DEL RIO, Texas -- In February 1862 Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley (described by his officers as
"a walking whisky keg") led a band of Confederate volunteers from what is now Val Verde
County here in southwest Texas to defeat in a Civil War battle in New Mexico.
Now, lawsuits in state and federal courts contesting last November's elections have placed Val
Verde County at the center of another battle, and though the weapons are now ballots rather than
bullets, the issue remains the same: civil rights.
Hanging on the lawsuits' outcome are interpretations of election rules for 1.5 million military
personnel and new legislation that could affect the role of military voters in local races across the
country.
And, woven into mostly undisputed facts in the case came a surprising admission on Feb. 21 that
one of the newly elected Republican members of the Val Verde County Commissioners Court
once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.
On election night, Nov. 5, two Democratic candidates for Val Verde County offices, both
Mexican-Americans in a region that is 70 percent Hispanic, led handily until 800 mailed-in
absentee ballots -- commonly used by military personnel to vote from abroad -- were counted.
Those late votes turned the tide, giving Val Verde a Republican, all-white county government
for the first time in more than a century.
State and national Republican leaders called the outcome a bellwether for their party's future in
heavily Hispanic, traditionally Democratic strongholds like Val Verde County along the Mexico
border.
But Jovita Casarez, a volunteer for half a dozen local campaigns over 30 years, was immediately
suspicious.
"We'd never even heard of these people who'd won," Mrs. Casarez said in an interview. "I
started asking questions about where all these extra votes came from."
Arguing that the absentee ballots -- most cast by military personnel who had once served at
Laughlin Air Force Base here -- were invalid because the voters did not live in the county, Mrs.
Casarez filed a lawsuit, naming a county election official, to prevent the two Republican victors
from taking office.
Moreover, she contended, the 800 votes had unfairly diluted the county's Hispanic majority, thus
violating the Voting Rights Act.
A federal judge agreed in December that evidence on both points merited a restraining order; he
barred the Republicans from taking office and set a full hearing for January.
The Republican Party quickly counterattacked, labeling the lawsuit "an outrageous attempt to
prevent military personnel from exercising their voting rights."
At the January hearing, David Richards, the lawyer for Mrs. Casarez, presented evidence that
none of the 800 military voters currently lived in the county and that most had not lived there in
more than six years.
Mrs. Casarez, by this time joined by two Democratic candidates as intervenors, also maintained
that 95 percent of the military voters were white and had voted overwhelmingly for the white
candidates.
At the January hearing, the defendant, the county election office, now joined by the Republican
candidates, chose not to rebut evidence about the contested voters' residency.
"We're not conceding the residency issue," said Tom Quirk, lawyer for one of the Republican
candidates, Murry Kachel. "We just don't believe it's a federal judge's business how the State of
Texas determines who is a resident."
Military voters have different residency requirements from other voters, and the reason, Quirk
contends, is that a member of the military could be stationed anywhere during a 20-year career
and might never really establish residence in any place within the United States.
Quirk also dismissed the plaintiff's assertions of bias, saying, "There's no real proof of whether
these voters are white, black, brown or yellow, or who they voted for."
On Jan. 24, Judge Fred S. Biery renewed the earlier judge's restraining order and referred the
case to state courts for residency rulings. His decision started a political fire-fight that continues
to grow hotter.
Within the week, Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, rose on the Senate floor to ridicule Biery's
decision, repeatedly asking, "Is there no shame?
The same day, 57 senators sent a letter to Attorney General Janet Reno demanding federal
intervention "on behalf of military personnel whose rights to vote are being jeopardized in Val
Verde County, Texas, and across the nation."
And on Feb. 5, Gramm introduced legislation making explicit the military's right to vote in local
elections, saying, "This bill makes certain that federal judges and legal services lawyers respect
that right."
Richards, the plaintiff's lawyer, said the case centered on precedents that were established a
century ago but have remained murky.
"Like most Confederate states," Richards said, "Texas laws were drawn to protect our local
elections while we quartered federal troops here after the Civil War. Until the mid-1960s, when
the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, Texas law -- like most Southern states -- kept the
military from voting in any elections."
Richards said that current state law was clear. "These voters are not bona fide local residents,"
he said, "and therefore not eligible to vote in local elections."
A trial has been scheduled in state district court for the end of April.
In the January hearing, Biery ruled that allegations that Kachel had once solicited coverage from
the German news magazine Stern for his role as a Klan organizer within the United States Air
Force while stationed in Europe could not be presented into evidence.
In an early court deposition Kachel denied ever having been in the Klan, but in an interview with
The Del Rio News-Herald on Feb. 21, he acknowledged that the reports of his involvement were
accurate.
Kachel apologized to the voters of Val Verde County, saying he would try to "re-earn" their trust
and respect by serving as their county commissioner.
Even without the controversy in this case, Republican and Democratic Party regulars agree that
Gramm's legislation and the current case could affect many counties where the votes of large
numbers of military nonresidents could determine the outcome of local elections.
"We all fully agree that the military has a right to vote," said Jorge Ramirez, executive director
of the Texas Democratic Party. "The question is where, in what elections and in what strength."