West El Paso Republican Women Debate

Last night was the debate for the two major races on the westside – the JP race and the county commissioner 4 race.

I'll do a few posts that summarize the debates but I wanted to write this quick note about the actual debate.

Despite the fact that it was run by one of the auxiliaries of the El Paso GOP the debate featured both Democrats and Republicans.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking it was going to turn in to a political food-fight. Well you'd be wrong.

The debate featured fair and probing questions of the candidates and the West El Paso Republican Women were gracious hosts. Even had homemade cookies.

Becky Hermosillo is the head of WEPRW and is probably one of the top two moderators in town that I've seen host debates over the years. She's fair, controls the program well, and keeps the show rolling.

It was certainly a tale of two debates. The first debate was JP candidates – Democratic nominee Sergio Coronado and Republican nominee Kelly Dickson. Both candidates are older than their PCT 4 colleagues and both are attorneys. The JP debate was civil and extremely cordial. Even when they had the opportunity to lock horns by asking a question of their opponent, they didn't get rough at all.

Hermosillo had planned to have them debate first anyway, but that worked out well for Coronado because he had to leave early to celebrate the birthday of his daughter who turned 21 last night. So shoutout to Coronado for showing up to a debate hosted by the opposite party on his daughter's birthday.

There were some shots fired in the second debate and you can tell that the Republicans aren't used to the same kind of hard contrasts between opponents that we are used to in our side of the aisle and you can tell a few of them were a little uncomfortable. Their discomfort made me chuckle because they had that uncomfortable look on their face like when a relative no one really likes shows up for the holidays.

Chairman and Mrs. Homsley were in attendance along with other prominent Republicans like Judge Bill Hicks. County Commissioner-elect David Stout, a Democrat, showed up to watch the debate as well. YISD Trustee Shane Haggerty was also in attendance.

Democratic comish candidate Julio Diaz showed up with a big entourage as well. It ended up being about 30% of the audience and included his campaign manager, a photog, a videographer, a couple of communications people, and family. They took up the entire first row and there were still others scattered in the rest of the audience.