Albert Bustamante, former county judge and congressman, dies at 86
Albert G. Bustamante, the son of migrant laborers who rose to become the first Hispanic elected as Bexar County judge before serving four terms in Congress, died Tuesday after a long illness. He was 86.
Bustamante was one of a number of trailblazing Hispanic elected officials in South Texas, but his career was untracked by an FBI corruption investigation that led to his reelection defeat and eventual conviction on two federal counts of bribery. He was sentenced to a three-and-half year prison term in 1993, which he began to serve at a federal prison in El Paso in 1995 after losing a series of appeals. Bustamante returned to San Antonio in 1998 after his release, but withdrew from public life.
His efforts to win a presidential pardon to clear his name were unsuccessful.
“I had a special relationship with Albert,” said Henry Cisneros, former San Antonio mayor and U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary in the Clinton administration, “because I was the first Hispanic to be elected mayor of San Antonio, in 1981, since Juan Seguín in 1842, but I wasn’t the first Hispanic to win higher local office because Albert won his race to become county judge in 1978, so we shared that.
“He was very intent on clearing his name and he put a lot of time and effort into winning a pardon, but could never get an administration to add him to the pardon list,” Cisneros said. “… He didn’t want his children to live with that judgment on their father’s name and career.”
Read more: https://sanantonioreport.org/albert-bustamante-obit/