Holy frijoles! In South Texas, Democrats go back to their party’s racist roots

Jerry McHale, to whose McHale Report blog Gonzalez’s campaign paid $1,200, has repeatedly pulled out the “Miss Frijoles” epithet for Flores in a deliberate attempt to mock and demean her for her ethnicity. And if you’re not a fan of “breakfast tacos,” or “frijoles,” McHale also attempts to demean her by calling her after a number of other Mexican dishes — “Miss Enchiladas,” Mayra “Menudo” Flores, and “Hot Tamale,” to name a few. A frequent user of the N-word on his blog until as recently as last year (hat tip to Kyle Morris of Fox News), McHale likes to invoke the additional racial slur of calling her a “cotton-pickin’ liar.”

It’s not just McHale’s over-the-top racial slurs that should make you wonder why Gonzalez would pay him, either. McHale has also published at least three items including vulgar references to her vagina, and possibly more. One is a pretty disgusting meme (you’ve been warned) involving former President Donald Trump. A second involves a quotation (possibly made up for satire), the sole purpose of which is to demean her because of her sex. McHale quotes a man as saying, “She isn’t even in the bush leagues unless she doesn’t shave her p****.”

The third involves this quotation — again, possibly of a satirical nature, but completely gratuitous and demeaning either way:

McHale has frequently called Flores “Mamacita” on his blog (by the way, sir, paragraph breaks are your friends), and at one point “a piece of chocolate candy laced with poison.” He also suggested that Flores dye her hair blonde in order to perform better in the election and that “she is convinced that the voters prefer beauty over brains.”

A few hours of studying McHale’s blog and one sees that this is a man who, both when he’s joking and when he’s serious, is a bona fide sexist happy to hurl ad hominem ethnic slurs at nearly anyone, even while looking down his nose at other people who behave exactly as he does.

Flores has accused Gonzalez of “[hiring] a creepy blogger to attack my Mexican heritage and sexually degrade me.” And yeah, when you read a few lines of McHale’s poetry, you quickly realize that “creepy” is an understatement.

She is wisely drawing as much attention to the disparaging blog posts as possible — without giving the impression of taking them too seriously.

Gonzalez denies paying for the blog posts per se, but the real question is, why did he pay an obvious sleaze like McHale in the first place? Yes, I understand buying political ads from bloggers (McHale reports that he is refunding the money), but this blog is really unhinged in a way most others are not. Its racialist and sexist content is truly extraordinary.

The payment, only $1,200 at face value, has surely backfired on Gonzalez by now to the tune of millions, putting this race on the map and, I’m guessing, enabling Flores to raise quite a bit of money.

I can’t find any of the ads Gonzalez supposedly paid for on McHale’s blog. I doubt they will ever appear now.

For his part, McHale is completely unapologetic about what he wrote. “I am a liberal Democrat,” he told NBC News. “And it’s war against the Republican … I’m going to be merciless with her.”

Well, he’s definitely being merciless toward someone, but it isn’t Flores. And I think Gonzalez has finally figured that out.

Democrats are rapidly losing their hold on South Texas — and probably on the Hispanic vote nationally, although that may come more slowly. A genuine realignment is afoot. It’s not enough anymore for Democrats to hurl ethnic insults such as “Tio Taco” and “Coconut” at the candidates in order to initimidate their peers out of voting Republican.

The 34th District, under its new 2022 configuration, is 87% Hispanic and voted 42% for Trump in 2020. It is quickly trending Republican in its vote, if not in its party registration. The scandal of Gonzalez paying McHale will hopefully help accelerate that trend. This seat, despite its prior Democratic leanings, could easily be winnable for Flores in a year like 2022, when all the trends are favoring the GOP and Latino voters in particular despise President Joe Biden as much as any other group, or more.

That’s why Gonzales can be seen on any given day talking like … well, not like any other Democrat you’re going to see in 2022.

“I believe in God, I’m a Catholic, I come from a patriotic family,” Gonzalez told Newsweek. “I wasn’t born in Mexico,” he added — possibly a dig at Flores, who was born in Mexico and immigrated at age six. “I was born in South Texas, the son of a Korean war veteran … I didn’t come here through chain migration, I didn’t come through asylum or amnesty or whatever.”

Gonzalez really should squeak it out — this is, after all, the most Democratic district in the Rio Grande Valley on the new 2022 map. But he may well lose in spite of these advantages. And even if he does, this district eventually is destined to go red along with the Texas Latino vote.

Gonzalez’s biggest problem this week is that you can’t win by insulting the voters or their intelligence — or by paying someone else who does so for a living. Frijoles, indeed.