Free Republic

January 3 - January 10, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 16 When the 112th Congress is sworn in on January 5, there may be no better living, breathing reminder of just how big the 2010 Republican wave was than Rep. Blake Farenthold. Written off during the campaign as a longshot at best and a joke at worst, Farenthold ended up narrowly defeating Texas Democrat Solomon Ortiz, a 14-term incumbent who had typically won reelection by more than 20 points in a district that is now 71 percent Hispanic. “For me, this was the race that put the exclamation point on...

WESLACO, Nov. 29 - U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz can depart Congress a hero to South Texas veterans by securing passage of legislation that would commit the VA to building a veterans’ hospital in the region. That’s the view of the American GI Forum of Texas, which has made the VA hospital issue one of its top legislative priorities. After 28 years in Congress, Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, was defeated in the Nov. 2 general election by Republican Blake Farenthold, also of Corpus Christi. Ortiz leaves office in the New Year. “After a long and distinguished career in Congress, Representative Ortiz...

CORPUS CHRISTI — Gov. Rick Perry will certify results Thursday of the 27th Congressional District election recount. The complete results, released Monday by the Secretary of State’s office, showed U.S. Rep.-elect Blake Farenthold receiving 51,001 votes, 775 more votes than incumbent U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz. Election returns showed Farenthold beating Ortiz by 792 votes. Libertarian candidate Ed Mishou received 5,372 votes, according to the Secretary of State. The governor will certify, or canvass, the results at 12:15 p.m. Thursday in Austin, Secretary of State spokeswoman Jordy Keith said. Because the recount did not change the outcome of the race,...

U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz’s petition for a recount of votes cast for the U.S. House of Representatives from District 27 has been denied. Texas Secretary of State Director of Elections Ann McGeehan said Ortiz' request was rejected because of specific defects in it. Ortiz has until Nov. 24 to amend the petition and submit a corrected one. McGeehan notified Ortiz in a letter dated today that he failed to include all precinct polls in District 27 in the requested recount and that his deposit of $11,500 was not sufficient and instead should be $23,500. Ortiz also failed to note...

CORPUS CHRISTI — Republican and Democratic Party officials are preparing for a recount in the 27th Congressional District that could take weeks and cost thousands of dollars. U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz on Monday asked supporters for $13,000 for the recount. He said in an e-mailed statement to supporters the money must be raised by midnight. Meanwhile, Republicans worried the recount could hamper U.S. Rep.-elect Blake Farenthold’s transition into office. Following last week’s election, the Democratic congressman trailed Farenthold by 799 votes. The lead was reduced to 792 after a bag was discovered containing seven uncounted ballots, all in favor of...

A satirist of Swiftian talent could not have made up Thursday’s sequence of events in the real-life saga of U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz’s persistent refusal to concede to Rep.-elect Blake Farenthold. First, a bag of uncounted votes was discovered – not a box, a bag. The Ortiz campaign’s immediate response was not unlike the super-sleuth’s standard “A-HA!” reaction to the discovery of a clue. “Yesterday we urged caution,” the Ortiz campaign’s statement said, “and today that caution was proved warranted ...” The bag was from a precinct in Robstown, Ortiz’s loyalist hometown. The bag contained seven votes, all for Ortiz....

Posted: Nov 05, 2010 6:28 PM CDT Updated: Nov 05, 2010 6:28 PM CDT CORPUS CHRISTI (Kiii News) - Congressman Solomon Ortiz is calling for a recount of the U.S. Rep District 27 election. This is his statement that he sent to the Kiii newsroom: "As I have said since Tuesday, we still need to ensure every vote is counted before determining the outcome of this race. However, since numerous voting irregularities have been reported in the 27th Congressional District of Texas race, I have also decided to ask for a manual recount. Just in the first days of counting,...

CORPUS CHRISTI — Blake Farenthold, the 27th District congressman-elect, and his staff focused Wednesday on his transition into office despite not receiving a concession from incumbent U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz. Ortiz, a Democrat, on Tuesday lost the seat he held for 28 years by 799 votes. Ortiz said Wednesday a recount of Tuesday’s 27th Congressional District election votes may be needed after his legal team completes a review of the results. “I thank all the people who supported me with their vote in Tuesday’s general election,” Ortiz said Wednesday in a written statement. “The process of reviewing the...

Today's Get out the Vote Rally at Veterans Park has been moved and will now be held on the vacant lot across the street from the park. Cameron County Judge Carlos H. Cascos earlier said the rally violates the election code and had asked the county's Election Department to move it because of its proximity to an early voting location. The rally will be moved to the new location because officials do not want to be accused of doing anything unlawful, said Jose Borjon, communications director for U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, D-Corpus, Christi, who is organizing the event. In...

HARLINGEN - U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa says he and other South Texas business and political leaders will hire redistricting experts and attorneys to help the region gain an extra congressional seat next year. “We did it the last time and we are going to do it again. We are going to invest in legal advice with attorneys, map drawers, everybody, because this region is one of the fastest growing regions in the country and we deserve to have another member of Congress,” the Mercedes Democrat told the Guardian. New congressional lines will be drawn by state legislators next year soon...

The longtime Corpus Christi Democratic congressman and political boss is facing a stiff challenge from Republican Blake Farenthold. He is the step-grandson of Sissy Farenthold, the onetime leader of the Dirty Thirty in the Texas House of Representatives during the 1971 Sharpstown Scandal, who finished second (to Dolph Briscoe) in the 1972 Democratic gubernatorial primary, knocking Ben Barnes out of the race and ending his promising political career. Now another Farenthold is positioned to knock off Ortiz. Word on the street in Corpus Christi is that Farenthold has an 8 point lead in the district, which runs south along the...

U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, D-Texas, states repeatedly in official documents that his trips overseas are for the purpose of expanding economic opportunities for his congressional district in south Texas. Despite expenditures over the years of, for example, $69,200 in per diem stipends from the government for official trips, and special-interest groups footing bills to the tune of at least $154,000 since 2000, the actual achievements of the trips are difficult to gauge. Have any jobs been created in Texas? Has new business located in Ortiz’s congressional district? Is there increased trade, particularly with China which has been the...

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Rep. Solomon Ortiz has been contacted by House investigators who are looking into the use of overseas travel stipends, according to lawmakers who were also contacted. This follows the newspaper's reporting in March that stipends had been used for unauthorized purposes, and that some lawmakers were apparently ignorant of the rules governing use of the money. Congressional rules say the daily travel funds, called a per diem, must be spent on meals, cabs and other travel expenses. But when lawmakers travel, many of their meals and expenses are picked up by other people,...

WASHINGTON — Born into South Texas poverty as the son of migrant workers, a man who rose from shoeshine boy to sheriff to congressman is the face of the immigration reform bill set to slog its way through the House of Representatives this year. That's by design. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, a 27-year veteran of legislative battles, isn't the only Democrat who concedes the road for immigration reform is steeply uphill in a midterm election year. But the bill's backers are counting on the Robstown native to draw on his life experience to argue that immigration reform is needed...

Yesterday we reported on a Libya reception at the Willard Hotel Wednesday, and wondered who from the U.S. government might dare show up in the wake of the Al-Megrahi controversy. POLITICO's Ken Vogel poked around, and discovered that not everybody in the U.S. government wants to pile on Libya. Here's his report: Not for Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-Texas) the Libya-bashing that followed Scotland’s release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the terrorist convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, and the hero’s welcome he received when he returned to Libya.

CORPUS CHRISTI — For about 1½ hours Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, fielded questions from residents on everything from the cost of a new national health care plan to whether it would take away private insurance some are accustomed to. Shortly before 6 p.m. an automated phone message from Ortiz started ringing hundreds of telephones and cell phones in South Texas, connecting constituents with the congressman. Ortiz said during the teleconference that he supports the Democrat plan to revamp health care and he also supports a public option, which opponents of the proposal worry would allow government...

CORPUS CHRISTI — Area residents will have the opportunity to ask questions and voice concerns about plans to revamp health care during a telephone town hall meeting next month. U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Robstown, whose office has gotten thousands of calls from constituents, will discuss health care proposals under consideration in Congress during the Sept. 2 phone conference. Constituents can call the congressman’s Corpus Christi, Brownsville and Washington D.C. offices to register, Ortiz spokesman Jose Borjon said. Corpus Christi resident Janet Homan plans to be among the first to register for Ortiz’s meeting. Homan, a 56-year-old elementary school teacher, had...

Ortiz draws line in sand over Neal's appointment U.S. Representative threatens to remove $3M in Ingleside CORPUS CHRISTI — U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz says he’ll take back $3 million in funds meant to offset Ingleside base closure if the Ingleside City Council confirms Nueces County Judge Loyd Neal to the board that oversees base redevelopment. Ortiz’s office announced Thursday that the U.S. House Armed Services Committee authorized $550.4 billion that includes a $3 million earmark for the Ingleside Local Redevelopment Authority. The earmark’s purpose is to help mitigate the job losses from closure next year of Naval Station Ingleside. The...

NEW YORK The Pentagon would be required to grant journalists access to ceremonies honoring fallen military personnel, under a bill recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. The legislation is significant because it would, for the first time since Vietnam, let photojournalists capture the powerful images of flag-draped caskets arriving on American soil during wartime. This week the bill won the endorsement of the National Press Photographers Association. The Fallen Hero Commemoration Act, or H.R. 6662, was introduced July 30 by Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.), a member of the House Committee on Armed Services. The bill states: "The...

CORPUS CHRISTI — A couple who provided U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz with free trips to China was sentenced Friday in Houston for their role in a complex visa fraud scheme unrelated to the trips with Ortiz. Kenneth and Ping Lee Cohen pleaded guilty in the case in 2006. They owned a company called Asia Access, which charged as much as $60,000 to Chinese immigrants attempting to obtain green cards. The company used fake documents from real companies in which Chinese nationals claimed they would be working as executives in American subsidiaries of Chinese companies, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office...

6 U.S. congressmen visit, discuss funding Five Corpus Christi-area community leaders told six visiting members of Congress that the area needs money and expertise to educate the workforce; build or repair infrastructure; medically insure residents and help bring more military missions. One question remained unanswered: where to find the money. The community leaders and congressmen met as a result of the State of the Federal Government in South Texas summit Friday at the Congressman Solomon P. Ortiz International Center. The congressmen came at the invitation of Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi. The meeting with community leaders followed a luncheon...

Congressman was unaware of their crimes, his aide says U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz accepted free trips to China from a Houston-based husband-and-wife business team convicted recently in an illegal immigration scheme involving Chinese nationals. Ortiz spokeswoman Cathy Travis couldn't reach him Monday, but said she is sure he was unaware of the crimes committed by Kenneth and Ping Lee Cohen, of Houston. The Cohens pleaded guilty in February to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and are awaiting sentencing. These trips are among the 46 paid by organizations for Ortiz and his staff between 2000 and August 2005, according...

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa Midwestern farmlands seem an unlikely hideout for Osama bin Laden's hired hands, but an ongoing federal crackdown reveals the increased presence here of a notoriously violent gang with suspected links to al-Qaida. Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, a gang founded in El Salvador and known for smuggling drugs and immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border, could be bringing terrorists with them. "The al-Qaida, from what we understand, has been meeting with them in Central America," said Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, which oversees national security. Ortiz testified in March that al-Qaida has offered...

The political recriminations from the cliffhanger passage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement last week are even worse than we thought. Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, is contemplating revenge against the 15 Democrats who had the nerve to vote for hemispheric growth and progress. The San Francisco Democrat called a caucus gripe session in the wake of last Wednesday's vote, and an article in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call suggested that Democrats who voted yes may lose their favorite committee assignments. Our John Fund reports on OpinionJournal.com that Democratic leaders are especially mad at two Black Caucus...

U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz's chief of staff instructed a Houston engineering company to hire specific Mexican subcontractors for a failed international bridge project, company officials and a former Brownsville port commissioner say. Florencio "Lencho" Rendon, chief aide to Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, denies the allegations. During last year's port elections in Brownsville, a great deal of public uproar was directed at incumbent port commissioners because of a bridge project many Brownsville residents have come to call "the bridge to nowhere." The port has spent more than $21 million on a now 15-year-old international bridge project that many acknowledge may never be...

Local representative lobs criticism at senator over Packery Channel, Valley Three angry letters Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison never received speak volumes about the discord between her and U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz. The letters attack her for favoring a Corpus Christi project at the expense of one in Brownsville. One letter plays the ethnicity card: "I know it's not because there's mostly Hispanics in the Valley is it? No, surely that's not it. I am, however, curious." The "I" was supposed to be a Valley constituent. Ortiz's chief of staff, Florencio "Lencho" Rendon, distributed the letters, intending to find others...

Ortiz sought to win friendly selection on base-closure panel, local officials say Nueces County's plan last May to hire Washington lobbyist Randy DeLay was a strategy by U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz to win the selection of a friendly base closure commissioner, several local officials have said. The nine commissioners who will form the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, commission will have the power to overturn Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's closure recommendations with a majority vote. President Bush will appoint all nine commissioners, but six of the nine are appointed in consultation with Congress. Last week, several members of...

U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-Corpus Christi) has requested that the Homeland Security Committee hold a field hearing in the Rio Grande Valley this spring to examine border-related homeland security issues. In a letter sent to Chairman Christopher Cox (R-CA) and Jim Turner (D-TX), the Ranking Democrat, Ortiz said he was concerned that as the nation moves forward with measures to secure its borders, "we do not impede the legitimate flow of people and commerce." Ortiz said he was particularly concerned with the implementation of the US-VISIT program. The rest of the story, subscribers only Border Buzz Caldo items also from...

Ortiz likes proposed district GOP makes deal; Dems plan challenge By Ty Meighan Scripps Howard Austin Bureau October 10, 2003 AUSTIN - After six months of wrangling among lawmakers and three special sessions, GOP leaders unveiled a compromise congressional redistricting map Thursday that could elect up to seven more Republicans to the U.S. Congress. The full House and Senate are expected to consider the map today. Democrats blasted the new plan, claiming that it dilutes minority and rural voting strength and will hurt Texas' clout in Congress if it ends the political careers of ranking Democratic members. They are vowing...

Katie Couric Award Winner Rush Limbaugh today "If we attack Iraq, are we going to begin to see suicide bombers within the United States because we don't have the right intelligence?" A day in the life of Solomon P. Ortiz

How Ortiz influenced a Navy contract A Hispanic, woman-owned company got two years of help from Ortiz - other firms didn't get a chance BY TARA COPPScripps Howard News ServiceJune 9, 2002   Outsider's struggle:Mary Lupe Arana says minorities need federal work to break Corpus Christi's tight-knit construction network. Read her story>> WASHINGTON - The Navy buckled to pressure by U.S. Rep. Solomon P. Ortiz in March and awarded a $12 million contract to a Corpus Christi minority-owned company, despite internal Navy recommendations against the award, according to documents obtained by the Caller-Times. On its face, Ortiz was just doing...