Quick Hits - Sidestepping Campaign Laws

A few different blog items that I am just throwing in to one post.

In probably the most egregious example of a candidates side-stepping campaign laws I have ever seen, current Justice of the Peace for Precinct 4 (the Eastside) Jesus Urenda put a campaign sign for his reelection on a Constable's vehicle and had them drive him in the Sun Bowl Parade.

Here is a pic of the signs (they were on multiple vehicles) affixed to constable patrol vehicles.

Judge Urenda is in the far vehicle waving to the crowd.

Here's a closer look at the signs. As you can see, all he did was tape some blue painter's masking tape to the parts of his sign that said "re-elect" and cover up the disclaimers at the bottom.

It is against campaign laws to use public property like a law enforcement vehicle for campaign purposes. Covering up a couple of parts of your campaign sign doesn't alleviate him of the problems. I'm sure someone will likely file an ethics complaint over this little stunt.

This is worse than not know the law for a Justice of the Peace, especially when he isn't a lawyer and one of the challengers is.

So you have to ask yourself why a judge would do something like that, why a judge would be willing to risk legal trouble during campaign season. The answer is simple, fear makes you do a lot of things. Urenda knows he's in trouble. He knows he has two challengers and at least one of his opponents already had signs go up around the eastside the weekend before last.

This is an incumbent Justice of the Peace knowing the law, and then taking very obvious steps to side-step the law.

Not a good trait for someone who's job it is to uphold the law.

************************************
1 Week Away

The filing deadline looms just one week away and so far only two people have filed to run for County Judge. This is the quietest run for County Judge that I can recall and is likely a function of the quality of candidates in the field being less than stellar. Only former El Paso Mayor John Cook and Richard Samaniego have filed their candidacy for the position so far.

I'm expecting this week to be pretty busy with people filing to run for office, but the date everyone has circled on their calendar is December 11 because that is the final day to file for office. In other words, that is the day everyone is waiting to see if former El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser files to run for Congress.

************************************
Speaking of El Paso Mayors, Mayor Margo's security detail is straight-up over the top waste of money. Although to be fair to Margo, he didn't start the silly detail thing, that was actually Leeser. Apparently the security detail doesn't accompany them to hoity toity westside restaurants and prevents fights between the (former) Mayor and Octegenarians, but I digress.

Anywho, its an unnecessary waste of money for a figurehead who is actually the least powerful member of city council.

I noticed the detail at the City's Festival of Lights thing downtown the other night. I happened to be working an event nearby and strolled through the plazita to check things out. I've said this before but I'll repeat myself - I hate the new light display in the plaza. Its a perfect example of what critics have been saying about there being a concerted effort to make downtown look less Mexican. Seriously, its a white Christmas y'all. And I don't mean snow. the lights downtown are almost devoid of any color. Its just a sterile pre-packaged collection of about a million white lights strung around. The kind of display you'd see at any strip mall in America.

Memmer the cool manger with the wise men, the animals, the shepherds, Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus? The one with the hay on the ground, yeah well thats gone. Remember all the cool colored lights and all the ladies selling tamales and champurado from their little carts around the plazita? Gone.

Theres a menorah in the plaza now, which is great for the small Jewish community in El Paso, but theres no traditional Christmas thing going on anymore.

Its like that cousin Memo you have that went off to college, married into a white family and now goes by Bill and thinks his shit don't stink now because he went to Stanford.

And no, I'm not saying it should have a donkey and be playing Donde Esta Santa Claus from the speakers 24/7. I'm saying that an upgrade or refreshing of the display could've been done in such a way that it still reflects the character of El Paso.

Not this sterile presentation we have now.

But, fun story...the LIGHTS WENT OUT on the night of the event.

Look, parking is one big clusterfuck downtown and its hard to see how all this investment in downtown is truly going to be realized if we can't solve something basic like parking. Because trust me, its End of Days bad to park downtown for this festival.

But shout out to the repair team who got everything up and running again within a few minutes.

***************************
Fenenbock Files

Word around the Party is that Fenenbock's people were freaked out about her poor performance at the Northeast Democrats endorsement debate and are likely to avoid any more candidate forums. That might be why one of her campaign operatives lost his mind during a debate that was set-up in her favor to begin with.

A source in her campaign has indicated that people are starting to be concerned about Leeser getting in to the race.

Apparently Fenenbock was expecting to run the table on the Democratic Party organization endorsements because most of them can essentially be purchased by paying for a bunch of memberships. In Fenenbock's defense, thats been a criticism of those organizations for years. Getting the endorsements of the Democratic organizations was a big part of her plan because of her Republican voting history and her spouses ties to Trump and Cruz.

But Leeser is really popular among the party regulars and would undercut any hopes Fenenbock has of trying to get endorsements of all the Democratic Party auxiliaries.

Also, Fenenbock filed for Congress officially. She joins Escobar and Tilghman as the only two that have filed so far. The funny thing is that the people that joined her the day to file were former Congressman Reyes and his supporters or her Republican relatives. Thats a microcosm of her campaign if I ever saw one.

Congressman Reyes. The guy that couldn't be saved by two presidents and Little Joe.