El Paso Politics

I’ve been going over numbers in various parts of town and it reminded me about something I’ve never really written about in-depth. Obviously countywide races are run differently than district races. Often the district races get over-looked because of the fact that countywide races are bigger and involve more people and money. But there is a reason people like to run on slates in some races. Because they understand the ability to pool resources and make your campaign dollars stretch is very helpful. Every voter costs a certain amount of money to get to the polls. Every savvy campaign takes that in to consideration. But there is a huge benefit to some candidates when they are running countywide and there is a competitive race going on in a sub-district. When there is a competitive race in a sub-district, and its an area you are popular in, you are going to reap some benefits. Campaigns might be sticking knives in each other trying to get each vote, but if you are popular in the area and ...

Look, I don't know who's in charge over there, but someone find out and kick them in the ass. I'm sure you guys do great work and all, but there honestly has to be a better way to fund raise for your organization than making women pan handle for loose change on busy street corners in the middle of the day during the summer. Surely you have a better strategy than that. Who the hell is your CFO, Donald Rumsfeld? Making women pan handle is degrading. Its also very dangerous in this heat. I sure hope these women aren't compelled to be out there begging for spare change. Seriously, come up with a better way to raise money before someone gets hurt in the traffic or the heat.

County Commissioner Willie Gandara said something in an El Paso Times ( http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_18308886?IADID=Search-www.elpasotimes.com-www.elpasotimes.com )interview back in June that I found pretty interesting. Commissioner Gandara, according to the Times’ article, is coordinating the project for the county. The article also says he purchased property in the area. Here is a portion of that article: "My family has owned land in that part of the county for a long time, and I bought two or three small lots here and there, mostly in tax sales," Gandara said. "This project will bring a dramatic, nearly an overnight, change to the valley," Gandara said. "It will improve the economic environment for my constituents. And it will be good for the entire county region." Gandara was in the news a while back after video surfaced of his recycling company’s vehicles at the construction site of the new mall that will be going up soon. If you recall, Commissioner...

I wanted to clarify something that I could've made clearer in my previous post. Despite the fact that I wrote Texas Democratic Party, I think the tone of the piece might have made people think I was being critical of the El Paso County Democratic Party. I was specifically talking about the state-level of the Texas Democratic Party (TDP). So to clarify, I think the TDP needs to get off their asses and pump some money in to competitive races like HD78. Additionally, I think they should pump some money in to the El Paso Democratic Party specifically for voter registration and GOTV. I think that should be an on-going effort. But since El Paso consistently votes Democratic, I am concerned that the TDP has taken El Paso for granted. We haven't begun to scratch the surface of the Democratic vote in this town. Voter turn out and registration is crap and we could really turn some statewide races if we voted in numbers we are capable of. But that takes money. TDP, think about were you ca...

Let's do something different in this election, since we got our asses kicked in the last election. Let's put money in to competitive districts this time. Lets face reality, Joe Moody's district is and was a toss-up district. In a toss-up district there is an ebb and flow. But Joe Moody was out-spent. Money means a lot in any race, it means even more in the close ones. You people were AWOL in that race. There was no money support. You lost a solid Democratic vote. So lets learn from the last election and have you guys do something a little different. How about you give money to competitive candidates, let the safe candidates work on their own campaigns, and get a little freakin' skin in the game and send some people to help out the close races.

I like Charlie Garza as a person. As an elected official, I think he's dangerous. All you have to do to know what makes him tick was to show up at is coronation as a member of the state board of education. Normally people just raise their hand, take the oath and thank supporters. Garza probably would've had an 18 gun salute (21 is reserved for presidents) and been knighted had he had the option. But now is an issue before the state board of education that will really tell us what he is all about. Creationism is again making headlines in Texas and Perry's newest head of the state board of education is a creationist. I'm interested, and watching to see what Charlie Garza does in this case. He's a right-wing idealougue and really doesn't make a secret of it. But he is at his heart, an educator. The question is, will he vote to put creationism on an even par with science along with the rest of his Republican buddies, or will he buck the trend? I suspect the former, ...

Even for a total wonk like me, not all the races interest me. Yes, I know they are all important. But some of them are really hard for me to give a shit about, like JP races in parts of town I don't live in. Unless Monica Teran is running. Any race she runs in is interesting to me because a) I think she's unqualified even by El Paso standards, and b) I've never seen someone that rude win an election. But here are a few races that I am interested in. Commissioner's Court – Perez is running for re-election, putting rumors to bed that she was running for a judicial position. (Told ya so, by the way.) She runs an efficient campaign and I will be surprised if she draws a viable opponent. Gandara's seat will be a very interesting race to watch, and for many reasons. First, there have been all manner of rumors about his race. Some have said he's not going to run for re-election and his staffer Dora Oaxaca will run for the seat. That particular buzz says that he will le...

The filing deadline for next March's primary isn't until December, but many incumbents are taking advantage of the fact that they are incumbents and are holding fundraisers. There will be several judicial races, along with two members of Commissioner's Court, all of the state rep seats, the congressional seat, and the presidential. The last couple of election cycles have been pretty tight in terms of fundraising. Maybe that's why one incumbent and a few potential candidates have been asking around about one fundraiser in particular. Seems that they are all pretty pissed at District Clerk Norma Favela. Favela is having a fundraiser at the downtown Leo's at 530 on Wednesday, July 27 th . “My God, she's not up for another couple of years. Why does she have to have a fundraiser now? Some of us are trying to raise money for this election. There's no rule against it, but it comes off as rude and inconsiderate”, said one potential candidate for an unrelated office....

Remember the shooting at a McDonald's on Yarborough a while back between an off-duty police officer and a young man that resulted in the man being permanently paralyzed? Back when my show was an every day thing, Sammy talked about the story and raised several important questions about that shooting. People were pissed about it and called to complain and sent me emails. Well he who laughs last... Turns out that officer was indicted for that shooting. Watch Noticias 26 at 5pm and see a complete wrap up of a press conference the Chief of Police is conducting right now on the issue. David Stoudt will have all your details coming up at 5. In the meantime, Sammy is still working hard and sent me this statement from the family regarding the indictment: We are pleased with the announcement of the indictment of Officer Gonzalez. The family would like to thank the grand jury, Ms. Lori Hughes, and the DA office for the hard work put forth to get this done. The focus now shifts to the criminal...

Surely I can't be the only one who noticed that shortly after one national group complained about Pastor Brown's blurring of the lines of separation of church and state, that he recruited a motley crue of eccentrics to lead the charge on his recall effort. I'm starting to learn something about Pastor Brown. He wants the attention, but he doesn't want to do the actual work portion of his various endeavors.  But back to my point. The people involved in the recall are Sal Gomez, some lady, and Ben Mendoza. Sal Gomez is also very anti-immigrant and when he isn't announcing at local boxing events (often in Spanish by the way), the eccentric, attention-seeker is at city council berating Beto O'rourke and referring to himself as Poor Man Walking. Ben Mendoza is a perennial candidate and El Paso's answer to Yosemite Sam. Somebody remind me to remind him he's a Democrat the next time he tries to run for something again as a Democrat.  But wait, the engineer of th...

If you read the paper today or watched the news yesterday, then you’ve heard the latest hub-bub about County Judge Escobar now sitting on the Purchasing Board. She was trying to replace Commissioner Willie Gandara, Jr who sits on the Board with Commissioner Haggerty and three district court judges. The Times then had a blub to an online poll asking if readers think it’s appropriate for the County Judge to sit on the Purchasing Board. I think the Times missed the real important question they should be asking. The real question they should be asking is whether it’s appropriate for Commissioner Gandara to be sitting on the Board. Commissioner Gandara was the swing vote on the Farah Project and then his company’s trucks were working on the project. How the hell does he end up on the purchasing board? I’m not alleging he’s corrupt, I’m alleging he used questionable judgment when having his company work on a project that was only made possible because he was the deciding vote. To me, that’s ...

El Paso’s senior member of the delegation, Chairman Joe Pickett was pretty famous around the state of Texas for his office. I understand its informally part of the regular tour around the capitol.  If you’ve never been to his office at the Capitol, Chairman Pickett’s office was decorated like a 50’s diner. It was great, it had the pop corn machine, sodas, and ice cream. Free. Or at least that’s what Brandi Grissom told me when she took me on a tour once and we grabbed an ice cream out of the cooler. But in something that went basically unreported in El Paso, Joe’s Diner is no more. After many years, he moved offices. Out with the old, in with the new. Apparently Chairman Pickett’s office 2.0 has a movie theater theme. If anyone has pictures, hook me up and I’ll post them. I rarely make it out to Austin so I don’t have any. The old stuff is around the corner in a museum-type setting, so it hasn’t gone to waste. 

As I said yesterday, I don’t revel in the misfortunes of Rachel Quintana. But if you have been monitoring social networking today (the modern-day water cooler), a lot of people have expressed an opinion one way or another about her sentence. I’ve also been talking with people in media circles and it turns out that several news operations in town were set-up in various locations to get a shot of Quintana leaving the courthouse today. Word is they weren’t able to get a shot of her because she was escorted out of the courthouse through an alternate exit. My question is simple…why? One critique many have said is that the sentence was pretty light and that if it had been a regular person, perhaps the sentence wouldn’t be so light. Now the questions will be why does a former city rep, now convicted, merit a special escorted exit to avoid cameras? It’s tough to argue that isn’t special treatment…

By now you've all read the article in the El Paso Times  by Marty Schladen about a group reporting Pastor Brown's actions to the IRS. Incredibly, the group that is leveling the complaint has done so many times across the country and essentially said that they haven't seen such brazen violations of the IRS rules dealing with political activity. Pastor Brown gave the lamest excuse I've ever heard. He actually tried to argue that his website isn't related to his church. Which is funny, because that comment is actually more ridiculous than some of the crazy shit on his website like curing a blind boy, praying away the gay, explaining why dinosaurs aren't mentioned in the bible, explaining why masturbating isn't really a sin, and explaining his version of why there are different races. But I think this issue will now put the Browns and their Church's finances under scrutiny. If you look at his Facebook page, you will see a lot of pics of vacations around the...

Okay, so I have been bombarded with questions asking where I have been and why I haven't been blogging. The short answer is that I have been sick and tired. I was sick for a few days and missed a couple days of work as a result. I have also been very busy and have just been really tired at the end of the day when I normally do my blogging. My mom is in town as well and I wanted to dedicate myself to some more family time. So I am working on a couple of important pieces that are complex and take a while to track down documents, get comment, etc. But they are important for El Pasoans to know about. I'll get to them pretty soon...as long as I don't get distracted by the search for the Sunland Park Ninja...

I'm not being sarcastic. I feel bad for her. I know, she was convicted by a jury of her peers. I respect the system we have. She has a daughter she loves very much. My daughter played with her daughter while Quintana and I had a conversation at an eastside Target a couple years ago and it was clear that she is a loving mother. I think she was a horrible city rep and I can't stand how she demanded info from me in exchange for information (which I didn't give), but I don't revel in her misfortune. It only took a jury of 6 women less than an hour to convict her and she is going to do some time. I know, we have a justice system and justice has taken its course, but if you are reveling in her misery, you might want to put that person in the mirror in check. I pray that the judge gives her a sentence that satisfies justice and minimizes the time her daughter has to do without her mother. 

Wouldn't it be ironic if someone who once said the courthouse was a "cesspool" was really speaking from authority? What kind of authority? Well, wouldn't it be really shitty if the person who called it a cesspool actually once got in trouble for taking a dump near the area where you go through the metal detectors on the 3rd floor of the courthouse? That would be funny and disgusting wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be hilarious if that person also made a "mess" in the men's room that took a janitor a couple of hours to clean up? Seriously...talk about a shitty job! It would be even funnier if that person has been walking around the courthouse like their shit don't stink after a recent trial? Wouldn't it be funny if that person was still allowed to work at the "cesspool" even though they took a dump in an area not meant for such a purpose? I know for a fact that there are consequences for smoking in an area that is not designated for tha...

Constable Angie Sommers. She took in a horse that was left to die. I know, she's a little eccentric (she wants her deputies to dress old western style, tip their hats to women and say "Howdy ma'am", and once called my live radio show by accident because she got me confused with Jaime O. Perez who was on another radio program on another station at the time), but she's really passionate about horses. Kudos to her. I don't wear those kind of hats but if you do and you see her around town, tip your hat and tell her "Howdy Ma'am". She deserves it.

So I've been having a similar conversation with several people around town ever since Tim Besco told the GOP "Fuck you, I hope you all rot in hell". People have been asking if the Congressman is going to end up with an opponent in the primary. No, I don't mean the eccentrics,  they ask if he is going to get a serious opponent. My answer is usually something along the lines of "Are you kidding? What serious candidate would do that?" Interestingly, a friend of mine called me today to say that there was a similar conversation going on at a local message board. He even said someone threw out the comment of when it would end up on my blog. So, I guess to save me from going through the same analysis over and over, let me break it down. Of course, this is only my opinion. IF anyone takes on the Congressman in a primary, it would be Beto O'rourke. I recently wrote that I don't think he will based on some of the things he's said, but IF there was a real c...

Okay, this week's Homeboy of the Week Award goes to three members of the El Paso Young Democrats that went to the West Texas Food Bank to volunteer. One of the things that we try to do differently in the El Paso Young Democrats is foster a spirit of contribution to the community. President Alfredo Longoria, Vice President Jay Desai, and James Boneau donated some of their free time on a Saturday morning to lend a hand at the West Texas Food Bank. So the three are the latest recipients of the Homeboy of the Week Award. If you are looking to volunteer somewhere, go there. Trust me, they could use the help. The Asshole of the Week Award goes to Yams. If you were there, you know why.

Anybody have an idea of who it will be? Will it be Emma Acosta again? Will it be Eddie Holguin? Will it be one of the new faces? Discuss.