's held the seat, she says.

And her focus on getting more road repair in the district was the reason Hardberger, who has generally stayed above the political fray, allowed her to use a supportive quote from him in an upcoming mailer.

Galvan also helped create a tax increment refinancing zone in the district to lure businesses into the area, and she lists a newly opened police storefront on West Commerce Street among her accomplishments.

But those messages are often drowned out by the uglier side of the campaign.

Galvan said Medina supporters have accused her of stealing, a charge she finds outrageous.

"I asked, ‘Where's the proof?' and of course they have nothing," she said.

Galvan supporters accuse Medina, who worked briefly in the offices of Radle and then-Mayor Ed Garza, of exaggerating his experience at City Hall, living outside the district and not having a job. He, too, says the charges are baseless.

Tensions have simmered since the 2007 election and have even led to a lawsuit filed this spring against Medina's parents by their former next-door neighbors, the Velazquez family.

For more than a decade, matriarch Maria Velazquez says, the families were close, attending each others' birthdays and graduations. But the relationship went downhill in 2007 after David Medina Jr., who then lived with his parents, asked her to be his campaign treasurer.

A longtime Galvan supporter, Velazquez declined. She said it led to a two-year campaign of harassment by David Medina Sr. and his wife, Josie, including dozens of police calls, accusations that Velazquez's son, Fernando, shot at the Medina home - which was ruled out by police - and a smear campaign against Velazquez's daughter, a San Antonio police lieutenant.

A police investigation into the dispute laid much of the blame at the Medina family's feet.

"At no time did the Medina family provide me with any valid reason why the Velazquez family may have suddenly become hostile and threatening," Officer Michael Saenz wrote to his superiors last January.

The Medinas ultimately moved. David Medina Jr., who is not named in the lawsuit, moved to a house on Winnipeg Street with his brother. He referred questions about the lawsuit to his family's attorney, as did his mother.

Fernando Velazquez worked briefly in Galvan's office, which he says inflamed the situation to the point where he quit. He says the feud has poisoned relations throughout the neighborhood and that Medina supporters still hurl insults at him in public.

He has taken action of his own, filing an open records request with the San Antonio Water System in an effort to prove that Medina Jr. couldn't have lived at the house on Winnipeg, which he listed in his campaign filing, because it had no water service from August through February.

SAWS confirmed that "the occupant living in the home was not authorized to use service and therefore no meter readings or billings were produced for this address."

Medina said he does and did live on Winnipeg but had no knowledge of the issue because his brother pays the bills.

Medina said he's always "had a heart to help" his community, which is why he's chosen to run before finishing college.

He says he's a project manager, working for his family's residential remodeling business.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/politics/District_5_rematch_getting_ugly.html?c=y&commentSubmitted=y#comments

tags: lourdes galvan  david medina  san antonio texas  san antonio politics  san antonio district 5  

links: digg this    del.icio.us    technorati    reddit