Forma Group and District #1

The El Paso political consulting and lobbying firm Forma Group appears to have represented three different candidates in the District 1 race for city council.

According to finance reports, Forma Group originally represented Dan Longoria. Longoria was the second candidate to get in the race after Peter Svarzbein.

After Dan Longoria dropped out of the race Forma Group then worked with Peter Svarzbein's campaign as you can see in this entry on their finance report. 

There is also refund entry in the Scarzbein report where Forma gives them their money back.

Not sure why they are dated for the same date but that might be just a reporting error.

I first spoke with candidate Al Weisenberger the day after he filed to be a candidate in the District 1 race. I asked him some preliminary questions and one of the questions I asked him was about getting in the race so late in the game and I told him there probably weren't any campaign teams left for him to pick up. Thats when Weisenberger told me his campaign manager was Rick Armendariz from Forma Group. 

Interestingly Forma Group nor Rick Armendariz's names appear on Weisenberger's report. Also interesting is the fact that Weisenberger dropped mail. 

Even though Weisenberger told me he had Forma Group early in March its possible that there are no expenses to report because he hasn't been invoiced for the work yet. Sometimes consultants don't invoice until after a campaign is over to avoid showing up on reports before the election is over and hold off billing their client until after its over. But expenses like design, printing, and mailing obviously have to be paid before the work is released so the 8 day report will likely shed more light.

Forma also did some work for several school board candidates as well. 

For context, Weisenberger was all the buzz in the days leading up to the filing deadline. As much as Rick and Forma might want people to believe they are shot-callers, they really aren't. They don't pull the strings, they get their strings pulled. 

Thats the pecking order. It is what it is. 

I don't know exactly what happened but in my opinion one of three things could have happened:

1. Both Svarzbein and Forma decided to part ways amicably, after signing a contract, in the middle of a big race. Its not likely, but hey that is perfectly plausible. All the money was returned according to the documentation above, so that could support a clean divorce.

2. Svarzbein could've fired Forma. Maybe Svarzbein decided he wasn't happy and wanted to go in a different direction. I suppose that is possible, but I don't see any firm not taking some compensation for any work that was done, so in my mind, this isn't a likely scenario. Plus they were together for only a short time so there's no reason to believe Svarzbein had any cause to fire his consultants.

3. Forma backed out of the contract. That would be incredibly bad business move for Forma and Rick because they started working for the competition shortly there after. No firm wants people to think they will back out of a contract with a candidate and then on a whim back out of the contract and go work for the candidates opponent. That would be absolutely terrible for business. In my mind that just doesn't seem plausible because its so bad for business right? Although others might argue that the fact that there was a refund of fees might suggest that Forma did back out to work for the competition.

At any rate, Forma Group is on their client in the District 1 race. First Longoria, then Svarzbein, and now Weisenberger. 

Svarzbein appears to be fine without them and Weisenberger doesn't appear to have really moved against Svarzbein so there doesn't appear to be any bad blood. So I'm leaning toward the first scenario, an amicable split. 

It just looks really bad that Forma is now on their third client in that race. The first one they get a pass for because he backed out. But working for one candidate one month and working for the competition the next month is just a really bad visual.