NURITH: The Butterfly Politician...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas | Once, she was the sweet darling of this city's predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood. Darlings, however, in love and politics, rarely last. That's what they openly say in the local voting district known as La Southmost. Nurith Galonsky remembers the best days of her effort to represent the poor side of town at City Hall.

One term. Four short years.

It wasn't enough, for her or for her District 1.

The 48-year old Miss Galonsky, an attorney by profession, left the political playing field last May, beaten down by absolute novice Bryan Martinez, a fresh-faced youngster who perhaps is better attuned to the wants and needs of La Southmost, Land of Poverty & Pain.

Young Martinez took 52% of the vote, Galonsky getting 47% in a runoff election. In other, perhaps better understood numbers, she lost 681 votes to 620, not quite a total, "eat-it" rejection but a rejection, nonetheless.

So okay, what did Galonsky leave behind? Is there even a little speck of legacy there? Can she point to at least one grand accomplishment for her constituents or is this yet another sad episode of a politician simply being a politician, someone out for a status title and nothing more?

She always talked a good game, often walking the dusty and dirty streets of her poverty-stricken district, even more often stopping to speak to haggard, sun-parched residents. Photos of those days not doubt abound in the leather-bound Galonsky scrapbook. She is also shown in photo below with ex-Mayor Juan "Trey" Mendez.

Some politicians you just can't categorize or place in a certain spot on the did good-did bad shelves. That, we would say, is Nurith Galonsky, a politician whose brief, lackluster career seems more the flight of a pretty, but doomed butterfly (most butterflies live only 2 to 6 weeks, btw) than the long and arduous run of, say, her busy-body District 1 predecessor, Rick Longoria.

Her service to this community included time on the always-troubled Brownsville Public Utilities Board. There is enough to criticize her about her "appointed" service there. But we're here for a retrospective on her "elected" career, that of Brownsville City Commissioner.

Her arrival there after the election in 2019, when she defeated Longoria 55% to 44%, signaled a new path for her, one she presented to La Southmost and the entire community with toothy smiles at all stops. Often, Galonsky moved in the campaign company of then-City Commission candidate John Cowen, he now being the mayor of Brownsville.

Cowen moves on; Galonsky moves out.

That's the picture in two frames.

Ups and downs, of course, are not rare in politics. We always believed Galonsky was never the best candidate to represent poor District 1. Current Commissioner Bryan Martinez seems to fit into the preferred-Charro outfit much better.

A very educated woman, University of Texas and Stanford, for two schools, Galonsky should have shot her arrow higher, like stage a run for mayor and leave little District 1 to one of their own. Maybe she saw it as a steppingstone, only that would be like legendary tennis great Billie Jean King forsaking the pros (Wimbledon and the French Open) and settling for hustling in a rural municipal league. Just not the path, no.

Who knows about Galonsky and political regret?

We recall the night she won the City Commission seat and giddily bounced onto the set of Erasmo Castro's Facebook talk show at a local eatery to join peripatetic celebrity analyst Jerry McHale with smiles for everyone. That, sadly, may have been height of her City Hall days.

They say dreams die hard.

Dreams and butterflies.

Galonsky will find something else to do. She is the daughter of a wealthy businessman here in town, and maybe she's helping him with the legal end of his dealings. Who knows?

In the movie, Nurith Galonsky would be training like crazy for one more political campaign, jogging daily not solely along the streets of La Southmost but across all of the city's unforgiving geography...

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