Burnt Orange Report: A Conversation With Gilberto Hinojosa, Candidate for TDP State Chair
This weekend, Democrats will convene in Houston for the Texas Democratic Party's state convention. One of the more important orders of business is electing a new state party chair, as Boyd Richie -- first elected in 2006 -- is stepping down. The leading candidate for the job is Gilberto Hinojosa, a former Cameron County judge and DNC member who has solid ideas for the direction in which the TDP needs to go.
I sat down with Hinojosa to discuss his background, his vision for the party, and why he wanted this job. All week I'll be publishing excerpts from our conversation. For those of you not familiar with Hinojosa, I hope this is a helpful resource to get to know more about the man who is likely to helm our State Party for the next two years.
Hinojosa hails from the Rio Grande Valley, born in Alamo and raised in Mission. As he puts it, "My father was a disk jockey on a Spanish radio station. He went into the military, he was drafted without speaking English. I went to what is now Pan-American University, then went on to law school at Georgetown around the time of Watergate."
In 1978 he graduated from law school and took a job as a migrant legal services attorney in Washington DC doing migrant farmworker impact litigation all over the country. After Ronald Reagan was elected, he came back to Texas to work in Brownsville. He was elected to the school board, and later appointed to the county court-at-law. Later, then-governor Mark White appointed him to a District Court bench. Hinojosa was next elected to the Court of Appeals at the young age of 38, and then decided to run for Cameron County Judge. He held that position for 12 years, and then went on to serve as Chair of the Cameron County Democratic Party. In 2008, he was elected to the DNC, and then-DNC Chair Tim Kaine appointed Hinojosa to the executive committee, making him the only Texan appointed by Kaine.
more: http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/12353/a-conversation-with-gilberto-hinojosa-candidate-for-tdp-state-chair
