Under the first four years of Bonilla's supervision over the American Dream PAC, Bonilla collected $550,000.00 to fulfill his promise to help fund minority political candidates, but Bonilla gave less than $50,000 to minority candidates seeking public office. Bonilla used less than 9% of the funds collected to serve the interests which Bonilla promised to serve.
Instead, Bonilla used over twice as much money collected by this supposedly "independent" Political Action Committee (more than $100,000.00) to pay off partisan Republican Party organizations and causes, including corrupt Republican Tom DeLay's criminal defense fund. This is the same Tom DeLay who violated the Voting Rights Act to illegally gerrymander Bonilla's congressional district in a failed attempt to dilute the votes of over 100,000 Latino voters in Bonilla's district. Even the Republican-dominated Supreme Court had to reject Bonilla's gerrymandered district because DeLay and Bonilla "took away the Latinos' opportunity because Latinos were about to exercise it" against Bonilla.
Bonilla said that his corrupt PAC gave only small donations to the minority political candidates he pledged to support because he couldn't find "good, solid minority candidates to expend the funds on. We tried to be judicious and not just throw money out the window." Bonilla did not comment on why he considered fulfilling his promise to fund minority candidates throwing "money out the window" while he didn't consider giving away those funds to Tom DeLay's criminal defense fund throwing money out the window.
In 2003, Bonilla's committee treasurer pleaded guilty in a San Antonio federal court to embezzling $119,021 of the funds collected for promising minority candidates, and she was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Due to lax oversight, Bonilla did not discover this theft for over four years, and even Bonilla had to admit that this "was a black mark on my judgment."
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More ways Henry hates Minorities:
July 24th, 2006
(from the Rick Bolanos blog)
Bonilla Votes Against Bilingual Ballots
(Washington, DC)—During renewal of the Voting Rights Act in the House of Representatives yesterday, Congressman Henry Bonilla (TX-23) voted to restrict access to bilingual ballots, making it harder for Spanish-speaking citizens to cast their vote at the ballot box. By voting for an amendment that would strike down the language assistance provisions of the Voting Rights Act, Bonilla voted to roll back the clock and return Texas to the days of Jim Crow laws.
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