Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo was asked to leave the Houston Rodeo Tuesday evening after she was denied entry to a concert at NRG Stadium, according to a since-deleted post she made to Facebook.
Hidalgo said she was “manhandled” after she and a group of guests, including two children, were prohibited from attending the sold-out Megan Moroney concert at NRG Stadium.
A representative for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, in a prepared statement, said the area Hidalgo attempted to access was limited to “chute seat ticket holders only,” premium seating priced at $425. The rodeo spokesperson said Hidalgo and her group were “directed back to their ticketed seating,” after they were denied access to the “dirt area.”
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Hidalgo, however, said she was “kicked out” of the stadium in the lengthy Facebook post.
“Before I could talk to the director, the men physically shoved me and threatened me with arrest,” the county judge wrote. “They asked me to leave the county’s stadium, which I did, leaving my guests to watch the concert elsewhere.”
Hidalgo’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.
Harris County, which owns NRG Stadium, leases it each year to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. High-ranking county officials and their guests enjoy regular free access to performances held at NRG via a county-owned suite in the stadium. Hidalgo was among those who received free access to a Beyoncé concert held in late June, for instance.
Hidalgo said Tuesday’s incident happened because she is a woman, and said it may have been politically motivated.
“Look, in such a divided country, perhaps those guys just disagree with my politics. They had the chance to change that twice at the ballot box and lost,” Hidalgo wrote. “If it had been a different county executive, a man, I’m willing to bet nobody would’ve been shoved, the director of the rodeo and the head of security of the rodeo wouldn’t have been deployed to keep the county leader out, and things would’ve just been fine.”
She ended her post with a call for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to provide information on how much it had charged previous county judges for concert access.
This article originally published at Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo says she was ‘kicked out’ of Houston Rodeo concert and ‘manhandled’.