MCALLEN, Texas — A developing federal investigation has brought up allegations that a Hidalgo County Commissioner paid for votes with bags of cocaine while other politicians paid for votes also with cash, cigarettes, marijuana and beer.
Court records obtained by Breitbart Texas from the arrest of two women accused of buying votes show that during the democratic primaries in 2012, a campaign manager for a Hidalgo County Commissioner who said that during the campaign, he bought $50 worth of cocaine, commonly known as an 8-ball and split it up in order to give it to the two women so they could use it to entice voters.
Earlier this week Belinda Solis and Veronica Salazar went before U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby who formally charged them with vote buying and set their bond at $10,000.
The two women were part of a large year and a half long FBI investigation into election corruption in Hidalgo County.
The investigation began in January 2013 when agents met with a campaign manager for a Hidalgo County Commissioner, who told the agents that he bought cocaine so his campaign workers could give it to the voters in exchange for their votes. The court records do not identify the commissioner by name; however they state that he ran during the 2012 primaries. The women were paid campaign workers, also known as politiqueras, who targeted low income areas and elderly individuals enticing them to vote for a particular candidate.
Over the course of the investigation, agents met with the two women who told the agents that they had received the cocaine from the campaign manager who is only identified on court records as campaign worker 1 and then gave it to the voters. The women also told the agents that they gave cocaine to voters during the school board election in Donna ISD in addition to cash, beer, cigarettes, and marijuana.
Political corruption primarily by democrats in South Texas has been exposed by federal agencies, shedding light into other cases of vote buying, contract rigging by school boards, bribery money laundering, and other criminal cases.
Eight months ago, Donna ISD School board president Alfredo Lugo hanged himself after federal agents arrested another group of politiqueras for buying votes using cash, beer and cigarettes and the school board was mentioned.
One of the public figures to be exposed in recent years is former Hidalgo County Sheriff, Lupe Trevino, who is preparing to serve a 5-year-prison term for taking money from a Mexican drug lord and depositing the cash into his campaign funds.
In recent weeks, the former Mayor of Progreso, his father and his brother who ran the school board ended up getting sentenced for running a scheme where they controlled all of the contracts that the city and the school board gave out and demanding cash payments from anyone looking to do business with them.