El Paso Politics

This is Martin. Martin blogs for his boss in exchange for a couch to crash on. Martin deceives his readers. When you ask Martin what time it is he will tell you how to build a clock. Martin is annoying. Don't be like Martin.

The Paso Del Norte Tejano Democrats at one point went years without filing any campaign finance reports and were spending money on supporting political candidates without filing as a political action committee. Eventually that was straightened out, after I spent a few months calling them out on that activity. However it has now been 2 1/2 years since they filed a report that indicated they had any money in their PAC. Dr. Anna Perez Treasurer, PDN Tejano Democrats Maybe that is true, but according to several candidates the Paso Del Norte Tejano Democrats are intending to purchase TV spots for their endorsed candidates again. They have done it in the past. If they stick to how they normally do it, its a pretty bad commercial. They try to cram all their endorsees into a short spot. The candidates name and pictures aren't on the screen long enough for a potential voter who may be watching TV at that particular moment to even catch the candidates and their offices. Ineffectiveness of th...

Former El Paso Mayor John Cook has endorsed Yvonne Rosales for District Attorney.  Rosales faces long-time District Attorney Jaime Esparza.  Esparza has served for over 20 years as the district attorney and was once considered the heir-apparent to Congressman Silvestre Reyes. But several losses in high-profile cases and an election defeat of Reyes ended that. Generally an elected official will endorse a candidate but not usually do much more than lend their name. But this Facebook post indicates that the former mayor is obviously doing more than lending his name.

As I mentioned yesterday Martin Paredes made a deliberate attempt to try to mislead readers as to the details of what appears to be a baseless ethics complaint against City Rep Claudia Ordaz. And even more interestingly, he actually admitted collaborating with Barbara Carrasco on the effort. But he had to admit it, he had already been exposed. Yesterday I wrote about how he had been very obviously supplied with details of the complaint long before anyone else and long before Rep Ordaz had even been given a copy of the complaint by city officials. As you can see in this screen shot of his post Paredes had been exposed and had to admit that he had been fed information by Carrasco, which normally wouldn't have been a big deal except for the fact that he regularly is critical of information being fed by sources to other bloggers. What is even more interesting is the fact that Paredes used a graphic image that I wrote about yesterday that contained the phrase "2nd degree misdemeano...

Being stupid isn't a crime, but it should be. If it was, Paredes would be in a maximum security facility in Gitmo. A lawyer friend messaged me after reading my previous post and point out something I missed that I believe was intentional. Remember the fun little photoshop Paredes did that he was so super excited about that he tweeted it at meal bright and early this morning? Well there is something really interesting about it. Here it is in case you missed it earlier: I mentioned how he very subtly includes the word "corruption" in the background. But I missed something rather obvious. His use of the term "2nd degree misdemeanor". There is no such thing as a 2nd degree misdemeanor in the State of Texas. Maybe there is in Florida, but not here. Misdemeanors are classified by letters, A, B, and C. Frankly I don't think it was a mistake on the part of Paredes. Oh don't get me wrong, I think he's dumb as a box of rocks. He's demonstrated that regular...

Anti-immigrant extremist Barbara Carrasco has filed an ethics complaint about City Rep Claudia Ordaz alleging a violation of the law. Carrasco is El Paso's answer to Sarah Palin. She's a shrill extremist that tries her hardest to string together Republican talking points into a coherent sentence but more often than not fails miserably. She's been trying to interject herself in to the local political scene for a long time in an effort to try to appear reverent going back to the days of Congressman Reyes' town hall meetings. Since Ordaz used to work for Reyes then maybe that is when Carrasco started to sharpen that axe she has to grind. Since then she's been on television for her extremist views on immigration with regularity. Before I go on you have to understand who she is and who she is connected to. She's a close associate of Martin Paredes, thats right, El Paso's own Flying Monkey. They have collaborated, which is ironic considering how much Paredes purpo...

Yesterday City Rep Claudia Ordaz and also Rep Cortney Niland at one point, grilled City Manager Tommy Gonzalez over his performance during a special city council meeting. During a conversation about approving the streets plan Rep Ordaz took Gonzalez to task for essentially allowing the city to go back to the old ways of politicizing street repairs - a process that frustrated many average citizens and was very unpopular. Ordaz very calmly and rationally explained that Gonzalez allowed another city rep to add streets to the repair program, without council's approval, and stated that Gonzalez needed to take responsibility for doing so. She went on to state that its part of a pattern of behavior of blaming everyone else from the previous council and city manager to the current council but never himself. Ordaz indicated that it happened under his watch and asked rhetorically when he was going to take responsibility. Gonzalez's reaction was very telling. He was basically speechless a...

An anonymous letter was sent out to some members of the Fabens community yesterday that outlined criticism of his salary. Its become an all too familiar criticism from the tax payers about the amount of money paid to an administrator in a political subdivision, much like El Paso's city council and the embattled city manager. It is unclear how many mailboxes ended up with the letter but it indicates that Fabens ISD Superintendent Eldephonso "Pancho" Garcia's salary and compensation is almost $200,000. If you factor in his medical benefits it likely very easily exceeds $200k. The Fabens ISD voted to give him a modest 2% raise which probably wouldn't bother residents of the community if it weren't for the fact that there are rumors around town that Fabens ISD is shuttering its Early College program and shutting several other programs due to lack of funding. The letter goes on to assign a cost per student figure relating to the superintendents salary. Salaries of ...

As I've said before, when I'm wrong I'm the first to admit it. I'm not really wrong in a post I did previously outlining some of the problems with Chente Quintanilla's bid to regain his old seat as state representative for HD 75, but there is some clarification that needs to be done. The case alleging voter fraud against Chente Quintanilla and some of this close associates like Judge Nina Serna and Judge Lujan was dismissed back in April of 2015. There was another lawsuit alleging defamation that was filed against all the aforementioned individuals and a couple of other people from Judge Dominguez, and that case was filed in 2014 at the same time as the alleged voter fraud case. But the funny thing about both of the cases is the fact that basically nothing has happened. On the one case that is still active, nothing has moved on the case since February of last year. Two years ago, as it is being reported in multiple locations now, there was an investigation initiated...

State Rep Mary Gonzalez has more special interest and out of town money than any of the other candidates for any office in El Paso for the March primary. Here is a link to her campaign finance report.  And the Lion's share of it (no pun intended) is out of town money. And Gonzalez raised almost no money from within her district. Only about 1/10 of her money is from El Paso County, about $13,200, and far less is from the district. Actually only 4 contributions were made from people who actually live in the confines of HD 75 and those amount total less than $2000 combined. In fact, one of the 4 people who contributed that actually lives in HD 75 is her father - a Republican. She also apparently is following the footsteps of her predecessor and current challenger, former State Rep Chente Quintanilla is having a very questionable expenditure for Cattleman's Steakhouse listed on her campaign finance report. I'll get to that later. Rep Gonzalez raised $84,470.28 in the last repor...

Former State Rep Chente Quintanilla was never in a position to win the election against current State Rep Mary Gonzalez but the idea was that he was at least going to bloody her nose a bit and go out on his shield. Based on campaign finance reports and a media story, it looks like Chente is going to struggle to get a respectable showing. He may have a hard time breaking 30% of the vote at this point. According to campaign finance reports, Chente Quintanilla basically raised nothing and has almost nothing left. In another strange campaign finance report involving the Texans for Education Reform, Quintanilla is reporting large sums of money but it is almost all "in-kind" (about $40k) and he only raised a few thousand dollars from the Ivey's - prominent valley farmers and close friends of the Quintanillas. There is also a problem in how he reports his expenditures. There is a requirement to post who the ultimate payee is on the reports and he just reports ATM withdrawals for...

Like many of you, I loves me some Whataburger. I like the #1 with double cheese, green chile, whatasized with a Dr Pepper. Man you put that together with some hot fries and some of their spicy ketchup and that is my version of heaven. And it costs about 8 bucks. Well it turns out State Board of Education candidate Joe Fierro raised just enough money by himself to buy the aforementioned combo at Whataburger. That's not an exaggeration by the way, he only raised $8 of his own money. As you can see from this screen shot of his finance report. Click here to see the whole thing, although the screen shots basically are the whole thing. The rest of his money, which I mentioned yesterday was something to be concerned about, comes from the TER, Texans for Education Reform. And by rest of his money, I mean $15,000. Someone with no education experience being funded to that extreme, although its in-kind, should draw major red flags. Why would a special interest group go so big for a candidate...

Since everything else in town will be needlessly closed for the papal visit, I have decided to follow suit.  The LionStar Blog will be closed the day of the papal visit to Juarez.  When asked for comment I replied, "Meh, screw it. I'm taking the day off from blogging and citing 'security concerns'. I don't want people reading my blog while they are driving in all the horrific traffic we are expecting."

The race for HD 77 which is the seat held by retiring, and now Forma partner, State Rep Marisa Marquez is heading down the home stretch with less than a month before early voting starts. Marquez candidate is Adolfo Lopez who is a smart and dynamic young attorney and as I mentioned before, reminds me a little of the Castro brothers. The opponent is Lina Ortega who is a well-known attorney in town. I was honestly a little surprised when I saw the campaign finance reports of the two candidates because I expected Lopez to have more money that what was raised so far. He came in around $40 grand, but that number was slightly inflated by the inclusion of in-kind donations from Forma Group. Those are listed in the plus side of the report. The way you know that they are inflated is because there are also expenditures to Forma Group. Candidates like to fluff up their numbers to look like they raised more than they actually did so that is usually done throw the inclusion of in-kind contributions....

The latest group to come in and try to influence El Paso politics is Texans for Education Reform (TER), which is essentially a sister organization of the Texans for Legal Reform (TLR). I warned everyone about their money and their influence a long time ago, but because they gave to Democrats with good voting records all was forgiven. Until those Democrats endorsed a Republican over a Democrat in a general election.  Now TER is dropping big loads of cash on candidates in this election cycle. As I mentioned, the candidates they are dropping the cash on are always Forma clients, so large portions of the cash are going to be soaked up in consulting fees.  But lets be real, money doesn’t always mean you’re going to win, but it damn sure helps. It keeps the machine going to pay for mail, lit, etc.  There’s one race in particular where money from TER is a bid deal and it should cause voters to give pause, its the race for State Board of Education. The SBOE is a collection of nut...

Ali Enrique Razavi AKA Max Powers Ah yes they say its a dish best served cold. I've been waiting until just the right time to write this piece about Ali Razavi, aka Max Powers. You know, the Forma Blogger. For going on years now I have had to deal with this guy talking shit about me, which there are no shortage of people that do that, but he's mentioned my kids, my late father, and people close to me. Pretty sure he'd lose his mind if other people started playing by the same rules he does. Turnabout is fair play and all. But you know, he was quite the lengua larga when he was just known as Max Powers. It gave him anonymity to say all manner of things from regular commentary on State Rep Marisa Marquez's rack (pretty sure her husband doesn't like that Ali) to commentary on how electeds dress, my hair cut and choice of beer, to who electeds sleep with. In fact, he's rather obsessed with every one else's sex lives. But when you look like that guy and can tell h...

Texans for Education Reform is the education equivalent of the Texans for Legal Reform. They are a front for conservatives that want to take over Texas education policy. I'm going through campaign finance reports but just so you know, the local TER/TLR firm is Forma Group. Where you see contributions from TER know that they are candidates from the Forma stable. Thats how it works, TER donates to a candidate but the deal is that Forma is involved and thats how they are making money this cycle. Most of that money ends up with Forma and not much of it ends up in actual materials because of "consulting fees". Its a bid deal because the TER is dropping big amounts of cash into campaigns and the TER candidates have some pretty scary ideas about what they want to do to public education in Texas. And make no mistake about it, this is straight up a GOP outfit. Sure they toss some cash to a few Democrats but they largely fund GOP candidates. Keep it in mind. More on this later.

Team Tony The El Paso Times wrote an article about the 8th Court of Appeals decision to order the removal of Tony Quintanilla from the ballot as an opponent to incumbent Democratic County Commissioner Vince Perez last week. I read the article and wondered where Quintanilla was getting all his money from. He has lit, a website, a newsletter, his filing fee, money for lawyers, paid for a fundraiser and now money for an (alleged) appeal.  As I read the piece I noticed something else that costs money... A spokesperson. How does a guy who has never been involved in politics before - to the point where he's never even voted - end up with enough money to pay for all of that stuff and have a spokesperson and "senior management of the campaign"? Since I know most of the media and political consultants in town, I found the name Ahmed Khan unfamiliar. Being the curious sort, I looked him up. Guess what I found? A connection to a dubious name in El Paso politics, Carlos Sierra. Sier...

Things involving Eddie Holguin's Paso Del Norte Tejano Democrats and Tony Quintanilla seem to just keep getting more and more weird. If you recall I wrote about how at last Thursday's endorsement meeting Quintanilla was allowed to speak and ultimately win the endorsement of the embattled organization because he stated publicly, when asked by the moderators that were from the media, that he had filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of Texas. Funny thing about that. He hasn't. At least not as of Saturday. In the day and age where information is so easily accessible it defies all logic and reason that Mr. Quintanilla would make a statement about filing an appeal with the Supreme Court of the State of Texas without Holguin even making a feeble effort to check if that was indeed an accurate statement. Turns out there is no record of an appeal being filed with the Supreme Court of Texas as of Saturday. They update the filings daily on the Supreme Court's website. So at the v...

Okay, lest you think all Democratic Party auxiliary clubs are as dramatic as the Tea-janos I'd like to give you a quick summary of the Westside Democrats Forum the other night. There was no drama. Candidates behaved themselves and spoke about their platforms. Other than Pee Wee being Pee Wee, which is really just cheering loudly and dropping the occasional F bomb even more than I do, it was pretty uneventful. Here's a few things that stood out for me. *************** HD 77 In the state rep race for HD 77, which is the really important race on the westside featuring Adolfo Lopez and Lina Ortega, Ortega seemed much more impressive than in the past. The one and only other time I've ever seen her was at a campaign fundraiser and she was rude and seemed to be a reluctant candidate. At westside demos she was very impressive, had a strong command of the issues - more so than her opponent I think, and seemed relaxed and confident. She looked like a state rep. Lopez is normally pret...

You know you haven't accomplished much in your career when your highlights include a coloring book and taking a picture with a pig. I mean unless you're in kindergarten. In which case you are having and AMAZING year! So the other day I wrote a piece about there really not being much of a difference between current State Rep Mary Gonzalez and former State Rep Chente Quintanilla because neither of them have a really stellar record of accomplishment. Interestingly State Rep Mary Gonzalez put out a year in review video on YouTube this week. Think of it like how over-zealous parents put together highlight tapes for their boys and send them off to schools hoping to get looked at by a college scout. If you 'memmur correctly, I also wrote a piece awhile back that was critical of Gonzalez's constant desire to take credit for projects that she had little to no role in. Well her video is basically the same thing, only set to music with a voice-over that sounds like it was recorded...