Sergio Muñoz Sr., a US politician, died on July 30, 2020, after recently becoming ill with COVID-19,.
The father of current state Rep. Sergio Muñoz Jr. and the party’s vice chair, Muñoz Sr. served as representative for Texas’ 36th district between 1993 and 1997.
The Palmview native was 68 at the time of his death. He died at DHR Health (Doctors Hospital at Renaissance) in Edinburg.
“I know he fought a hard long battle to the end, and that was just who he was,” Muñoz Jr. said of his father. “He never gave up.”
In 1995, during the 74th Legislature, Muñoz Sr. served on the House Committee on Elections, which among several tasks reviewed early voting by mail problems and provided oversight of that year’s Judicial Campaign Fairness Act.
During the same session, Muñoz Sr. also served on a county affairs committee tasked with understanding issues that arose from proposals to change or eliminate certain county offices.
Muñoz Sr. was no stranger to such committees, having previously served on the elections body in the 1993 session, in which he was among several representatives who reviewed agencies’ reporting requirements on streamlining obligations and improving accountability.
Muñoz Sr. also focused on education and worked to raise the salaries of local teachers.
Muñoz Sr. and his wife Connie raised their family in the Mission area, where he worked in health care and she was an educator. His daughter, Marla Muñoz-Lopez, also works in health care.