Barraza Shines, Marquez So-So at 1st Debate for HD 77

For the third time this week, I was pleasantly surprised at the performance of a candidate in a debate. This time the surprise performance came from Aaron Barraza, candidate for HD 77 who is taking on the incumbent State Representative Marisa Marquez.

I know you people think I have my favorites, but I call it like I see it and I was very, very, very surprised and impressed by the performance of Aaron Barraza in the debate. I'm told "he has a lot of teachers working with him right now" by a source close to the camp.

They should pat themselves on the bat because they took a kid who was completely unprepared for public office and knew absolutely nothing about substantive issues relating to the seat when I first met him a few months ago and turned him in to a candidate.

Extremely impressive turn-around. Barraza should take a bow as well. He obviously internalized a lot of information. And its not easy sitting up there trying to remember all the information, trying to think on your feet, paying attention to what you opponent is saying, listening to the panel, watching the audience, and oh yeah...the blogger guy is there with the infamous video camera.

So, job well done on the part of Barraza.

It wasn't all perfect for young Mr. Barraza though. He showed up with a posse and there were at least ten people in the audience wearing his campaign shirts. He also planted questions with a lot of people that were obviously meant to stick it to Marquez. In the video you can actually see some of the plants reading from a script. This wasn't unexpected either. Its straight out of a former State Reps playbook. A strong visual and vocal presence (they cheered over-zealously about policy answers. It was kind of funny because no one feels strongly enough about a bill to cheer like they are at a football game) to intimidate your opponent and give your candidate some confidence by creating the illusion of over-whelming support. Sharp questions that are pre-scripted to be asked by your supporters, etc all of that is classic and straight out of an old playbook.

In fact, if anyone should've seen it coming its Marquez.

Barraza also got in trouble a couple of times when he forgot something and had to look for it in his notes and he has a confrontational edge to his demeanor when someone pushes him or disagrees with him. You can see it when the drug thing came up. He has to fix that because its too easy to use against him.

I don't want to take anything away from Barraza because he had a very impressive performance. I do want to add one thing though. He benefited greatly from the fact that he put his opponent on defense right away and she didn't appear to want to play offense at all.

Once I saw that there were plants in the audience with scripted questions I asked a pointed question at Barraza for the sake of balance. He gave a crappy answer, but that wasn't important. What was important was that he gave AN answer. Clearly it was scripted and he was ready for it. I wasn't concerned so much with the content of his answer, but more so with his demeanor. He did well with it.

Marquez can still stomp a debate mudhole in Barraza any time she wants to. But for some reason, she didn't appear to want to. She seemed like she was holding back the entire time. Its harder for an incumbent because you have to be preoccupied with everything the challenger is preoccupied with, along with the fact that you have to be aware of how you are perceived. Its not fair, but people expect a more stately presentation from the incumbent and the challenger can get away with more.

Marquez didn't do poorly. In fact she did okay, but clearly she is capable of a stronger performance and a more focused delivery. She shouldn't cut him any slack. He's in the Major Leagues now, she should act accordingly.

So getting to the substance of the debate, Barraza had a lot of information about votes Marquez took, so I am going to look them up. In fact at one point, both candidates were pretty adamant about some information that I am going to look in to myself to see who is right and who is wrong.

Time to do some fact-checking, so it might take me a few days to get to it, but I'm working on it.

Here's footage.