Born in Corpus Christi, Rafa is a 30 year veteran in the political field promoting democracy and accountable and responsible government on the local, state, federal and international level. Rafa has a well rounded background having worked constituent service and legislative affairs with the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners in Florida; as a Press Secretary for a member of the U.S. Congress; and as National Hispanic Coalitions Director for the Republican National Committee. He has worked to strengthen democracy abroad through the International Republican Institute as the Resident Country Director for Peru and Mongolia. He joins the TPPF team from his previous position as Texas Regional Director of The LIBRE Institute where he focused on a variety of issues including the promotion of School Choice.
September signals the end of summer and the beginning of the academic year for millions of Texas students. While schoolkids may understandably be less excited than their parents about the back-to-school rush, parents may also be unhappy if they were fully aware of the quality of education their children are returning to. Sadly, there are...
Evidence continues to grow that Texas Hispanics are disenchanted with liberals. The 2016 and 2020 election results in South Texas surprised just about everyone and showed a significant rightward shift in historically deep blue counties along the border. And the most recent 2022 Texas primary elections featured a record number of Hispanic Republican candidates, as...
It’s easy enough to rebut Ruben Navarrette—a columnist for the Washington Post and other outlets, perhaps the most widely read Hispanic commentator—but he and his readers deserve more. What Navarrette gets wrong about critical race theory is brushed away like the straw man it is; what he gets wrong about race is far, far more...
From the spread of liberation theology in the 1960s to the culture wars of the 1990s and beyond, progressives have used Hispanics to further their agenda to reshape society into a socialist utopia. In today’s battle over Critical Race Theory, nothing has changed. Progressives have been consistent in launching wave after wave of attacks to...
As a first-generation American kid, the saying, “you only really appreciate something when it’s gone” was repeated to me ad nauseum and drilled into my brain by my parents, who were forced to flee their homeland of Cuba in 1960. I heard it at family gatherings as well, and when visitors came over. Hearing it...
Hispanic Heritage Month, Sept. 15 through Oct. 15, reminds us that Hispanics — specifically of Tejano or Mexican origin — are, and have always been, an integral part of Texas. With a Hispanic population of 40 percent and growing, it’s impossible to imagine the future of Texas without Hispanics in it. But this living legacy...
In South Texas last summer, a Hidalgo school board election was voided after allegations of mail-in ballot fraud. Judge Federico “Fred” Hinojosa Jr., a Democrat, expressed concern that 52 ballots “were cast in violation of the Texas Election Code and should not have been counted.” It doesn’t sound like much, but those 52 votes were enough to...
Too many children in low-income families, many of whom are minorities, are stuck in failing public schools in underfunded school districts and are forced into subpar classrooms.