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.

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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. Two years earlier, the TDP had asked Ortiz to provide branding services for the party at the 2016 state convention in San Antonio.

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Ortiz’s design business submitted a $15,000 proposal (with $10,000 of that fee being donated by Snake Hawk Press to the TDP as an in-kind contribution), stipulating that the designer “shall retain ownership of the design” and that the TDP had “exclusive rights to use the final graphic art for 1 year.”

The contract proposal, submitted as an exhibit in Snake Hawk Press’s court filing, also stated that “any additional uses not identified herein require an additional license and may require an additional fee.”

In April of this year, the party again approached Ortiz, asking to reuse his 2016 convention logo and requesting a new longhorn logo for the 2018 convention.

On the first day of this year’s convention, however, members of the Snake Hawk Press team were alarmed to see Ortiz’s designs altered and re-purposed, according to Olivia Ortiz, the design company’s co-founder and CEO, and the wife of Cruz Ortiz.

“The work was manipulated, which they don’t have the authorization to do, like every junior graphic designer knows that you are not to manipulate a design,” she said. “From our standpoint, it looks intentional. They knew the value, they knew that we were speaking to voters. So it’s hurtful. It’s hurtful from our own party.

“Cruz and I are very involved in bettering our community. We bleed blue. But the great thing about being a Democrat is that right is right.”

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Crystal K. Perkins, the executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, provided a statement to the Express-News, saying the party “will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit.” She added, “We paid this vendor every dollar it was owed and were granted permission to use these works as part of the parties’ agreement.”

While Snake Hawk Press is seeking damages from the TDP, it’s clear that this lawsuit is driven less by monetary considerations than by the sense, shared by Cruz and Olivia Ortiz, that their company’s work was misused and cheapened by the Democratic Party.

“The way they manipulated the design is not something Snake Hawk would have ever produced,” Olivia Ortiz said. “So in that instance, our brand was damaged.”

The conflict also speaks to organizational problems within the Democratic Party — at local, state and national levels — even as its candidates bask in the glow of major midterm successes.

One of the party’s biggest problems is the perceived disconnect between the inspiration provided by its best young political figures and the bureaucratic dysfunction of the party machine.

“In Texas politics, we’re starting to see change,” Olivia Ortiz said. “And this (lawsuit) is part of that change.”

She pushed back against the TDP’s contention that Snake Hawk Press has filed a frivolous lawsuit.

“It is disappointing,” she said, “that anyone thinks it is acceptable to use material from Snake Hawk Press and Cruz Ortiz without permission, or try to copy his well-known style and we will simply no longer stand by when we see this occur.”

Memo to the Texas Democratic Party: If you’re truly interested in expanding Latino and millennial turnout, and if you understand that it’s a bad idea to drive away influential loyalists eager to help your cause, you might not want to make an enemy of Cruz Ortiz.

@gilgamesh470

Gilbert Garcia is a columnist covering the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470