Brownsville Navigation Board sees new faces following election

May 4-The Brownsville Navigation District Board of Commissioners will have two new members according to the vote count from the May 2 joint election.

David A. Garcia won the Place 2 commission race with 4,303 votes (51.97%), besting challengers Shariff Gonnella (2,455 votes, 29.64%) and Alex Najera (1,523 votes, 18.39%). The total number of votes in the race was 8,282.

Garcia will succeed longtime Commissioner John Wood, who choose not to run again for Place 2. Garcia formerly served as Cameron County administrator, a position from which he resigned in 2019.

Garcia had been named county administrator in 2015 when then (and current) administrator Pete Sepulveda Jr. was appointed to fill Carlos Cascos' role as county judge after Cascos was named Texas Secretary of State.

Garcia, who was endorsed by BND Place 3 Commissioner John Reed, had also served as assistant coordinator for the Cameron County Regional Mobility Authority. Wood endorsed Gonnella in the race.

Luis Villarreal Jr. won the race for BND Place 4, succeeding Steve Guerra, the commission's chairman, who chose not to run again for BND commission.

Guerra instead threw his hat in the ring in the race for county judge, going up against incumbent Eddie Treviño Jr. The two will face each other in a primary runoff on May 26.

Villarreal, who made an unsuccessful bid for Texas House of Representatives District 37 in 2022, won Place 4 with 3,308 votes (40.16%). Trailing were Martha A. Davila (2,973 votes, 36.09%) and Prisci Roca Tipton (1,957 votes, 23.76%).

Out of 191,397 registered voters countywide, only 14,179 ballots were cast on May 2, representing a turnout of 7.41%, according to the election results.

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