LifeGate Church Candidate Forum Draws Pastor Tom Brown Candidates

There is still debate over whether or not Babe Ruth ever actually called his shot before a homerun, but there is no debate that I called my shot on the Pastor Brown candidates only going to forums on safe ground.

All of Pastor Tom Brown’s candidates showed up to the forum held by LifeGate Church last night. George “Buster” Russell is the pastor of the church and he was able to do something I haven’t seen done in a while…get new faces in to a candidate forum.

The Tom Brown candidates are in a bit of a pickle. They want to come across as more than one-issue candidates, but the harder they try not to, the more they sound like one-issue candidates.

The candidates were asked a question about what they thought the three biggest issues facing the city were and given 5 minutes to talk about it. The only one of the Pastor Tom Brown stable that is remotely capable of saying they are more than a one issue candidate is Manny Hinojosa. If there were an award given for Most-Improved Candidate, it would be Manny Hinojosa.

Except he has this weird habit now of repeating things three times. Repeating things three times. Repeating things three times.

His stablemate Zulema Lazarin would be given the Least-Improved, I-Can’t-Believe-She-Gets-Worse-Everytime-I-See-Her Award.

The Que Dijo? Award would be a close one between Gerardo Rosiles and Jorge Artalejo.

Sorry, got distracted. Back to the answers. The first word out of Sonia Brown’s mouth at the forum was traditional marriage rant. She now has a cutesy story in her stump speech about women and bathrooms and why they need to have bigger restrooms than men.

She, along with the other candidates of District 5 keep talking about how they are going to fix the traffic problems at Montwood, Zaragoza, and Joe Battle. Which is great and all, but its not actually in their district. Its in Eddie Holguin’s district and it’s a state road, so there really isn’t anything that they can do about it, but its fun listening to them talk about it because I don’t think they have realized its not in their district yet.

I think the fundamental reason that the females in Pastor Tom Brown’s stable avoid candidate forums is because they don’t know much about issues. They have little substance. In fact McGregor is also light on the issues, but he is campaigning via forum so he has to go to forums and when he gets in to trouble, he just brings up God.

We were given the chance to write questions on a 3x5 card and submit them. So I asked a substantive question asking about details about attracting business to El Paso. They both fumbled the question.

Why?

Because they only know talking points. If it were Biblical, they could quote it chapter and verse, but since it was election issue oriented, they proved what I suspected. That they don’t really have an understanding of the issues, they just work off of a script of talking points.

Watch Sonia Brown giggle with nerves as she stumbles through an answer, even after Lazarin had first crack at answering the question.

Remember, my question was asking them to articulate specifically what they would do to attract business and cut expenditures. See if anything in this answer sounds like an answer or specificity. Also notice how much trouble she has with it.

Clearly she was much more comfortable at the Tea Party Rally where she had a script to work off of.