Lazarin on a String

"Pull my little string and I'll turn you some flips, I'm your puppet..."

I'm your puppet is a great song. I hear it every Sunday on The Fox Jukebox with Mike Guerrero and whenever I DJ a gig in the valley.

But when its political candidates, its not such a great concept. But according to several witnesses that attended the EPISO Forum on Sunday afternoon, it looks like Zulema Lazarin is just that, a puppet.

But I was surprised to hear who the supposed puppetmaster is...Nacho Padilla. Witnesses say that Padilla was signaling Lazarin how to answer questions.

Its not like there haven't been other candidates that have had handlers guide them on how to answer questions. But thats prep that is done before a forum, not during!

He was literally giving her the thumbs up or thumbs down for Lazarin when she was asked questions.

Now Lazarin has given us plenty of reasons to question her judgement, everything from her decision to run, the district she ran in, the creation of her website, etc. But if you are going to have someone be the puppetmaster...why the hell would you choose Nacho Padilla of all people?

He might be one of the biggest political jokes in all of El Paso, which is saying alot! In case you forgot, here is video of Padilla being escorted away from the podium by an El Paso Police Officer.



But it makes sense. Padilla knows he's a joke and has no political future, so the right play for a guy like him is to find someone he can influence. Padilla is anti-gay and has been aligned with Tom Brown and the other members of El Pasoans for Traditional Family Values. Which is even more interesting considered that Padilla is divorced and not married himself.

Nonetheless, I'm told that the EPISO Forum was especially interesting because of the fact that Lazarin was taking signals from Padilla like a major-leaguer at the plate looking at the third base coach to see whether she should swing or take the pitch.

Lazarin apparently flip-flopped all over the place and changed her answers several times. Interestingly the Republican did call for El Paso to be a sanctuary city. That is not consistent with the Republican Party platform. But then again, I'm not convinced she actually knows that.

Tom Brown's candidates, with the exception of Manny Hinojosa, have avoided public exposure as much as they can. I would expect that to continue until the race is over. They will avoid any forum that isn't on ground of their choosing. So they went to EPISO and ill likely go to another forum on Wednesday, because they are in front of a religious group, but that would be about it.

In fact, I'd expect Lazarin to not even show up to the Greater El Paso Republican Women's meeting later this month. I'm told she's not fond of the fact that I recorded the other candidate forums, which is weird because with video, what you see is what you get.