From the “Home is where you say it is” department.
Delicia Herrera
Her dogs live there, her mail arrives there, and her “stuff” is still there.
But Delicia Herrera insists she no longer lives at the home she owns on SW 39th Street.
The house sits in Texas House District 124, and the former city councilwoman is running in the Democratic primary for District 125. State law requires elected officials to live in the district they represent.
Herrera said she now lives on Glen Heather, in the northwest corner of the district, which runs in a strip from Loop 1604 on either side of Bandera Road to the city’s near West Side.
“I haven’t been sleeping there the past week, but I will be from now on,” she said Thursday afternoon on a break from block walking.
Candidates had until April 9 to establish residency in the district in which they’re seeking office, according to the Texas Secretary of State. That deadline came from the federal court order establishing interim congressional, House and Senate boundaries in the state’s ongoing redistricting battle.
Herrera said she was told the deadline was April 18. “I remember because it was near tax day,” she said.
She changed her address to Glen Heather on her voter registration card on April 3, according to the Bexar County Elections Office.
That home belongs to Sylvia Velasquez Cortez, who was listed as Herrera’s campaign treasurer on her January campaign finance report.
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I know very little about Herrera or her primary opponent, Justin Rodriguez. I’m just citing this as another example of Texas’ notoriously forgiving residency laws, which generally make it easy to register or represent wherever you say you live, whether or not you really live there. The Lege is full of people who don’t live where they represent. Voters generally give them a pass, and even opponents don’t usually kick up a fuss – Rodriguez is quoted in the story saying he’s focused on other things – and when they do it often fails to get traction. It’s probably not the best way to do things, but it’s not particularly high on anyone’s priority list (mine included), so it is how it is.
I wonder if Ms. Herrera is going to give up the homestead exemption she claims on the 34th Street house. If not, then she’s a crooked liar.
This is one of those issues that needs to be fixed, where any property with a homestead exemption is presumed to be your residence, with no exceptions.