EPYD Meeting Yesterday

The El Paso Young Democrats met for their monthly meeting tonight and there were some interesting people that showed up to the meeting.

 

We normally have a monthly guest speaker and we had Vince Perez, Congressman Reyes’ Press Secretary. Normally the guest speakers are someone related to the local Democratic Party and speak about their particular area of expertise.

 

Its been pretty uneventful, except for one time when we had a judge and former State Representative Norma Chavez, who is NOT a member of the El Paso Young Democrats and not affiliated with the organization in any way what so ever, spoke without being recognized. She was taking credit for creating the court that the guest speaker was a judge in, and went on some unrelated rant.

 

The guests that aren’t normally at the EPYD meetings were Victor Houston, Jerome Tighlman, and Raul Amaya. Victor Houston is an outspoken critic of the Congressman. Jerome Tighlman actually tried to run against Reyes and has been critical of him as well, though not to the same degree.

 

Perez, who has shown himself to be more than capable of explaining Reyes' position on a range of issues, describing his achievements, and fiercely defending him when need be, once again showed why he's an asset to the Congressman.

 

During his remarks, he said something that people critical of the Congressman probably would take issue with. He said that Reyes would go down as the most-effective Congressman in El Paso’s history.

 

A bold statement to make, but he defended the statement by laying out the Congressman’s record of achievement.

 

That statement reminded me of something I took note of in a meeting with the Congressman last week. The Congressman was speaking about the new rail yard project in Santa Teresa. That’s a project that will bring good jobs to El Paso and everyone is always saying how they want the railroad out of the downtown area. Congressman Steve Pierce was there speaking in favor of the project, be he didn’t support the project’s creation in Congress. Governor Martinez was there basking in the glory, but it wasn’t her project, Governor Richardson made that project happen.

 

Republicans don’t seem to mind taking credit for work done by Democrats. But it got me to thinking about the Congressman. He takes a lot of criticism from Republicans in town, well basically because he’s a Democrat. He also takes some heat from people on the left who expect him to wave a magic wand and make immigration reform happen, stop the cartels from killing people in Juarez, make everyone have $100k jobs and give the Cowboys a Super Bowl win.

 

None of which he has control over. Especially the Cowboys…man they suck!

I read about a project at Beaumont that the Congressman made happen in the newspaper over the weekend and Perez explained that its going to be a campus facility. Something a couple times larger than the Chamizal. That’s a big deal.

 

The point I’m making is that people tend to have political tunnel vision. They focus on their issue and forget all the other work the Congressman and his staff does for El Paso.

 

In particular, I remember when Reyes' communication team set up a meeting with one of the Congressman’s biggest public critics. They just spent an hour talking about the work they do for the Congressman and explaining the work he’s done for El Paso. Guess what?  He wasn’t so critical of the Congressman anymore.

 

To conclude my post, I guess it all comes down to this. The political climate is getting edgier. The Republicans are rattling swords and we Democrats are going to go through are biennial ritual of fighting like cats and dogs in a primary and then taking on the Republicans in the general.

 

The Congressman looked like he was ready for a fight. He spoke about taking on Republican extremists like Tancredo in Congress who would go on anti-immigrant rants because they want to defend America, but they never served a day in their life. The Congressman told the story of when he joined the Army in Vietnam. His father told him that it was their turn to serve because America needed them.

 

I swear I thought the Congressman was ready to lace up his old boots put on a ruck sack, grab a weapon and man a post. He clearly looks ready for a fight and the rest of the party should take his lead.