Senate candidate ‘Mamá’ Garcia isn’t Hispanic but says she has ‘el corazón Latino’
I first encountered Annie "Mamá" Garcia at a Jan. 11 forum for Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate in Houston.
It opened with a lightning round including: “Do you consider yourself a Texan?” and “Which city has the best tacos?” And this one: “Name a Texas activist from a culture other than your own who will vouch for you.”
“It’s a really interesting point that you’re making right now, because what am I?” Garcia said when it came her turn. “So I would say my husband is Spanish; I speak Spanish; I identify. But I was born in Minnesota, and I’m white. So are you saying Latino’s off-limits to me? I just don’t understand.”
Days earlier, one of Garcia’s rivals, Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, apologized for saying that “Tzintzún is more Mexican than any Garcia or Lopez. We were the only indigenous group in Mexico that were not defeated by the Aztecs.”
Tzintzún Ramirez grew up with her father’s last name — Costello — but as an adult took her mother’s name and then added Ramirez when she got married, though she is now divorced.
“I’ve spoken openly about the fact that my identity has been questioned and attacked my whole life, and I have always said that there’s no wrong way to be a Latina/Latino/Latinx, and I truly believe that,” Tzintzún Ramirez said.
Ballot names matter. Another Senate candidate, Sema Hernandez, got nearly a quarter of the vote in the 2018 primary against Beto O’Rourke on $4,000, sweeping some border counties.
The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll has MJ Hegar at 22%, Tzintzún Ramirez at 9%, Chris Bell at 7%, Amanda Edwards and Royce West at 6%, and Garcia and Hernandez at 5%.
In a race for second that tight, "Mamá" could cost Tzintzún Ramirez a runoff spot.
In 2006, gubernatorial candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn was not allowed to use "Grandma" on the ballot because Secretary of State Roger Williams judged it a slogan, not a nickname.
On Monday I called Garcia in the midst of her 420-mile protest walk across Texas. I asked where she was.
“I am in Corpus Christi,” she said. “We were down in an area called las colonias, which, as best as I can tell, I’ve never heard this expression before, but it’s come up now in Brownsville, McAllen and Corpus, and I think it kind of means slum.“
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Yeah.”
I asked Garcia, whose mother, MaryEllen Kersch, was mayor of Georgetown, about her use of Mamá.
Garcia said she was inspired by Brad “Scarface”Jordan, a rapper who ran for Houston City Council last year. (He lost in the runoff.)
“I’m obviously Mamá because my oldest child, who is 7 years old, that’s what he calls me.” So too, she said, do folks at a hospital in Spain, where she launched a nonprofit after her daughter’s illness.
When she filed using Mamá, Glen Maxey of the Texas Democratic Party warned her another candidate could sue, but “no one sued me.”
“Ever since Cristina said that she was more Mexican than any Garcia ... I find it incredibly disturbing and offensive that Democrats are having this conversation with a white supremacist in the White House and we're trying to go and play off each other based on ethnicity. I don't go and knock Cristina for never having lived in Latin America. I don’t knock another candidate that doesn’t even speak Spanish. I chose to learn Spanish. I chose to live in Spain and Ecuador for six years.
“As my husband says, ‘Lo más importante es que su corazón es Latino.’ The most important thing is that my heart is Latin.”
“I’m Mamá, and I’m also a lawyer, and I carefully read the rules, and I decided that’s who I am .”
In the lightning round at Tuesday’s KVUE-TV Senate debate, candidates were asked: "So in one word, tell us the quality you have that makes you the most qualified person on the stage to take on Sen. John Cornyn.“
“Corazón,” said Mamá, whose closing statement ended, “vota para la Mamá harta con el corazón Latino.”
“Vote for the fed-up Mamá with a Latino heart.”
¡Madre mía!
