Reyes Camp Makes Blunder

This happens every election like clockwork. Every election some genius decides they are going to send campaign emails to employees of some government body. Sometimes its city employees, sometimes its county employees, etc. This time it was to employees of EPISD.

For some reason candidates don't understand that you can not do that. I don't really understand what is so hard for them to grasp about that, but it never fails. You could almost set your watch by it.

Every campaign season will have someone that sends emails to a public entity, candidates will have their signs stolen or defaced, someone will do something really stupid and get attention for the wrong reason, someone will forget the word "for" in their campaign signs, and someone will screw up on their campaign finance report. These are just universal truths for El Paso politics.

But the Congressman's campaign sending an email to the EPISD employees is a big deal because of the fact that it tells you something about the campaign.

First thing I would say to watch for is the quote in the El Paso Times for Chuy Reyes, the Congressman's brother and campaign manager. The Times quotes him as saying, "We are looking into it...we have ways of trying to find out if it was one of our workers."

That is the campaign floating the idea of distancing themselves from the person that made the mistake. And thats what it was by the way, a mistake. There's nothing malicious there, probably just an over-zealous campaign staffer that didn't know better, but should.

But here are the things that the blunder point to:

1. Mistakes like this are bound to happen when you haven't had to mount a serious candidate in over a decade. They are out of practice and will stumble a few times. But we are fairly deep in to the campaign now, so this kind of stuff shouldn't be happening.

2. This tells me they are having internal communication problems. Too many chefs spoil the dish people.

3. gmail? Really? For a Congressional campaign?

4. Someone has no idea what the term "targeted messaging" means. Sending emails for a candidate to a huge listserv is like sending a campaign mailer to everyone in a district. Only an idiot would do that. You send things out strategically. With today's technology there is no excuse for using buck shot with a sniper rifle.

5. Once again the focus of the Congressional race is about campaign activities rather than issues or message. That means something is wrong. And not just for the Reyes campaign. The fact that issues aren't being discussed in this race represents a failure on the part of all the candidates. They have failed us. Except Ben Mendoza. That whole Mexican Commonwealth was freakin' hilarious. Something tells me he'll never be able to get away from that campaign message.

The Reyes' have to get it in gear. They are running a campaign for a sitting multi-term Member of Congress. Its time they started looking like it. Stop letting your campaign be hijacked by campaign antics and blunders. The campaign is yours to lose and anything less than winning by two touchdowns will raise eyebrows so get your head in the game.

Mistakes like this one are for rookies. Not for campaign veterans. Its constructive criticism so don't get your chones in a wad.