City Council Candidates, The Low End of the Political Gene Pool

I've been watching every election since I moved here and it doesn't take long to realize something about El Paso. We seem to have a knack for having sub-par candidates in city elections.

Sure, we have some eccentric candidates run for other offices, but for some reason, city elections seem to be particularly fruitful ground for particularly bad candidates.

I think its because they are races that are non-partisan. In non-partisan races, there is no party structure to try to somewhat weed out the weaker candidates. City elections are basically a free-for-all for anyone who's ever wanted a little attention, their picture in the newspaper, or their name on a campaign sign.

I know, I know, some nuts still make it through the party system. Some really, really, really, bad candidates have run for other offices. That's true, and with the recent candidacies of Dion “El” Dorado and Tim Besco, its hard to argue that the party system does a good job of weeding out the weak candidates.

But for the most part, the party system keeps most of them out of a general election. It doesn't stop them from running for office in the primary elections, but at least they don't make it to November.

But just run through the checklist of some of the people that have run for mayor and city council over the years. And I'm not even talking about the ones that managed to get elected!

This election will no doubt follow suit. Early in the election season there have been a total of four candidates that have filed for office?

How many of them have the right stuff?

Well at least one of them is a perennial candidate with no money, no support, no agenda, no platform, no ideas, and from what I can tell...no clue. Hell he might even be mentally ill!

Another candidate should never be a candidate. He's not ready for prime time, and at his age, probably never will be. But he has a short temper and has a history of not following through on things and will likely self-destruct early.

One candidate is a mystery and the other candidate toyed with the idea of running previously and then had a last-minute change of heart. That's going to be interesting to see how that is dealt with by the candidate but by no means is a game-changer either way in the election.

So of the four candidates that have made some indications of a candidacy, two are total jokes and two are unknown and don't have a support base yet. Time will tell if the two unknowns become serious contenders but we'll have to wait until later in the campaign season to get a good look at them.

The scary thing is with a low voter turnout like we have in El Paso, one of the inferior candidates might actually win an election.

But then again...its happened before!