Rodriguez, Luxury, & Gringolandia

I guess its bad timing for Senator Rodriguez, but an article I stumbled across in the Texas Monitor has a not-so-flattering mention of El Paso's senator which really put into perspective his recent comments regarding Duranguito and El Paso's city council in another publication, the Texas Monthly.

More importantly, it points out something that might be embarrassing for the Senator that spoke about how we don't want gringolandia in El Paso.

He is apparently totally cool with gringolandia in Austin.

This is coming off a scathing letter from most of City Council about his comments regarding gringolandia and the Senator's insinuation that they are being brought off by developers that have contributed to their campaigns.

Before I get to that, check out this story from KTSM about the letter. Check out Sito Negron's response to the news story. He's really not handling the media relations on this story well at all.

Okay, so back to Senator Rodriguez's remarks and the Texas Monitor's recent article. The article is called Announcing the ‘Living Large Index’ for the Texas Legislature and you can click on that link to visit the article. 

Look no further than the second paragraph of the article to get a taste of what the article is all about. 

"Incumbents tend to face weak challengers, if any, raising questions as to what is done with surplus lobby cash. The answer, as revealed by The Texas Monitor’s analysis of campaign finance reports going back a decade, is rampant spending on creature comforts with questionable relevance to serving constituents."

Rodriguez is in the top 5 of the Living Large Index. He's the only senator in the top 5 that is not a committee chair. 

He's the least tenured of the folks on the list. 

He's the 4th highest spender of "lifestyle spending" on the list. 

Rodriguez's surplus campaign cash was spent on an apartment in Austin that was $60,900 and a more than $20,000 lease on a Lexus. Thats much more than what many El Paso families spend on their home annually. 

That works out to paying about $875 month on his luxury vehicle and $2,500 on his apartment ... all from campaign contributions. Hard to listen to the senator lecture El Paso City Reps about being bought and paid for by developers after seeing this list. 

Of the top members of the legislators on the Living Large Index, most of them are...

wait for it...

GRINGOS!

Now what was that about being too many people that want to be like Gringolandia?