Political Intimidation in Grand Prairie Elections, Part Two

Recent videos from Former City Councilman Jeff Copeland sparked surprise from Grand Prairians, as he targeted former fellow council members with alleged unethical behavior.

The term “political agenda” has a negative connotation, though not all political agendas are necessary bad. A political agenda refers to the set of issues that are currently being discussed and acted upon within a political system. It can be a list of topics that government officials are paying attention to, or it can be the broader set of issues that are being debated and considered by the public and various interest groups. What makes the agenda “good” or “bad” in the public eye is whether or not the people controlling the agenda are being forthcoming and transparent about it with the voters. Political agendas that are carried out without transparency for voters are called “dark political agendas,” because they keep voters in the dark about what they are really trying to accomplish. In Grand Prairie, the more voters are learning about a specific political agenda that’s been kept from them, the more sentiments are growing against it.

Allegations by Former City Councilman Jeff Copeland

In a series of recent Facebook posts and videos, former Grand Prairie City Councilman Jeff Copeland made allegations regarding Grand Prairie City Councilmen John Lopez and Mike Del Bosque that surprised members of the Grand Prairie community. On May 6, Mr. Copeland posted his endorsement of Marketta Nimo in the run-off race between herself and John Lopez; in the post, he said he felt “[John Lopez] was by far the most immoral person I served with on the Council.” His first video from May 12 and second video from May 15 alleged that Mr. Lopez and Mr. Del Bosque had participated in intimidation and coercion of candidates who’d filed to run for seats on both Grand Prairie City Council and the Grand Prairie ISD Board of Trustees in recent elections. All his posts centered around “John Lopez and his out of town PAC has their own agenda for GP,” referring to the New American PAC funded by Lulac President and Dallas Personal Injury Attorney Domingo Garcia. (I reached out to Ms. Nimo to ask how she felt about the endorsement being entangled with some controversy, she replied “I am still very grateful for Jeff’s endorsement. I can’t speak on what happened before between the two of them, and that’s their story to tell, but I’m still glad to have his endorsement.”)

In the first video, Mr. Copeland tells the story of Dr. Wendy Nguyen-Anaya who filed to run for Place 2 in the GPISD school board election against incumbent Bryan Parra in 2023. According to his video, after Dr. Nguyen-Anaya 9who was pregnant at the time) had filed to run, she was approached for a meeting with Mr. Lopez and Mr. Del Bosque, in which the two men, acting in their capacity as city councilmen, convinced her not to run against Mr. Parra and instead, pressured her to run for the at-large seat that was held by Jeff Copeland at the time. They informed her that they would pay for any costs associated with filing to remove herself from the school board race. Ballotpedia confirms that while she filed to run for Place 2, she did not appear on the ballot. Bryan Parra won that election against Tarrance Jones, 474 votes to 456 votes.

I’d spoken with Dr. Nguyen-Anaya before these videos came out; in fact, she was the anonymous source of the recent Faces of Grand Prairie article titled Political Intimidation in Grand Prairie Elections, but at the time of publishing she did not want her name to be public. She has since given her permission to use her name and comments. She shared the same story and details with me regarding her experience running for office, sharing how upsetting it was as a native Grand Prairian and GPISD alumni to be intimidated out of running for the school board for which she actually wanted to serve. She shared with me other incidents of intimidation she experienced that I have not been given permission to make public, incidents that caused fear and for that reason, it’s taken her this long to come forward with her story. Dr. Nguyen-Anaya also shared with me that the plan in the 2023 election was to split the vote in Bessye Adam’s favor, to get Jeff Copeland unseated (to my knowledge, Ms. Adams was ignorant of this plan and had nothing to do with these schemes).

In his second video, Mr. Copeland addresses the word “immoral,” noting that several people had an issue with the use of that word, when referring to Mr. Lopez. He read the definition of immoral and clarified {paraphrasing} “to me, it’s immoral for two city councilmen to sit a pregnant woman down and intimidate her from running for any political office.” He went on to explain that even if they were nice about it, it’s still an intimidating situation. He then tells the story of Charlie Garza, who recently ran for District 6 in the May 2025 City Council Election against John Lopez and with fellow candidate Marketta Nimo; this election resulted in a close vote that triggered a run-off election between John Lopez and Marketta Nimo, which will occur June 7, 2025. In the video, Mr. Copeland claims that after Mr. Garza (who is Hispanic) filed to run, he was approached in a public place by Councilman Del Bosque, who attempted to intimidate him from running, and offered to pay any fees he’d paid thus far to back out, which Mr. Garza said “was a bribe.” Councilman Del Bosque allegedly told him “we already have a Hispanic in that race, just wait and run against Bessye Adams when her term comes up.” I reached out to Charlie for comment and he supported this story, adding that the public place was the parking lot of Sam’s Club on I-20. “All he did was make me want to run more,” Mr. Garza added in our conversation, “I’m really concerned for how things are happening in our city council.”

The results of this race from May 2025 were as follows:

John Lopez - 698 Marketta Nimo - 628 Charlie Garza - 156

In an effort to give him the chance to respond to these videos, I reached out to Councilman Lopez with the following request for comment on May 18, 2025:

I received the following response on May 23:

I confirmed with Mr. Copeland that he did receive a cease and desist letter from Paul Rich. Esq, whose active Linked In profile lists experience with the Law Offices of Domingo Garcia. I have not been able to confirm the official association between the two attorneys at this time. Mr. Copeland sent the letter and gave permission for it to be shared in this article.

After reading both the statement from Mr. Lopez and the cease and desist letter from his attorney, it’s clear that the most important thing to him is his good reputation…..not correcting statements that were wrong, not rejecting the idea directly that he’d ever manipulate an election behind the scenes, and not distancing himself from Del Bosque and his actions. He doesn’t appear to understand why his reputation is being tarnished - it’s not because of Mr. Copeland, it’s because the things Mr. Lopez is being accused of doing are serious things that voters in Grand Prairie find unseemly and unethical. There’s no doubt Mr. Lopez has amassed a very good reputation with many Grand Prairie voters over in the past several years, this is why many people were shocked by Mr. Copeland’s comments. The Faces of Grand Prairie, in its attempts to be a fair publication that respects his good reputation, gave Mr. Lopez the opportunity, through the questions provided, to distance himself from all the accusations from the video, and while he did respond to our request for comment, he didn’t address any of the questions directly.

Mike Del Bosque was not asked for a comment because he made his comments known on the posts to Mr. Copeland directly. After his first post on May 6, Mr. Copeland updated his Facebook account with the following post: “Well it only took 3 hours for the strong arming to begin. Mike Del Bosque just told me via text that if I used his name ever again that he would make me eat my words. I wonder if he gave the 60 year old man he was recently arrested for assaulting the same warning?” Councilman Del Bosque screenshot his own text messages to Jeff after the first post and shared it in the comments, receiving criticism for not realizing the threatening nature of the texts, which he didn’t have to share with the public willingly.

The comment from Mr. Copeland was in reference to the recent April arrest of Councilman Del Bosque for assault, making “I’d hate to make you eat those words” sound even more threatening. According to local reporting, Del Bosque was arrested and charged with two misdemeanors after a woman called the police in April 2, claiming her husband, real estate broker David Collantes, was assaulted by Del Bosque. Del Bosque owns the building where the assault took place at 517 N Carrier Pkwy, Grand Prairie, TX 75050; Collantes, his wife and potential buyers entered the building while under the impression it was for sale. According to the arrest affidavit issued for Del Bosque after the incident, as the couple was leaving, Del Bosque “without provocation, hit Collantes’ $2,000 phone out of his hand and pushed him to the ground.” As he began to get up, Del Bosque “hit him with a closed fist in the head.” A recent search on LoopNet, a real estate listing site used by agents for commercial properties, the building is in fact for sale for the asking price of $1,800,000. Fox 4 News received an email from an attorney involved with the buyers of the transaction, stating the assault caused the buyer to back out of the deal. “They feared retaliation if they bought the building. "So we are back to square one on the sale," said Robert Berleth, Attorney at law.

After the news of the arrest was shared on the Facebook page of Grand Prairie Texas Talk, comments from people close to Councilman Del Bosque accused the page of racism, claiming that Del Bosque was “protecting his staff an intruder.” To my knowledge, none of the other members of the city council have condemned this incident or Del Bosque’s behavior, and the city of Grand Prairie has offered little comment about the incident. Only a month later, Del Bosque, who appears to have gained no humility from his arrest, was “strong arming” a former Councilman, who was accusing him of strong arming candidates in our elections.

The “Dark” Political Agenda

Mr. Copeland’s comments about “John Lopez and his out of town PAC” that “has their own agenda for GP” are in reference to the New American PAC, funded by Lulac President Domingo Garcia. According to Transparency USA, Mr. Garcia has contributed $142,500 to the PAC since it’s inception, at least that has been disclosed. The New American PAC has sent divisive mailers and text messages to Grand Prairie voters in multiple election cycles for different candidates, most recently in the May 2025 school board election of Veronica Lopez and incumbent Emily Liles, which was the subject of our article titled Mudslinging Tactics in Grand Prairie School Board Elections. The mailers are not always negative, as was the case when the PAC sent out mailers (pictured below) to voters in the 2023 election cycle, grouping Gloria Carrillo and Bryan Parra (running for school board), and David Espinosa (running for city council) on one mailer. David Espinosa was serving as a Board Trustee at the time, but decided to run for city council in this election….the same race Dr. Wendy Nguyen-Anaya was coerced into running for as well.

Here are the results of their elections:

GPISD District 2:

Bryan Parra - 474 Terrance Jones - 456

GPISD District 3:

Gloria Carrillo - 1693 Patty Harris - 1385 Joshua Hooten - 320

Grand Prairie City Council At Large:

Jeff Copeland - 2138 Bessye Adams - 1959 David Espinosa 845 Wendy Anaya - 691

This resulted in a runoff between Jeff and Bessye:

Bessye Adams - 2095 Jeff Copeland - 2028.

Notice that Wendy received 217 more votes than Bryan did, the race she originally filed to run in. The city council race was an at-large race, meaning anyone in the city could vote for her, as opposed to only the voters in district 2, so she would have likely not received as many, but if you see how close that race was, she would have received enough to put Bryan Parra at risk by splitting the vote, which gives the context behind the intimidation from Mr. Lopez and Mr. Del Bosque.

The cost of mailers like the one above do not have to be recorded or disclosed by the candidate if they are sent by a PAC (Political Action Committee). These types of mailers are endorsement mailers, and they are sent all the time by various PACs (the free advertising for the candidate is often the reason candidates seek their endorsements). For example, I’m a member of the Texas Real Estate Political Action Committee (TREPAC). At every election, we allow any candidate who’d like to receive our endorsement the opportunity to come before our Government Affairs Committee. Because TREPAC is focused on protecting the rights of property owners, our questions to candidates revolve around property rights. Afterward, we select the candidate we feel would be represent our interests, then send advertising to voters regarding our endorsed candidates. The process is transparent and most PACs are upfront about what their interests are so voters can understand where the endorsement is coming from. There are many PACs in our city, such as the one for the Fire Department, Police Assocation, even ones for the Republican and Democratic Party.

The New American PAC (spelled “American” above and “America” below) holds no open roundtables or townhalls to give all candidates in the race a chance to come before them and share their platforms. There’s no website for which the New America(n)? PAC shares it’s intentions or interests to the public. This leaves the public to come to their own conclusions and investigate themselves about what they believe the PAC is attempting to accomplish politically.

The above mailer has an address listed for the PAC, it’s the address for the Law Offices of Domingo Garcia. The mailer below does not have an address, but it does contain the logo of the organization who printed it, Reilly Echols Printing, Inc. This is the same printer who received over $14,000 from the New American PAC, according to Transparency USA. Does this PAC not know how to spell its own name, or is it intentionally trying to confuse and deceive the public?

What is the Political Agenda?

On the mailer above, the operative word is “our.” If the PAC doesn’t state publicly whose interests they represent, then who is “our” referring to? The three candidates pictured on the mailer above were apparently the PAC’s preferred Hispanic candidates in the May 2023 city council and school board elections. So when a mailer like the one pictured below goes out the voting public, with no endorsement of a candidate and only contains messaging smearing one candidate in particular, what is a voting public supposed to think?

What most PACs do not do is send out anti-candidate ads with no endorsements of another candidate. This is why PACs like the New American PAC are called “Dark PACs.” It means they do things in the dark, as opposed to being open and transparent. Grand Prairie isn’t the only city in DFW affected by these divisive mailer campaigns by this PAC; D Magazine reported on the New American PAC in May 2023 in an article Money, Mailers, and Messaging: How a PAC Is Trying to Sway North Oak Cliff’s Council Race.

Why the target over Board Trustee Emily Liles? For one, Veronica Lopez, was running in her race. John Lopez (Veronica also donated to John’s campaign), Mike Del Bosque (who contributed to her campaign), and David Espinosa all campaigned on her behalf. Secondly, Emily Liles was one of the two board trustees who were public about their desire to terminate former GPISD Superintendent Dr. Jorge Arredando, who, in his 45-day active tenure, we now know was accused of creating a hostile work environment and discrimination for over 40 nonhispanic females in the district. (More reporting on this in Part Three of this article).

Campaign Finance Reports

Campaign finance reports are open records on the city of Grand Prairie’s website and the GPISD’s website. These finance reports are required multiple times throughout an election cycle: if the election is in May, candidates must submit campaign finance activity for the first quarter of the year, another report is due 30 days before the election, and then finally, another one 8 days before the election. If an official is not in an election year, they must send campaign disclosure reports bi-yearly, once in January and once in July. Candidates must disclose all donations collected, including name of the person or entity, address and amount, if it’s above $99. If it’s under $99, they are allowed to group them together. They must also disclose campaign expenditures and the balance of their campaign funds from report to report.

There are few things that should be expected and patterns to look for when looking at reports, as well as red flags that should signal concern. First, if a candidate is in an election year, and you see signs or received texts (all marketing that costs money) for a candidate, there should be an expenditure listed on their reports. If you see marketing efforts but their report does not include that expenditure, it’s a red flag that their reports are not accurate. Second, if they report a balance of their campaign funds on one report, and the next report the balance is less or $0 but there are no expenditures listed, this is not only a red flag, but an ethics violation in the state of Texas. Third, if you see an contribution listed as an “expenditure” on one official’s report to another official or candidate, you should see that listed as a “donation” on their report. If one report has it and the other report does not, it’s a red flag.

What’s clear from reading the reports of Gloria Carillo, Bryan Parra, John Lopez, Mike Del Bosque and David Espinosa is that they all give to one another, donating to each other either personally or on behalf of their campaigns over multiple election years and races. John Lopez would receive $1,000 from the Campaign of Gloria Carrillo, who would receive $500 from John Lopez and Domingo Garcia, who would give $1,000 to David. Bryan Parra would receive $1,000 from Mike Del Bosque, who would give $500 to John Lopez, who received $500 from Elba Garcia, the wife of Domingo Garcia….and on and on. By law, there’s nothing illegal or unethical about this (campaigns are allowed to make donations to other campaigns and officials are allowed to donate to other candidates by Texas law), it just creates a pattern, showing who is a part of this political agenda. While other candidates and officials from the city council and school board endorse each other and donate to their campaigns, it’s minimal and there doesn’t seem to be an ongoing group, aside from this one, that passes donations around to the same people in multiple elections.

What’s also clear from reading some of these reports from all our elected officials is that there’s multiple ones that are late, they are messy, and will require a separate article, which I will do at a later time.

Red Flag #1: John Lopez’ campaign fund has maintained a $30,000 to $40,000 balance throughout all reports, but the city only shows reports as far back as last year; I’ve requested previous year’s reports from the city secretary to see where the original contributions came from. Mr. Lopez’ account is the largest, while most other candidates have $0 to a few thousand from year to year. This isn’t illegal, but it’s interesting because the amount is much higher than any other elected official on city council or school board except for the Mayor, who has been on city council since 2002 and probably had the same campaign fund for 23 years. There might not be anything to this (Mr. Lopez might just be a great fundraiser), but it’s certainly something noticed when going through everyone’s reports.

Red Flag #2: Mike Del Bosque’s campaign fund went from $11,570 in January 2024 to $0 in January 2025, with no expenditures listed on his report.

Red Flag #3: Veronica Lopez’ 30 day campaign report, received for the first time April 2025, showed an even balance of $3,000 from $3,000 in political contributions, none of which were itemized, with no expenditures, despite the fact that people received mailers, text messages, t-shirts, etc during her campaign. Her 8 day report showed donations totaling $410, $250 from Mike Del Bosque, with no expenditures.

Red Flag #4: David Espinosa’s campaign fund goes from $3,683 in election year 2021, to $0 in January 2022 with no expenditures listed on his report.

“Our Leaders”

Going to back to the “our leaders” in the mailer from above: The unstated agenda, that’s becoming more apparent as time goes on, is the belief that Grand Prairie needs 100% Democratic Hispanic representation on both city council and school board. There is a belief by this group that they represent the needs of all Hispanic voters in Grand Prairie, and that because the Hispanic demographic is now the majority in the city of Grand Prairie, they believe both the city council and school board should reflect 100% leadership. They also seem to believe that all Hispanic voters in Grand Prairie are Democrats who believe city government and school board should be ran in a partisan manner. However, Veronica Lopez ran on a platform of “Democrat Good, Republican Bad” and came in 3 out of 4 in her race.

If all Hispanic voters agreed with this agenda, they’d be turning out in droves to vote for it, and they’d be winning their races with an overwhelming majority, but as you can see from the voter turnout, voter sentiment is not reflecting that. Veronica Lopez and David Espinosa both lost their races, John Lopez is in a runoff with Marketta Nimo in his race; Bryan Parra only beat his opponent with less than 20 votes. The problem with believing in representation purely by race is that there’s diversity of thought, beliefs and political ideas in every race, just as there’s diversity of thought, beliefs and political ideas in all Grand Prairians, as a whole.

To reiterate the point from the first paragraph, there’s nothing inherently wrong or bad with having a political agenda, even one that assumes all officials in Grand Prairie government should be Hispanic, as long as it’s clear to the voter that’s the agenda they are voting for when voting for a candidate. When the agenda is hidden from the public and then made known to the public after their vote has already been cast, they feel hoodwinked. It’s what is called a “bait and switch.” If a political agenda is popular amongst the voters, there should be no reason to keep it in the dark.

Behavior shows these elected officials appear less and less concerned about whether the rules of behavior and engagement for everyone else, applies to them. For example, based on Mr. Lopez’ response, it’s not clear whether or not he believes that intimidating a candidate is wrong, as he didn’t address it one way or another. Another example, based on the finance reports, it seems several of our officials don’t respect the process of timely, accurate, and clear reporting of their campaign funds. Another example, whenever divisive mailers are sent to voters by this PAC in their names, I’ve seen no candidates distance themselves publicly from them, or discourage that type of mudslinging in elections. Another major example is evident in city council and school board meetings (especially school board meetings): there’s serious issues with a lack of respect for the process of Robert’s Rules of Order that dictates the flow of these meetings, as well as a lack of decorum from one official to another.