Albert Perez is an attorney on Fort Worth's predominantly Hispanic North Side. A few years ago, Perez and a handful of other Hispanic leaders looked around at the political leadership in Fort Worth and Tarrant County and saw few officeholders who looked like them. There were no Hispanics on the Fort Worth City Council, none on the county commissioners' court, none on Arlington City Council or its school board. They did have three members of the Fort Worth school board and a couple of justices of the peace. Oh yeah, and they had Hector Garcia, mayor of Watauga, population 22,089.

But living in a county that is 20 percent Hispanic and a city that is nearly one-third Hispanic, Perez and his friends thought they could do better. They started meeting every month and brainstorming to find ways to get more Hispanics to run. After about a year, they had found no one. They disbanded about a year ago.

"We never could get anyone to run," Perez, 57, said. "Everyone we talked to was too busy making a living to run. A lot of them were like me. I have a law office to run. I'm still paying off college tuition. I'd rather play with my grandchildren than run for office."

I asked Perez if the Tarrant County Democratic Party had ever participated in the meetings. "They were aware we were meeting," Perez said of the TCDP's leadership, "and I guess it would have helped if they had participated. I mean, we were interested in Democratic candidates, because most Hispanics feel more comfortable with the Democratic ideology than the Republican. But I guess it speaks volumes about our relationship with the Democratic Party that we didn't think of approaching them, and they didn't ask if they could participate."

"I think they just saw what we were doing as an impossibility," Perez continued. "If we couldn't find someone among ourselves, how could these white guys in the party structure hope to find Hispanic candidates for us?" NEXT »

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5