A hell of a way for your city to make the news

BEAUMONT, Texas — The nation is watching Texas today as the state votes for its respective Democrat and Republican presidential candidate.

Unfortunately, the city in which I live has made the national news for something even more ugly than the GOP fight between Trump, Rubio and Cruz. Last night a white man driving a white Jeep reportedly unleashed some racial epithets before firing at the campaign office of a Democratic candidate for sheriff. That candidate happens to be an African-American woman, who is in a contest with a black male and a white man.

Zena Stephens is former chief deputy sheriff of Jefferson County, and is currently police chief at the historically black Prairie View A & M University, some 40 miles northwest of Houston. Running against Stephens in the Democratic Primary is Rod Carroll, assistant chief deputy for the sheriff’s department, and the son-in-law of the late U.S. Rep. Jack Brooks.  Joe “QB” Stevenson is  the other African-American in the race. He is a former corrections officer and currently a chief deputy constable.

Neither Stephens nor her campaign workers were injured in the drive-by shooting.

A press release by Beaumont Police Officer Carol Riley said five people were in the Jeep although one person has reportedly confessed to the crime. Adam Carver, 19, of Vidor, Texas, was charged with deadly conduct.

The winner of the sheriff”s primary or a resulting run-off will face Republican challenger Ray Beck. He is a retired lieutenant with the Beaumont Police Department.

Someone familiar with this area near the Texas and Louisiana border would not be surprised that the alleged instigator in the crime comes from the city just across the Neches River from Beaumont. Vidor has had a lengthy history as a haven for the Ku Klux Klan. City officials in Vidor have for years tried to separate itself from its KKK-white trash past. But some things never change, or so it seems.