Westside Democrats Endorsement Meeting

I served on a panel last night for the Westside Democrats' Endorsement Meeting.

Here are the contested results (I'm doing this from memory so if I miss anyone its not intentional)

Congress - Silvestre Reyes by a wide margin.
House District 77 - Marisa Marquez by a wide margin.
House District 75 - Mary Gonzalez by one vote.
District Attorney - Jaime Esparza by a decent margin.
448 - Judge Regina Arditti by a decent margin.
383 - Lisa Aceves-Hayes by a wide margin.
8th Court of Appeals - Tom Stanton in a close vote.
388 - Don Williams in a run-off.
41st - Mike Cervantes by a decent margin.
Tax Assessor Collector - Victor Flores by a wide margin.
County Commissioner Precinct 1 - Danny Anchondo by 11 votes.
NE Constable - Rick Gammon in a close vote.
Westside Constable-Richard White by a wide margin.

So those are the results.

Here are some awards (I'll explain them too) :

Best Speakers of the Night: Luis Torres & Vince Perez.
Worst Speakers of the Night (Non Judicial): Armando Rodriguez & Shane Haggerty
Worst Speakers of the Night (Judicial): Judge Herrera & Laura Strathmann
Most Awkward Moment: Judge Herrera
Most Polished Candidate: Marisa Marquez
Best Answer to a Question: Judge Regina Arditti
Worst Answer to a Question Mary Gonzalez
Blown Opportunity of the Night: Aaron Barraza
Surprise Win of the Night - Tom Stanton
Surprise Loss of the Night - Anna Perez

Best Speakers - Luis Torres for Congressman Reyes did extremely well. The problem is he delivers the Congressman's message better than the Congressman does sometimes. Which is a critique often directed at Reyes for not being a polished speaker. But Torres laid out the argument for the Congressman in a small bite-size message. Vince Perez was relaxed, articulate, on-point, funny and to the point. Masterfully mentioned his experience with Congressman Reyes' office in a room that was decidedly pro-Reyes. Honorable Mention - Constable Robert White. Yeah, that's right, a constable! Pretty good speech.

Worst Speakers - Armando Rodriquez over articulated, got lost in the time frame of the questions and overshot the audience. He seemed extremely nervous, perhaps sensing that he was in a room that his opponent was going to do well in. I've seen him do much better.

Shane Haggerty will always have to live up to his brothers Randy, Tito, Jermaine and Michael. Its almost not fair for him and he is running for Constable and not a major policy decision, so keep that in mind. But he's clearly not the public speaker of the family.

Worst Speakers (Judicial) - Herrera seemed pretty intense from the minute he grabbed the mic. He's an tall intimidating figure, but he seemed to have an edge to him when he was going over all the campaign contributions he's made to candidates, most of which were to two electeds from the lower valley. But that's not why it was a bad speech. It was a bad speech because he made people mad. In his summary he said he didn't want the endorsement and that he didn't think Democratic groups should be endorsing candidates. He never explained why he felt that way, but a lot of people were offended by that assertion. In order to be at the meeting you had to have filled out a questionnaire to be considered for the endorsement. People that weren't interested in the endorsement simply didn't fill one out or return it. The fact that Herrera obviously had and then went through the trouble of speaking only to end by saying he didn't want the endorsement irritated a lot of people. So they gave him what he wanted.

Laura Strathmann came across as too prosecutorial and crossed her message wires a bit. She did such a good job of explaining how much she loved her job that one of the panelists who is an attorney asked her why she was going for a seat on the bench if she loved her job so much. Strathmann's body language was that of a lawyer in court. She paced back and forth while she spoke and looked a lot like she was trying to convince a jury rather than win votes. To be fair to her, that is a common problem with lawyers when they run for judicial posts. They tend to talk like they are talking to lawyers, judges, and juries instead of realizing they are talking to regular people with little to no legal background.

I've said it time and time again. Its not the most-qualified that gets elected, its the person that tells the best story.

Honorable Mention - Ray Gutierrez. He under-performed.

Most Awkward Moment - The Judge Herrera I-don't-want-your-endorsement moment. Although that Lucas guy running for District Attorney was a close second. He went up to the podium and gave the Theresa Caballero stump speech.

Most Polished Candidate - State Rep Marisa Marquez came in ready to fight for her seat. Passionate, articulate, and on-message. She's clearly going to run on her record. Right body language, right message, right delivery, right level of passion. Spot on. No pre-season warm-up needed for Marquez, she seems to be in mid-season shape.

I thought about doing a Least Polished Candidate category but it would've been a tie between too many of them. Especially judicial candidates. Ouch! Some of them could use a quick workshop or two.

Best Answer to a Question - Judge Regina Arditti answered a question that no one asked but I'll bet most people in the room were thinking. It was about her case. Again, it wasn't the question asked but I think she knew that its what people wanted to know about and she mentioned her case and how she felt that justice ultimately prevailed. I was pretty impressed that she had the courage to take it head-on. Saved me the trouble of asking the question myself.

Worst Answer to a Question - Mary Gonzalez needs some help with poise in front of a group. She works a room with skill far beyond her experience and age, but in front of people is where she needs to concentrate some improvement. She was asked (by me) if she really knew the district given the fact that she just moved back to El Paso right before the filing deadline and hasn't actually lived here during her adult life. Rather than put that nagging issue to bed, which she really hasn't done yet, her answer wandered around the lower valley for a while before she finally ran out of time. She was the only candidate in her race to show up to the meeting and only won by one vote, but had she handled that question a little better I think she might have squeezed a few more votes out. But, a win is a win. (Uh, unless you're Romney and Santorum, then its not so clear).

Blown Opportunity of the Night- Aaron Barraza had a real chance to look good in front of a group that might ultimately have some constituents in it. He didn't attend the meeting despite having filled out the form to attend. An announcement (that could've been confused for a "mic check") was made at the end of the meeting by his campaign manager that he wasn't able to attend because he was sick. So in fairness to Barraza, you can't control when you get sick and candidates frequently battle bugs while campaigning because they spend a lot of time shaking hands and in crowded rooms. But there is something to be said for playing hurt. Mary Gonzalez was also sick but drove all the way from Clint to go compete for an endorsement that she was the underdog for to begin with. Gotta play hurt sometimes if you want to win the game.

Surprise Win of the Night - Tom Stanton won the endorsement for the 8th Court of Appeals. Stanton has been pretty close to Republican Chris Antcliff and doesn't have much presence within the local Democratic Party and he still pulled off a surprising win. I think even he was surprised at the win and looked very happy with receiving it.

Surprise Loss of the Night - I was surprised that County Commissioner Anna Perez didn't win the endorsement of the Westside Democrats. She has higher name ID than her two opponents and she has a much stronger presence within the Democratic Party than her opponents. She didn't perform badly in her speech and I was surprised that her presence within the party and high name ID didn't translate in to an endorsement.