El Paso Politics

You've probably heard this around the water cooler yourselves if you work in government or in the downtown area but the notion of drafting Mayor Leeser to run for another term is starting to pick up more and more steam. At an event in the valley this weekend Mayor Leeser along with several other elected officials were in attendance and the buzz among attendees was getting the Mayor to run for another term because of the current field of candidates. Mayor Leeser has presided over a council that did a lot of fighting amongst themselves for a while but seems to have come together as of late. Obviously Mayor Leeser would be a favorite for re-election considering he has higher name ID than any other candidate running, and is the only candidate running that has already demonstrated the ability to win a citywide election. Oh yeah, and he's loaded. He doesn't have to go hunting for cash because he already has a lot. A Leeser re-election bid would completely change the race. When he...

Well known El Paso artist Ho Baron had a letter to the editor published in the El Paso Times recently about switching to partisan elections for city council. The idea isn't a novel concept, its done in several major cities including New York, Charlotte, Indianapolis, Baltimore, and Houston among others. But it got me curious about the impact of partisan elections (hypothetically) on the mayoral race. As we all know El Paso is a Democratic city - overwhelmingly. Parties are about governing values - which is the primary way in which they are distinct. One candidate in particular has had my interest, David Saucedo, because of his love for ultra right-wing conservative Rick Santorum. He was also the person who was the driving force behind bringing Lou Holtz to El Paso for a fundraiser following some very controversial remarks about immigration. I checked all the voting records of the announced or rumored mayoral candidates for the upcoming municipal election. Basically there was only o...

I'm not sure if this was previously reported or not, but Monica Terán is the former Justice of the Peace in the Lower Valley and was defeated in the last election by the current Justice of the Peace John Chatman. There has long been talk about Terán running for her old seat again when Chatman faces reelection. Well that just became an even steeper hill for her to climb. I was looking for an alleged mug shot of a state lege staffer with political aspirations. This staffer was apparently involved in a DUI. I stopped looking for his when I came across this one: Photo taken from KVIA website Ms. Terán is innocent until proven guilty and will obviously have her day in court to deal with the issue, but the point is this mugshot is a nightmare for her ability to regain her seat on the bench. It should also serve as a reminder to us all during the holidays to get a ride home instead of getting behind the wheel. This is something that could happen to any one of us.

And now for the losers... El Paso County Sheriff's Officers' Association You know up until Election Day I thought most of the employees were anti-Wiles. But as I made my way around the county from polling place to polling place and I spoke with poll-sitters, it was then I realized that a lot of them were deputies and their families. The union made it sound like "all the badges" were against him. The EPCSOA are the undisputed champions of losers in this election not just because how incredibly bad they lost the election, but on how they did it. At first the reaction in the labor community was confusion as to why a labor organization would support a Republican in the first place. But eventually that turned into anger as the election wore on because the sheriff's union and municipal police union supporting a Republican ultimately undermines the rest of the labor unions in town. This election is an opportunity for the union to take a long hard look in the mirror at wh...

I'll get to the national stuff in another post, but as they say, all politics is local so I'll start there and the next post will be the losers. Sheriff Richard Wiles This is obvious, it was essentially the biggest race of the night after the presidential race - and it was over early. Wiles completely demolished his opponent winning 184 of 191 precincts in El Paso County. Like I told Marco Camarillo - probably the loudest smack-talker for the sheriff's union, Buchino didn't win a single precinct south for the freeway from downtown to the freeway. Hell Buchino almost didn't win a precinct anywhere east and south of the New Mexico state line. More on the sheriff's union in the losers section... I've been critical of the sheriff on matters of policy - and some of you may have forgotten that it was his department that actually conducted the investigation on me when I went through my divorce. I worked for an elected official that had a somewhat adversarial relati...

Today is Election Day. It is not an understatement to say that this is the most important election of my lifetime. Americans have an important decision to make about the path of our future. The candidates have decidedly different views about almost everything. Vote today. If you don't know where to vote, click this link and you can find out. If you aren't sure if you are registered to vote, click this link and you can find out. If you want to study the ballot before you go vote, and want to follow election night results, click this link to see all of that. If you need a ride to vote, call me and I'll point you in the right direction or arrange a ride - (915) 694-5714. Also, there will be a lot of campaign volunteers out there. Even if they are for candidates that you're opposed to, be nice to them. Its going to be windy out there and standing outside in the sun all day isn't a lot of fun. So be nice, its the El Paso way. Speaking of which, shout out to all the ca...

Hillary Clinton I don't like her. Her voice and her laugh get on my nerves. I don't want to hang out with her or grab a beer with her. But we aren't electing someone I want to hang out with are we? No, we are electing the next leader of the free world. The reality is that she is the most qualified person to run for president in recent history. Donald Trump is a court jester. He has no discernible set of values or vision for this country and when he has expressed an opinion, which is usually in a stream of thought that has all strategy and organization of a 20 something sorority girl puking in parking lot late at night after drinking, its usually something dangerous. The scary thing is the people voting for Trump. They are willing to mortgage America's future because they don't like Hillary. I don't blame them for not liking her, but being so petty that they are willing to put our country into the hands of an unqualified freak show like Donald Trump because they ...

So word on the street is that several candidates for the mayoral elections will be making their formal campaign announcements following the presidential election. What is most interesting is that rumblings about who is going to be running for mayor. By my count, two city council reps and perhaps a third will be running for the seat. Acosta is running for sure. Dora Oaxaca has not exactly kept that a secret. Carl Robinson is likely to run, if for no other reason that he's termed out and will have some time on his hands. Also hearing that a third candidate from council is considering a run - which would be a big development because it would mean a massive fault line in a the money folks. Not exactly sure if that one is really gonna happen yet but I'll update you when I get something more definitive. Sufficed to say the rumblings are loud enough for me to actually mention it. Frankly, I don't get why anyone from council would want to run for mayor. Forma Group is going to have...

Republican candidate for sheriff, Tom Buchino admitted to an assault that was outlined in a police report I posted earlier in the election cycle. The admission came during an interview on News Channel 9 with Estefanía Seyffert that aired during last night's news broadcast. "I didn't hit him very hard, but nonetheless should I have done it? No." Buchino admits during the interview. I conducted an open records request earlier in the election cycle and found the police report detailing the assault. I wrote about the alleged incident in a previous blog post . The concern I raised in my previous post was about Buchino's temperament. In fairness to Buchino the incident followed a car accident in which he says his wife was seriously injured and couldn't wake up. He says in the news story, seen in its entirety he re , that he yelled for the man he assaulted to come help. So that story actually concerns me even further about Buchino's demeanor during stressful situ...

In another sign of what Trump has done to American politics, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller used the word "cunt" to describe Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. First he lied about it and said that his account had been hacked. It wasn't hacked. It was allegedly a staffer. But the real point was that a) it happened in the first place and b) that his first gut reaction was to lie and say his account had been hacked. Then in a move that should surprise no one and comes directly out of the Naomi Gonzalez playbook, he blamed a staffer for retweeting someone else's tweet. You'd think that would be were it ends. Except one problem...it wasn't a retweet. At best, the staffer (alleged) copied the tweet verbatim and then sent it out on Miller's account. It wasn't a retweet. But the truly devastating affect of Trump's footprint on politics is how many people from the right in social media have been either calling it free speech or saying that peopl...