TEXAS
The Monitor
Jacob Fischler | The Monitor
Posted on Mar 5, 2014
EDINBURG — At about 7:20 p.m. Tuesday, in the parking lot of the Edinburg middle school he attended more than a quarter-century ago, Ricardo Rodriguez hugged his 15-year-old son close and kissed him on top of his head.
“It’s over,” the Hidalgo County district attorney-elect said.
It was an atypical display of emotion from the 41-year-old former 92nd state District Court judge, who rarely lets his guard down in public but had complained in the past two days of the way the time he’d committed to a volatile district attorney’s campaign had strained his family life.
“That’s why I stick around there and that’s why that’s my traditional ground there where I stick around because I don’t like to show too much of those emotions,” he said later. “It was special because my son was there also there with me, and they’ve taken a drain in this campaign.”
Rodriguez defeated 8-term incumbent — and former political ally — Rene Guerra, 69, with nearly 64 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary for Hidalgo County district attorney. Rodriguez outspent the veteran in the campaign at a rate of more than 3-to-1, while building support for the idea that change was necessary in the DA’s office.
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