Aldo Tatangelo

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Aldo J. Tatangelo (born September 16, 1913) is a retired businessman who was the "reform" mayor of Laredo, Texas, from 1978-1990. Tatangelo is often credited with having obtained the paving of the "streets of Laredo" (a term made famous in an old western song). Tatangelo succeeded the scandal-plagued administration of Mayor J.C. "Pepe" Martin, Jr., who, like Martin's father before him, exerted vast powers as a "political boss" in south Texas. In retirement, Tatangelo has become one of Laredo's most beloved elderly statesmen. Since Tatangelo's retirement in 1990, Laredo has just inaugurated its third mayor, Raul G. Salinas.

1 Early years, education, military
2 Manufacturing sunglasses
3 Choosing Laredo as his home
4 Interest in local politics
5 Election as mayor, 1978
6 A change in city charters
7 Running for county judge
8 Tatangelo's Republican activities
9 Tatangelo in retirement
10 References

[edit] Early years, education, military

Tatangelo was the second of five children born to Nocolo and Bettina Tatangelo, Italian immigrants who moved to Rhode Island in 1910, with hopes of providing a better life for their children. In 1917, Nocolo Tatangelo established a jewelry manufacturing plant which rapidly prospered to become Standard Ring and Company. Tatangelo dropped out of high school at the age of 16 to work at his father's company. "This was the time of the Great Depression, and my father needed help; so I went to work with him and enrolled at night school," Tatangelo said in a 2002 interview with his hometown newspaper, the Laredo Morning Times. He finished high school, studied plastic engineering, and graduated with a degree from Brighton and Stratton colleges in Rhode Island.

Tatangelo continued to work for his father until 1943, when he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He was a fireman first class in the naval supply department. That same year, Tatangelo married his beloved wife, the former Alice Natali (November 8, 1921 -- March 17, 2001). She was a 22-year-old employee of his father's company when they wed. The marriage lasted for 57 years -- until her death.

[edit] Manufacturing sunglasses

After his military service ended in 1945, Tatangelo established his own sunglasses factory, Atlantic Optical Products, in Providence, the Rhode Island capital city. "I only had $380 in my pocket, but I wanted to start my own business; so I did," Tatangelo explained in the interview with Diana De La Garza of the Laredo Morning Times on the occasion of his 89th birthday. Within two years, his company grew to 168 employees and produced an average of 5,000 sunglasses daily. Atlantic Optical was at the time the second largest manufacturer of sunglasses in the country. In 1949, Tatangelo opened a branch in Mexico City with a Mexican associate. He then moved to Mexico to supervise the company. When he determined that his partner would not share the authority over the company, Tatangelo sold his part of the business.

[edit] Choosing Laredo as his home

Tatangelo's mother died in 1963, and he decided to move his family from Mexico back to the United States. "I had always felt like a foreigner in Mexico. I liked the city, but I didn't think it was a place for my children to grow up in," Tatangelo told the Laredo Morning Times. Tatangelo sought a border city to establish businesses on both sides of the Rio Grande. He considered Brownsville in Cameron County and Eagle Pass in Maverick County but instead chose Laredo, some 150 miles south of San Antonio and 310 miles west of Houston.

In Laredo, he established a jewelry manufacturing plant and went into business with an instructor from Laredo Community College (then Laredo Junior College). The partnership ended, as Tatangelo established his family-owned Frontier Novelty Co. He also established a plant in Nuevo Laredo, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, to assemble jewelry and optical products. He has long been a booster of border issues.

[edit] Interest in local politics

After several years in Laredo, Tatangelo became active in local politics. He considered himself a Democrat, but, as an independent businessman, he was more pragmatic than partisan. "I had a summer house in Zapata (also Zapata County) and learned that they had a fire station manned by volunteers. I thought we could have that in Laredo," he told Diana De La Garza. He recruited 39 volunteers, and in 1973, a fire station was built on Del Mar Boulevard across from St. Patrick's Catholic Church.

In the middle to late 1970s, some 75 percent of Laredo's streets were still unpaved, and Tatangelo challenged the established order that permitted a low standard of achievement. Tatangelo said that Cranston, Rhode Island, a city with which he was familiar, had at that time a population comparable to Laredo's. Cranston had all paved streets and a $1 million budget. Laredo had a $3 million budget with miles and miles of dirt, dusty roads. Cranston also had to earmark funds for snow and ice clearance, an expense that did not apply to Laredo, with its semiarid climate.

Tatangelo attended Laredo City Council meetings and asked Mayor Martin why Laredo had so few paved streets, considering that it had three times the budget of Cranston. Martin, an ally of Senator and President Lyndon B. Johnson, replied that Laredo was "a poor city." Tatangelo then proposed to donate $6,500 to purchase paving equipment that city employees could use. The mayor and the council rejected Tatangelo's proposal. Tatangelo persisted and, for a full year, he attended every council meeting to discuss street paving. The council eventually agreed to a paving experiment in a six-block area of the San Ignacio neighborhood.

Tatangelo, meanwhile, decided to run for mayor to challenge the status quo, or the so-called "Old Party" or the "patron system," by which voters defer to one or two elected officials in the community with the expectation that those officials will provide personal favors when needed. This was a Laredo version of what Mayor Richard J. Daley established in Chicago after 1955. He told the Laredo Morning Times: "I would go to the city council meeting, and nobody would pay attention to me. I said, 'Maybe I should be inside, instead of outside looking in.'" Yet, Tatangelo knew that Martin seemed to be as entrenched in Laredo as the ever popular Daley was in Chicago.

"Laredo was such a closed city. There was a clique, and if you were part of it, you were O.K., but if you weren't, then things were not so good," said Tatangelo. Martin always used the excuse of poverty in Laredo, but, Tatangelo challenged him: "I thought Laredo was a rich city that could do a lot of things."

[edit] Election as mayor, 1978

In November 1977, the wealthy Martin, under investigation for wrongdoing in office, announced that he would not seek a seventh term as mayor in the municipal elections set for April 1978. Tatangelo entered the six-candidate nonpartisan race with confidence. (All Texas mayors and city council members are elected without party labels on the ballot.) He visited 10,100 homes and lost 25 pounds in the campaign. Tatangelo easily won the election, which, according to Tatangelo, represented "a new beginning . . . a new administration, with new ideas, new things to do. The rest, as you know, is history."

In his three terms in office, Tatangelo made many changes. He believed that Laredo was a "great city" that could prosper. Tatangelo said that his election brought change, but he could not have succeeded without the help of his fellow citizens.

In addition to the (1) street paving, Tatangelo is credited with (2) establishing a pension plan for city employees, (3) reorganizing the city street department, (4) developing a parks and recreation department, and (5) promoting affordable housing for low-income families.

In the spring of 1978, CBS News reported on the surprising developments in Laredo in a half-hour prime time CBS Reports narrated by Texan native William Daniel "Bill" Moyers. The documentary detailed many of the scandals in the Martin administration, including the looting of taxpayers through fraudulent purchase orders. A month after the election, Martin was indicted by a federal grand jury on one count of mail fraud and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and $201,118 to the city in restitution, and was sentenced to serve thirty weekends in the Webb County Jail. Critics derided the "too-lenient" sentence as having made Laredo the laughingstock of Texas.

[edit] A change in city charters

When Tatangelo was elected, he was the "executive" to the "legislative" council. In 1979, as a result of the Martin scandals, which some attributed to weaknesses in the strong mayoral form of government that had existed in Laredo for more than eighty years, the city council authorized a new city charter, which established a city manager government. The change in government took effect with the municipal elections held in the spring of 1982. A citizens panel, including a college government instructor, Arturo Nava, drafted the city manager system. While it was similar to charters in other cities, it was uniquely adapted to Laredo's needs. The charter provided for a professional manager to be appointed by the 8-member city council. The manager acts as the day-to-day "executive" authority, but he is managed by the council. The elected mayor can break a tie vote on the council, but his role is more limited under the city manager system than it was under the mayor-council format. The mayor may be mainly a "ribbon-cutter," or he may attempt to lead the council toward his own goals. Recall of the mayor and council is permitted.

Martin's "Old Party" -- officially the "Independent Club" -- survived for 84 years because of its ability to attract new people into its fold and recruit former opponents. In the latter years, however, it failed to bring in younger members and could not adapt to the changing demographics of the county. Martin told Bill Moyers in the CBS documentary that the "Old Party" had succeeded in its heyday because many Laredo voters felt too uninformed to make their own political choices in elections and preferred a "patron" to make such decisions for them.

The "Old Party" also included Laredo Independent School District Superintendent Vidal M. Treviño, Martin's father, Sheriff J.C. Trevino, Sr., District Attorney Philip Kazen, and the late U.S. Representative Abraham Kazen.

Tatangelo won his second and third terms under the city manager format. He was term-limited under the charter and could not seek a fourth term in 1990. Laredo mayors are restricted to two consecutive four-year terms plus up to two years of an unexpired term. They may run again after sitting out a term.

In Texas, all mayors and city council members are elected on nonpartisan ballots. The candidates, of course, may have a party label (if they voted in a party primary) or a party preference (even if they did not vote in their primary), but for purposes of election, they are listed on the municipal ballot without party designation. Other states may or may not follow the same policy.

[edit] Running for county judge

In 1990, Tatangelo launched a write-in campaign in the November general election to challenge the Democratic nominee for Webb County judge, a largely administrative, rather than judicial, position. The Democrats nominated a former Laredo Community College business instructor, Mercurio "Merc" Martinez, Jr., who had no Republican opposition, but under Texas election law, a write-in candidate can file up to 45 days before a general election. One cannot write in any name he chooses on a Texas ballot for any office: a "write-in" candidate must be officially entered for a particular office. Rarely do candidates win by this route. (Two who did were the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (1954) and the late Congressman Joe Skeen of New Mexico (1980), both Republicans.)

Tatangelo made a stronger showing as a write-in candidate than had been the norm in Laredo, but Martinez prevailed with nearly 75 percent of the vote. Martinez hence won the first of his three terms as county judge. (Martinez is a trustee for Laredo Community College.) In that campaign, Tatangelo said that he had been a Democrat since 1936, when he was still living in Rhode Island. In Texas, one is officially a "Democrat" or a "Republican," for that matter, only if he votes in his party's primary election or runoff election in the spring of even years. His party designation is good for two years -- until the next primary elections. He can adopt a party label as a personal preference, but he is officially a Democrat or a Republican in Texas only by voting in his party's primary or runoff election.

[edit] Tatangelo's Republican activities

Presumably, Tatangelo meant that he had voted in Democratic primaries when he said that he is a "Democrat." Records reveal, however, that Tatangelo has often supported and hosted Republican candidates, including the late President Ronald W. Reagan and both President George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush. Tatangelo once had a 45-minute visit with Reagan. In 2004, Tatangelo gave $750 to the Republican National Committee. Tatangelo gave $250 in 2004 to the campaign of former Republican Congressman John Thune of South Dakota, who unseated Senate Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle. And when he ran for county judge, a local Republican leader, Webb County GOP chairman Esther Buckley, endorsed Tatangelo and urged her fellow Republicans to write in his name on the ballot. Tatangelo secured Republican support not because of party, presumably, but because many had admired his challenge to the "Old Party" establishment and his desire to modernize the city while retaining its traditional values.

Tatangelo was also committed to cutting county spending and lowering property tax rates, issues that attracted Republican support. Homeowners, however, found that even when the county cut the ad valorem tax rates, their property taxes continued to climb because the Webb County Appraisal District in Laredo routinely increases the valuation of their properties on an annual basis. The district points out that state law requires the higher evaluations each year. Then it is up to the taxing bodies to set the actual property rates.

[edit] Tatangelo in retirement

In 1998, Tatangelo had open-heart surgery. "I still have many ideas, but physically the doctors don't want me to get too involved. I miss . . . being able to sit down and trying to figure out problems. It bothers me," he told the Laredo Morning Times.

Tatangelo has three children and several grandchildren. He said that he has been pleased with his long life "as a whole. . . . There were more things that I would have liked to do, but, hey, you can't get everything you want, right?" He is a Roman Catholic.

Tatangelo has left his public papers with Texas A&M International University in Laredo. In 2000, he gave $25,000 to establish an endowed scholarship at the university for promising students in the fields of political science and public administration. Recipients, who must come from either Webb County or Nuevo Laredo, are known as "Tatangelo Scholars."

Tatangelo has also supported Laredo Community College. He occasionally meets with honors students in their class in Texas government. He offers the students words of wisdom and lessons on municipal government, and the students usually warm to him as they might with a caring grandfather. Tatangelo’s intimate conversation with the collegians touches on his role as a city government reformer during his tenure as mayor.

Tatangelo is honored with the "Aldo Tatangelo Walkway," a green space in downtown Laredo that provides a slight respite from the city's legendary summer heat, when can easily reach 110 degrees. His admirers often speak of him as the man who brought Laredo into the twentieth century, even when the 21st Century was just two decades away.