Journalist, Activist, Musician, Industry Worker Runs for Edinburg Mayor

Note: The Edinburg Advocate does not endorse any candidate for any office. Candidates are welcome to send in their first campaign announcements at no charge. The Edinburg Advocate does not edit these announcements and does not vet the statements made in these announcements.

Greetings Edinburgians and Edinburg Advocate Readers, My name is Jonathan Salinas and I am running for Mayor of Edinburg. I’m 34 years old. I graduated as part of the last class of UT-Pan American before it became UTRGV, in 2015, with a Bachelor’s of Science in Psychology and a minor in Philosophy. At university, I served in the Student Government Association as a Senator-at-Large, a junior senator, and first year intern. I also had the honor of serving on the Constitutional Convention which came up with UTRGV SGA’s Founding Constitution. I served as an officer in student organizations such as my major’s official student group, The Psychology Club, as well as treasurer and president of the Atheist Student Organization. As a student I spoke at protests demanding transparency during the merger between UTPA and UT-Brownsville, social justice causes, and wrote for the campus newspaper, The Pan American, as well as the campus magazine, The Panorama.

I am currently completing a ten year writing project, a book that covers the history of UT-Pan Am through the merger, and UTRGV’s first ten years.

After graduation in August 2015 I stuck with journalism and wrote for various local publications. I wrote for RGVision magazine in early 2016 and worked as a staff writer for the Brownsville Herald in late 2016. Upon President Trump’s first election I left the Herald and launched a now-defunct independent online outlet with activist friends called RGV Independent which later became Únete 956. From 2017 to 2018 I worked with advocate organizations like La Union del Pueblo Entero (LUPE) as a community organizer in the rural Mercedes area and wrote as an immigration reporter for Neta RGV, now Trucha RGV. I was honored in 2019 to be sponsored by the National Butterfly Center for a journalism fellowship funded by Los Angeles Playwright, Ellen Gavin. During that time, I was the chairman of the No Border Wall coalition and served as an executive committee member for the Lower Rio Grande Valley Sierra Club. I was chosen, among others, by the national Sierra Club’s Borderland’s Campaign to lobby as a resident and citizen in Washington D.C. against border wall funding, in June 2019.

Approaching the pandemic, I began to break politically with the nonprofit organizations with whom I had worked closely during the Trump years, taking a more working-class orientation to politics. Once the pandemic closures began, I returned to working in industry as a delivery driver for Grubhub. Since then, I have remained working in industry at restaurants, call centers, and factories/maquilas. Most recently, I’ve been working as a server. Over the summer I worked at University Draft House in Edinburg and at La Jaiba Seafood Grill in McAllen. I am currently in the onboarding process to work as a concession stand worker and kitchen worker in Edinburg.

When not doing politics, I pursue my passion in playing music, which I’ve done since childhood. I played in band at Lyndon Baines Johnson Middle School in Pharr and played basketball and football at PSJA North High School from where I graduated in 2009. I was also a musician and singer for my childhood church at Iglesia Biblica in McAllen. I’ve played in local bands, such as playing keyboard with Stellar Adam and The Officer, playing solo acoustic shows, writing originals for activism causes like the No Border Wall movement and the LUPE-sponsored Sonidos del Agua in 2018. From 2022 to 2024, I played the annual South Texas Irish Festival with McAllen Irish Arts and played the 2023 San Patricio Festival in San Antonio.

I’m running for Mayor of Edinburg to represent the working-class. Working people are not represented in politics, either nationally or locally. Candidates run to represent the interests of the rich bosses and their upper-middle-class servants. Then, once in office, they rule in their interests. I am also running on an internationalist platform, with the aim of uniting the working-class here in Edinburg and across the Valley and Mexico, regardless of immigration status, country of origin, or language. While I am not a member or in any way formally affiliated, I am running to publicize and express the program of the American Socialist Workers Party, whom I support and to whose publications I subscribe and donate.

The Socialist Workers Party believes that working people can run society better than the bosses and their politicians. This is why my official campaign slogan is, “Working people need to become the ruling class!”

If elected Mayor of Edinburg this November I will use my office to fight for the abolition of property taxes, which fall hardest on working-families barely getting by. I will instead propose that our schools be funded by taxing the profits of large corporations like Walmart and Doctor’s Hospital at Renaissance. These super-profits generated by these businesses are extracted from working people who are the true creators of society’s wealth. I will fight to assure that evictions, which are the prime cause of homelessness, end. I will fight to expand public works programs, at union pay, to put unemployed workers in Edinburg back on the job. I will fight to provide affordable housing for working and homeless people, based on human need, rather than the profits of greedy real estate agents and landlords.

I will fight to liberate the arts by getting politicians and police out of having anything to do with the city’s cultural art events and projects. Currently, every city festival—from Frida Fest to the South Texas International Film Festival for which I volunteered this year as a film screener—is influenced by the political and personal views of City Council members and police. As Mayor, I would fight to let artists decide what to do with community art projects without any intervention from the city council or police department.

Speaking of police, I will fight to end ALL traffic fines, a weapon used against working-people to fund the city slush fund and to keep the poor afraid and saddled with “community service” to pay-off fines. I will also fight to end any police programs that spy on and likely violate the civil liberties of working-people in Edinburg, as well as removing all references to “God” on city vehicles and property, in upholding the “wall of separation between church and state,” which President Jefferson so brilliantly adduced during the founding of this great republic.

Lastly, I would use my office to join the national and international fight for amnesty for all undocumented workers living in the United States, in order to unify the working-class and for union rights. Bosses and government agencies around the country, including Edinburg, super-exploit undocumented workers, using their insecure immigration status to intimidate them from joining a union and to divide workers with papers against those without papers. Moreover, I would do everything within my power to give back undocumented students in Texas the right to in-state tuition. Many young people—months or a year away from graduating—recently had the rug pulled out from underneath them. This is cruel and unjust.

I do not make any qualms or pretenses that I am running to represent the business-class in Edinburg. I am running to advance the class-interests of working-people. Although candidates usually say they’re running to represent “all Edinburg residents,” we all know they’re really running to represent their own class interests and those of their friends and families. To those folks, I say, “Vote your class.” I’m not your candidate nor do I want to be.

I am the working-class option in this election. Thank you for your time.

To keep up with Salinas’ campaign updates, follow his newsletter at jonathansalinas.substack.com or contact salinas4Edinburg@gmail.com