Presidio
On an uncharacteristically wet and gloomy morning in Presidio, David Beebe, a candidate for county judge, pounded the pavement—figuratively speaking, as many of the backroads in the county’s largest and most impoverished community aren’t paved at all. Beebe, a tall self-proclaimed gringo who typically adds extra height with a cowboy hat and tinted glasses, doesn’t exactly blend into a South County street scene, but he’s not a true outsider either. “It’s amazing how many people I know from back when I was justice of the peace,” he said, referring to his start in Presidio County politics over a decade ago. “It’s not necessarily good or bad—but it does mean I’m not a completely new face.”
Beebe has been hitting the campaign trail hard, knowing that he has a long way to go to become a household name in Presidio, the hometown of his competitor and the first Presidio county judge to hail from somewhere other than Marfa, José (“Joe”) Portillo Jr. Last time he ran, Portillo delivered a decisive victory: 1,228 to 608 against Cinderela Guevara of Marfa.
Portillo didn’t return multiple phone calls to participate in this story, but one can only imagine that he’s wondering if he’ll be able to pull off the same bruising performance. After all, 2022 was an unusual victory in an unusual year. Incumbent Guevara had started to rub some of Marfa’s more progressive wing the wrong way with controversial political moves like declaring an “invasion” of migrants at the border to attract border security funding from Austin. Later that year, Big Bend Sentinel reported that Guevara had been taking money from a conservative PAC that had been funneling money into trying to turn the traditionally blue borderlands red.
Guevara’s party flip to Republican was a flop with voters, who turned out for Portillo in droves. Even in Marfa’s precincts 1 and 7, the results were a bloodbath—folks didn’t seem to mind voting for a mostly unfamiliar candidate so long as they weren’t hitching their star to Gov. Greg Abbott. (In fact, more people turned out for Portillo in Precinct 7 than in any single precinct in his hometown.) “I was really happy he won,” Beebe told potential voters at a candidate forum last week in Presidio. “But I think now I could be doing a better job.”
While Portillo was running for judge in 2022, Beebe was running to represent Marfa on the Presidio County Commissioners Court and handily defeated Republican Gary Willbanks 381-152. Beebe and Portillo served side-by-side amicably for the first few years, both expressing that making financial decisions on behalf of the cash-strapped county was unlikely to earn either of them friends. “There’s no cherry on the ice cream,” Portillo was fond of saying of the county’s excruciating budget-drafting process. “In fact, there is no ice cream.”
The tone of county politics started to shift just after the close of the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 budget cycle, when Portillo began to openly float the idea of taking on debt to tackle costly outstanding projects, including repairs to the county courthouse and outdated equipment at the road and bridge department. The judge later changed his tune, supporting a petition launched by Fernando Juarez, a member of Presidio City Council and a candidate for Commissioners Court, to strike down a call for certificates of obligation that he’d been among the first to suggest. (Portillo has since clarified that he would like to see the county pursue more grant-funded opportunities to address these issues.)
At the end of the FY 2025-2026 budget drafting process, Portillo made the controversial decision to pull funding for the Marfa Golf Course and Vizcaino Park and advocated to fold the veterans service officer and emergency management coordinator positions into his own office. While the latter two initiatives failed, the parks were successfully removed from the county’s long list of financial burdens, and a nonprofit group is hard at work trying to figure out how to run them without county support.
The increasingly acrimonious mood spurred Beebe to throw his hat in the ring—a bit prematurely under Texas law, giving Portillo the power to remove him from Commissioners Court. Portillo replaced Beebe with former commissioner Frank “Buddy” Knight in October.
Beebe’s unintended resignation raised some eyebrows among Presidio voters, as did a persistent rumor that he’d once been arrested for a DWI. Beebe has never been arrested for a DWI, but was arrested for public intoxication in 2016 after stopping by Stripes on foot to pick up beer. “As an elected official serving Presidio County I recognize that I am responsible for holding myself to a higher standard than a regular citizen,” Beebe told NewsWest 9 at the time.
The incident was one of many shots fired in a long conflict between the Beebe and the Presidio County Sheriff’s Office—a conflict that has since been resolved, Beebe assured Presidio voters last week while praising Sheriff Dominguez’s courage and integrity.
Over the years, Beebe has painstakingly chronicled his thoughts and observations about law enforcement and other issues facing the county on his blog. It’s a small exercise in government transparency, but he thinks it’s important. “Prior to COVID and Zoom, County Commissioners Court meetings and [Presidio International Port Authority] meetings and all that stuff were all done during the day—no reasonable working person other than somebody who’s rich or retired can come,” he explained. (Beebe’s self-professed commitment to transparency is so great that he’s promised to purchase a “modest” home in Presidio if he wins to be available to South County voters at least one day a week.)
Both Beebe and Portillo have long insisted that growing traffic at the Presidio Port of Entry could be a solution to the entire county’s budgetary woes, though the two men disagree about exactly how and when that should be done. Portillo would like to see ownership of the Presidio International Bridge transferred from the state of Texas to the county—a proposition that Beebe once supported, but now doesn’t think the county is fully ready for. “We’ve got to empower ourselves,” Beebe said. “Part of that might be by giving power to folks on the outside who know what they’re doing and aren’t just coming in for a grift.”
