Stupid With Power
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The Mayor of the little town of San Benito, Texas is real tough and he’s helped us decide the next chapter in our Rio Grande Valley investigation is STUPID WITH POWER. Guerra told the local newspaper he would knock the shit out of me if I investigate his parents.
No one has complained yet about your mommy and daddy Mayor, but your brother, he is a whole different story.
“This is the Micky G Channel.”
It fashions itself the Rio Grande Valley’s version of Wayne’s World, and on this night in August it literally was.
“We have a special guest lined up for you guys tonight. The one, the only Dolcefino Consulting.”
I was online talking about nepotism and shady deals we’ve uncovered in San Benito.
The city manager threatened to sue us with taxpayer money after we showed you he was violating the city charter, refusing to move into town.
“Are you planning to move?”
“No. Never.”
And get this. The mayor has threatened to knock the blank out of me if I dig deeper into his family.
And it’s that kind of nonsense that gives us the title of our next investigative report.
After my planned podcast appearance was advertised on social media, San Benito’s Mayor Rick Guerra opened his mouth, and boy did he stick his foot right in it.
“Now I’m trying to figure out what the next video is going to be called. I’ve got Drunk With Power and Arrogant With Power. Stupid With Power could be the third.”
Stupid With Power it is.
“I want to be truthful to the people and I want to be transparent, you know, to the people,” The mayor said in an interview with a local blog.
Public officials just love that word transparency, even when they don’t practice what they falsely preach.
Case in point, San Benito’s Mayor Rick Guerra.
He was being interviewed on the Rio Grande Valley YouTube channel called El Rrun Rrun.
And the mayor was complaining that it’s all my fault that politicians in that town look bad in our videos.
“We want to do the best for San Benito and move forward and give the best we that can, you know, and to be transparent,” Guerra said on YouTube.
There’s that transparency word again, and boy did it make this woman mad.
“You were mad.”
“Yes sir. I was. I still am. I’m upset.”
Upset because she knows Mayor Guerra has been fighting transparency, hiding financial records of the San Benito Economic Development Corporation.
And also trying to hide something else.
The release of a six-year-old investigation into sexual harassment at the San Benito Housing Authority.
The apparent sexual misconduct committed by Johnny Guerra, the Mayor’s brother.
“He was just a cruel individual. I mean he was just cruel.”
“He attempted to assault you and touch you on multiple occasions.”
“Yes.”
She contacted me the morning after the mayor’s interview went live.
It stirred up horrible memories of what she says happened here at the Stone Village Apartment Homes where she was the manager.
It’s a story of alleged sexual misconduct captured in police reports we’ve obtained.
And while we agreed not to share her name, we did convince her it was important to show you her face, to hear her story.
“I will never understand, Wayne. How many times do you have to tell a person no? How many times do you have to tell a person no?”
Police reports detail an incident here in apartment six. It was vacant at the time.
Guerra reportedly grabbed her from behind, tried to push her into a closet.
“I yelled, I made a loud sound and I said what the hell are you doing? He starts making his comments.”
Among the comments the police reports attribute to Guerra, a request for oral sex.
“I remember him just covering my mouth. He literally covered my mouth, covered my mouth, telling me to hush me, to be quiet, that people were going to hear.”
“I’m very scared, I’m shaking, I’m trembling and I’m asking him to please stop, to let me go. He eventually lets me go.”
In the days and weeks that followed, she says she received a slew of lewd comments.
“Very mean. You know, saying that I was old fashioned, that I was bitter, that I had an attitude and that I needed a good F-U-C-K.”
And ongoing harassment.
“He would come into the office, he would start rubbing, you know, his, where his crotch area is. He would just start just rubbing on the desk and making comments, lewd comments, nasty comments.”
Then another graphic incident. Even years later, she remembers it was inside apartment 31.
Guerra allegedly trapped her inside.
By text she told me Guerra locked the door, put his foot and hand on the door to prevent me from leaving.
Guerra was eventually fired after a monthslong internal investigation for other reasons.
And his brother? He was a city commissioner at the time.
A federal lawsuit claimed that when he became mayor, he waged a campaign of retaliation over his brother’s firing.
The lawsuit said the mayor’s new housing authority chairman, Benito Cortez, warned the executive director not to bite the hand that feeds her.
Then helped fire her. He told us the firing was just, and claims he never saw the investigation into Guerra’s alleged sexual misconduct.
“The attorney that was representing the housing authority at the time, Mr. Saenz, instructed us that that was a closed case, and it was sealed. We didn’t receive any information at all,” Cortez said in a phone call with Dolcefino reporters.
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