"PEOPLE FIRST, PARTY SECOND": RICK SALINAS MAKES HIS CASE FOR MISSION MAYOR
He showed up in a red jacket and opened with a My Cousin Vinny joke. Then, for the next 33 minutes, Rick Salinas talked like a man who has been waiting a long time to say all of this out loud.
Salinas, a Mission attorney who was born in 1965 and is now running for mayor of his hometown, sat down with me on my podcast this week for a wide-ranging conversation about money, power, growth, air, water and what he calls the "corrosive" turn of local politics. He is blunt by design. He is also, by his own admission, not someone who needed this job.
"I was Rick Salinas before I ran for mayor," he told me. "I'm Rick Salinas today. And long after, regardless of the results, I'll continue to be Rick Salinas."
What follows is what he said, what he claims, and where his argument leads.
A FAMILY BUSINESS HE SWORE OFF
The first question was the obvious one. Why would a 60-year-old with an established law practice step into Rio Grande Valley politics?
Salinas answered with his family tree. His father, Norberto "Beto" Salinas, served as Mission's mayor from 1998 to 2018, and Salinas said his father spent 32 years in public service overall. He also pointed to his cousin Joe Flores, a former Hidalgo County commissioner, and to former district judge Aida Salinas Flores.
For a long time, he said, that was enough. The family had done its share.
"When you sit on the sidelines and you're watching something, you say, 'Hey, I don't think that's the way to do it,'" he said. "And when you see that it's no longer working, you feel like, 'Put me in, coach.'"
He said people in Mission told him he owed it to the city. He talked it over with his family, including his daughter Victoria, who finishes law school in December. She was on board.
He also wanted people to remember where he came from, not just where he is now. Salinas reminded listeners that he was the attorney behind the lawsuit against the City of Mission over its energy savings contract, a case he brought representing his father as a taxpayer. Local outlet KRGV reported at the time that the former mayor sued the city over a $17 million energy-savings contract.
And he was quick to point out that the job pays next to nothing. By his estimate, Mission's mayor is paid roughly $130 a month.
"That's really no reason for anyone to run for anything," he said.
THE "PRIORITY PARTY"
Salinas framed his campaign around something he calls the Priority Party. It is not a registered political party. He described it as an idea he shares with a handful of friends in Sharyland and Mission.
"We prioritize people first," he said, "and your party affiliation is second."
He reached back to his childhood to make the point. Born when John F. Kennedy's influence still hung over Democratic households, he remembered his grandmother keeping a JFK calendar tucked between the box spring and the mattress. He quoted Kennedy's "ask not what your country can do for you" line and argued that today it would sound like a conservative statement.
"Somewhere down the road," he said, "we lost our way."
Salinas, who said he has voted Democratic for a long time, argued that social media has turned neighbors into opposing camps.
"Are we really going to fight like two gangs?" he asked. "I'm sure that there's plenty of Republicans and Democrats that believe in good old-fashioned, honest, in-your-face government."
Mission's city races are nonpartisan, and Salinas leaned into that. He described the city as a big corporation funded by taxpayers, and the mayor's job as making those dollars work for everyone, whatever their politics.
"WHY DO YOU SELL THE FARM?"
I asked Salinas about something I see across the Valley: cities chasing growth at any cost, afraid that if they hesitate, the deal or the grant goes to the next town over.
He did not hedge.
Salinas said Mission has approved projects in which the city gives up 10 to 15 years of sales tax revenue to attract business.
"Who in God's name does that?" he said. "Why do you sell the farm? Sell the farm animals. Give them everything. It doesn't make any sense."
His argument is simple. A new business still uses the police department, still tears up the roads, still relies on city services. If it does not pay its share for years, the residents pay for it instead.
"If you want to come to Mission, all I want is something to be fair," he said. "I can't give it away. The people in Mission don't want to give it away."
He was careful to add that not every deal cut by the current administration works that way. But he took a clear shot at what he called the pull of "the shiny, blingy little things," meaning ribbon cuttings and headlines.
"I don't need that," he said.
He also laid out his priorities. Law enforcement comes first.
"As a mayor, it's my golden child," he said, adding that he did not mean to minimize Mission's firefighters. He also referenced EMS, saying voters already know what he intends to do there, and listed infrastructure as the next major priority.
He said he would like to see the mayor's power pulled back to what voters actually grant, rather than extending into the economic development corporation and other bodies, and he called for a stronger code of ethics.
"THREE OR FOUR YEARS AWAY FROM BANKRUPTCY"
The sharpest claim of the conversation came when Salinas described his frustration with City Hall. Some people, he said, mistake it for anger.
"It's not anger," he said. "And if it is, it's righteous anger."
Then he said Mission is "about three or four years away from bankruptcy," and called it "an undeniable fact" that incumbents can argue about all they want.
I asked him to back it up.
According to Salinas, Mission's charter requires the city to keep 60 to 90 days of operating money in reserve, which he put at a minimum of about $11.8 million. That cushion exists for emergencies like a hurricane. Salinas said the city has been holding no better than 14 days of operating expenses at any given moment.
He offered an analogy any household would understand.
"It's like having a big paycheck. You're getting paid big money, but your bank account's always empty," he said. "You're bouncing checks and your credit rating sucks. That's the equivalent of where we're at right now in Mission."
He said that if city leaders are touting strong sales tax numbers, around $22 million by his account, residents deserve to know where that money went. As a lawyer, he said, the only conclusion he can draw is mismanagement. He also said the city's outside auditor, whom he identified as Mr. Longoria, indicated that city leadership was not interested in building those reserves.
Salinas also said Mission filed its audit late two years running and has been penalized by the Texas Attorney General's office, leaving the city unable to bring in new revenue. For context, a state law that took effect in 2025, Senate Bill 1851, allows the attorney general to bar a city that misses its audit deadline from adopting a property tax rate above the no-new-revenue rate. The Progress Times has also reported on Mission's late audits and its struggle to meet its own reserve requirement.
I raised the obvious worry. The Valley took a beating from storms last year. What happens if the next one lands on Mission?
"We're screwed," Salinas said.
He then pointed to city workers. He said some Mission maintenance employees are making $12 an hour because the city cannot afford raises, the same people out in the middle of the night pulling branches off roads after a storm.
"How do we control this mass exodus of great employees that have been there for years," he asked, "without rewarding them in some form or fashion?"
"You cannot tell the public out there that we're doing great when that's all you got."
WHY RESIDENTS FEEL UNHEARD
I go to a lot of city commission meetings, and I have seen Salinas speak at them. So I asked him why so many residents walk up to the podium and feel like they are talking to a wall.
He answered with Pink Floyd.
"I have become comfortably numb," he quoted, saying that is what happens to officials who stop listening. He said the political machine decides who gets reelected, and that voters need to take that power back to the neighborhoods.
"They have the ability to run your butt out of office," he said.
Salinas predicted he would win outright in November with no runoff, and said he does not plan to stay long. Four years would be ideal. Eight would be the limit.
"I know for sure I can't do more than eight years," he said. "I'm willing to give the city the next eight years in order to get this resolved."
He also said he wants a fiscally conservative man or woman to eventually step in behind him, and that Mission should set the example for neighbors from Peñitas and Palmview to La Joya and Sullivan City.
"Mission has to be the shining light for everybody else," he said.
GROCERIES, LIGHT BILLS AND THE GAS PRICE MAILER
I brought up a pressure I hear about daily: families being forced to choose between groceries and the electric bill, at the same moment billions in industrial investment and data centers are lining up along Highway 48 in Cameron County.
Salinas pointed to a recent exchange with the incumbent's campaign. He said his campaign sent a mailer about the cost of living, and the incumbent responded that she has nothing to do with the price of gas.
Salinas called that a misreading of his message. Nobody believes Mission controls inflation or fuel prices, he said. His point was empathy, and acting on what a city can control.
According to Salinas, that means a moratorium on tax increases, watching utility rates, and lowering water rates where possible to offset what residents are paying for electricity. It also means using money from sources like the city's hotel occupancy tax revenue and the economic development corporation in ways residents can actually feel.
"We want you to have that Friday night money to take the kids out," he said. Maybe the family that used to go to a nice restaurant now goes to a local burger joint, he said, and that is fine. "It's the moment that you spend with your family that matters."
On growth, he said that when it moves too fast, the city has an obligation to tap the brakes.
"We don't have a water shortage. We have a water consumption problem."
On data centers, Salinas did something candidates rarely do. He admitted what he does not know.
"I don't have an answer to the end-all with data centers, but it's concerning and I'm concerned about it," he said. He added that any candidate claiming to be an expert on the subject is not being straight with voters, and that the right move is to hire real experts and protect residents first.
"Before we go from first base to second base," he said, "shouldn't we talk about that first?"
THE AIR WE BREATHE
I told Salinas about my own work on air quality. Brownsville recently brought 11 air quality monitors online, and since then I have watched smoke plumes from Mexico roll across the Valley and the coast. That comes after Brownsville was ranked second in the nation for year-round particle pollution, with McAllen and its surrounding area around 16th or 17th. I am working on a plan to place 50 monitors across the region.
Salinas said he feels it every morning.
"I got tired of taking Zyrtec," he said. He said he first blamed age and a weaker immune system, then realized it was the air.
He said border-area growth and burning in Mexico, including tires, are a big part of the problem, and that those sources fall outside any regulation the Valley can enforce. Asked what a mayor could actually do, he was candid.
"I don't have an answer for that. That's an honest answer," he said.
His best idea: Valley mayors and county judges should unite and take the issue to Austin and Washington, and he said he would petition the governor's office to open talks with Mexico.
I pressed one more point. McAllen's leadership has a strong relationship with Mexico, and cities are now pitching Blue Zones wellness programs. How does that work if residents cannot breathe the air outside?
A SHIFT TOWARD TRANSPARENCY
Before we wrapped, I shared something I have been noticing: a new kind of mayor in the Valley. San Benito's mayor has become more vocal about the issues there. Edinburg Mayor Omar Ochoa has been keeping residents updated. Elected officials across the region are starting to open things up in a way we have not seen before. With roughly a third of the Valley under 18, I told him, the stakes are our kids.
Salinas agreed, and closed on the theme he kept returning to all night.
He said Mission and McAllen have long histories of transparency, and that Mission lost its way. The fix, he argued, is not complicated.
"When you're the mayor, if you can tell the truth, regardless of what the news is, people respect it," he said. "Hey guys, we're not doing well. Something happened. This broke. We're going to fix it."
The trouble starts, he said, when leaders begin to twist the truth.
He compared the job to driving a car full of passengers down a winding road. The economy shifts. National events hit without warning. The driver cannot control every curve.
"But if you don't tell them the truth, they lose faith in you," he said. "I can't control every aspect of what's going to happen, but I can make this promise. I'll never lie to them about what's going on."
THE BOTTOM LINE
Rick Salinas is running on three ideas: Mission's finances are in far worse shape than voters are being told, the city has been too generous to developers at residents' expense, and the cure for both is a mayor who will say the hard thing plainly.
His central financial claims, including a reserve of roughly 14 days and a three- to four-year path to bankruptcy, are his own characterizations of the city's audits and budget, and the incumbents he is running against see the city's condition differently. Voters will settle the argument in November.
What is not in dispute is that he came to talk. He did not dodge the questions he could not answer, and he did not soften the ones he could.
"I think people today are sick and tired and fed up of politics as usual," he said.
In Mission, voters will soon decide whether he is right.
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