Green Party's Altgelt wins Laredo council at-large seat

George Altgelt was the Texas Green Party's nominee for statewide judicial office in 2014.  Last August, he sponsored a petition to have the sitting Laredo city council at-large 7 representative, Jorge Vera, recalled.  The petition was certified and Vera was removed from office by the voters last November.  (Vera pleaded guilty to charges of drug possession and filing a false police report in February of this year.)

Altgelt and a few others ran for the vacant seat in the special election in March.  He defeated a Latino challenger Hector Patiño yesterday in the runoff, 58-42.  *Update: Altgelt's mother is Latina, so insinuation on my part -- or inference by the reader -- that the contest was a Caucasian versus a Latino is regrettable.

This news is obviously quite remarkable on several levels.  Most interesting to me from a macro perspective is the flourishing of the Green Party in Laredo over the past few years.  There's something going on down there -- what it is ain't exactly clear to me yet -- and portends some nascent (a word I've used a lot lately) hope for progressive change in Texas.

The Texas Green Party holds its 2015 statewide meeting in June, in Tarrant County.