By Gilbert Garcia Published 4:42 pm CST, Saturday, November 10, 2018 Over the past decade, San Antonio artist Cruz Ortiz has been a huge asset to the Democratic Party cause. In 2008, Ortiz lent his irreverent Chicano pop-art sensibilities to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, hosting a bash at his home in which he silk-screened plain T-shirts with the message, “Obama tiene ganas.” He raised nearly $5,000 for Obama and later received a thank you letter from the Obama White House. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential team tapped Ortiz to bring some hipness and Latino outreach to her campaign, and he complied by creating a flag with the word “ganas” under a series of right angles. This year, he produced silk screen designs for Democratic hopefuls such as Gina Ortiz Jones and Beto O’Rourke, with the latter citing Ortiz — during a February town hall at the Ella Austin Center — as the embodiment of the energy that O’Rourke’s Senate campaign wanted to generate. This history makes it particularly stunning to learn that Ortiz’s South Side design business, Snake Hawk Press, has filed a lawsuit against the Texas Democratic Party, claiming copyright infringement, trade dress infringement and breach of contract. The lawsuit was filed on Nov. 2 — four days before this year’s midterm elections — in U.S. District Court, with another prominent local Democrat, former congressional and judicial candidate John Bustamante, representing Ortiz’s company. The rift between Ortiz and the TDP revolves around the 2018 Texas Democratic Convention in Fort Worth…. [Read full story]
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