Brownsville City Commissioner Cesar De Leon took the stand to read a prepared statement during last night’s City Commission meeting, apologizing for calling two black county prosecutors “niggers,” calling other female officials “bitch” and “twat,” among other things during a secretly recorded conversation between himself and Carlos Elizondo. In the statement, De Leon expressed that he would continue his “commitment to the people of Brownsville, nor will (he) back down in (his) fight for (their) great community.” In other words: he’s not resigning and that’s bullshit.
Let’s make this very clear to anyone who was dumb enough to believe last night’s apology; De Leon does not care about your better interests or the betterment of “his” town. De Leon does not care about cleaning up Brownsville and the effort that these two prosecutors have done to legitimately scare him and his peers, he didn’t mince words of what he clearly thought of them. De Leon cares about his image and that’s about fucking it. A young, ambitious man whose stock was on the rise before the recording was made public is now faced with the cold reality that he has morally bankrupted the legitimacy of his office and turned his back on the over 4,000 Brownsville residents that voted for him.
The Bench Wire is, quite literally, the lowest common denominator when it comes to taking the moral high ground and we get that. We, however, were never elected to represent a community that has, by proportionate estimates, over 1,000 people who consider themselves black or black-latino.
If De Leon is interested in re-doing his apology, we’ve penned one just for him:
My fellow Brownsvillians,
Today I stand before you not as a man, but as a boy of empty morals. I could tell you that I am sorry and tell you how heavy my heart is that I have failed so troublingly quickly at representing and upholding the office and the responsibility I was tasked with by you, the people. I could tell you that I am a citizen first and a politician second and that goodness should trump political agenda and aspirations. I could tell you that seeking justice and cleaning up our city is at the forefront of my mind and not how any of it serves my own personal interests.
I could tell you all of those things, but none of it would be true.
You, the people, deserve better and deserve an official who legitimately understands what it means to represent the public in a just and moral way. For this reason, I am stepping down from my post as City Commissioner, At-Large “A” effective immediately.
I would ask for your forgiveness for my acts of turpitude, but everyone knows that it would just be a craven facade to do so.
We’ll keep you posted if De Leon changes his mind.
