Court battle halting LULAC election amid coup allegations set for Friday in Texas court

A Texas state judge is scheduled to hear additional arguments on Friday, which could impact a temporary restraining order she granted last month that halted election proceedings at the 2022 League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), which were originally scheduled to be held on July 30 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Judge Tahira Merritt, who serves in Dallas County’s Civil District Court, halted the election on July 29 in response to a temporary restraining order and injunction petition by select LULAC members, who fear the organization is facing a usurpation that could negatively impact its national elections and amount to a hostile takeover by outside forces. The matter will be reviewed by another presiding judge in Texas’s 162nd Judicial District tomorrow at 1 p.m., Maricela Moore.

Plaintiffs seeking to enjoin the election have identified Puerto Rico’s New Progressive Party (NPP) in their July 29 complaint as an outside force seeking to install its sympathizers within LULAC. The NPP has a history for supporting the island’s statehood. 

Some of the plaintiffs involved in the request for an injunction suggest outside forces formed hundreds of LULAC councils in an effort to generate voting delegates for the national LULAC elections.

“Very close to the election suspiciously, suddenly, hundreds of councils were being formed in Puerto Rico,” said plaintiff’s attorney Jeff Tillotson in local news interviews. “Through some diligence, it was determined that they were basically being funded by the same outside political organization. One important thing about LULAC is it is a nonpartisan organization,”

The lawsuit says others were seeking to replace current LULAC national president Domingo Garcia, a Dallas based attorney, with Juan Carlos Lizardi, a New York-based LULAC president. Lizardi has said the temporary restraining order and temporary injunction petition was a diversion to suppress votes as part of a campaign to align the organization with San Juan based movements seeking Puerto Rican statehood.

“The record is proof for themselves. How do you go… for 20 years only having 38 councils to 350 councils [with] 1,400 delegates?” Garcia said. “This has never happened so it definitely raised a lot of red flags, and that’s why we have investigations.”

LULAC’s internal governing rules prohibit its members from subjecting it to control of outside political organizations and parties.

In her July 30 ruling, Merritt said she was presented with sufficient evidence to support the request for an injunction, in that the election was an effort to “engage in a fraudulent and illicit scheme to place LULAC under irreversible control of a foreign political party.”

In this case, the outside organization in question appears to be the NPP, which, the pleadings allege, used its extensive resources to pay for votes. The July 29 complaint also alleges that some of the individuals involved in the purported scheme have previously faced “criminal indictment for misappropriating government funds.”

In the months leading up to LULAC Convention, which was held July 25-30, Puerto Rico’s LULAC councils (chapters) have increased from 54 to 343, outnumbering Texas’ 221 councils, and providing them with 1,480 voting delegates. According to LULAC’s proposed amendments, the number of delegates per council is dependent upon the size of the council.

“LULAC is NOT FOR SALE or RENT. We will not let the corruption of the Partido Nuevo Progresista (PNP) or New Progressive Party, or any partisan political party stain the good name of our organization,” Domingo Garcia, LULAC national president, said in a press release.

“As president, I must protect and defend LULAC from external and internal corrupt threats. In recent weeks, members became aware of significant amounts of monies being funneled into LULAC Puerto Rico to create ‘paper councils’ to manufacture votes and attempt to seize the national leadership of LULAC and use it for partisan political purposes.”

Garcia said that while the New Progressive Party “staunchly advocates statehood for Puerto Rico… LULAC has always been non-partisan.”

Lizardi said he believes the injunction is a delay tactic.

“A strategy was used to influence not having an election by discouraging or preventing members from voting. The work continues,” Lizardi said in a social media statement following the convention. “One does not need a title to serve the community, one just needs to serve.”

As a member of the LULAC board, and as a ministerial formality, Garcia was listed among the defendants, along with the rest of the LULAC board.

The LULAC president said the organization will survive the internal dispute.

“Yes, there’s politics in the organization. There’s politics in families and in churches. But at the end, we unite as a family, and we move forward,” Garcia said in a statement quoted in Dallas news reports.

The parties will appear in court again on Friday regarding the status of the injunction.