El Paso Politics

Okay, I know its kinda been serious around here lately. So lets lighten things up, shall we. I saw this ad on Facebook the other day and when I heard it, I'll be honest - I rolled my eyes and thought it was the dumbest thing I've seen in politics in El Paso. And that is saying a lot because, well El Paso does dumb politics pretty damn well. I guess Samaniego felt like he didn't want Cook to corner the music market for candidates. After a couple of hours, something weird happened. I started humming the damn thing. Then I went to polling place and I heard a candidate for a different office humming it. Its cheesy as hell. But it gets stuck in your head. I was all set to make fun of Forma for the song, but it turns out, its kinda brilliant. My favorite part is that it starts off rhyming, but at the end they just sorta give up on rhyming and it sounds like the responsorial psalm in mass where they sing the lines but they don't rhyme. Any who, enjoy. And I apologize for putti...

Alyssa Perez sent out a pretty ugly mailer against her opponent Monique Velarde that landed in mail boxes earlier this week. It was ugly. And you can't help but read the mailer and think that it clearly came from an emotional place from Perez. There's not nice way to say it so I won't bother tip-toeing around it - she pulled a mean girls and body shamed her opponent. Yeah, the mailer was essentially just a vehicle for her to send out an unflattering picture of her opponent. In the era of "me too" it makes you scratch your head to see a woman body-shame another woman, especially when vying for a seat on the bench. And that shows you really the only thing we non-lawyers have to go on besides a basic sense of fairness, her temperament. Perez was pissed about a mailer that Velarde sent out. The Velarde piece featured news clips of the controversy surrounding Perez working as a the attorney for CLEAT and taking judicial appointments and serving as a part-time, fill-in ...

Take note of the judges who pretty much just say screw it and give themselves the day off to go campaign on your dollar. I showed you Judge Mike Herrera and John Chatman doing that yesterday, well apparently Jesus Urenda doesn't care either. This is a pic taken of him today at 2:15 at the Esperanza Moreno Branch Library on the eastside. Your tax dollars at work ladies and gentlemen...

Apparently a few judges pretty much close their courts down during early voting. Your tax dollars at work ladies and gentlemen. I snapped this picture this morning at the Carolina center at about 8:30am today. Not one, but two sitting judges were out campaigning instead of being at their job. Pictured are Judge Mike Herrera and John-John Chatman. So I guess there are no back logs in their courts. By the way, this isn't a one-time thing. They have both been at Carolina center and other places regularly throughout early voting, so don't think this was just a coincidence. Isn't that nice?

Leave it to that clown car of a campaign that is the Dori Fenenbock congressional effort to do a negative ad against Escobar that features Escobar debating policy against Willie Gandara and Anthony Cobos. There are a lot of reasons that this ad is hilarious to me. One - who was the genius that thought having Fenenbock align with Gandara and Cobos was a good idea, Norma Chavez? Seriously, was there a conversation in her little committee and someone had the balls to stand up and say, "Hey, I know...what if we had a commercial featuring Escobar fighting with Willie Gandara and Anthony Cobos!" Whoever came up with that should never be allowed near a campaign again because they aren't helping. Other reasons this commercial is hilarious - very few items are ever taken to the voters, even fewer from the County. Not because they don't care, but because there is no legal mechanism to do so. Its mostly just bonds that go to the public. And guess what, part of the commercial tal...

Former State Rep Norma Chavez's campaign is in bigger trouble than I thought. When Chavez actually did file a report, for the first time in the entire campaign, it was clear what she was hiding. Her campaign is a financial ruin. She got one campaign donation listed. One. I'm not joking. And in this bizarro world we live in now, people turn something into the opposite of what it really is thanks to Donald Trump, so Chavez is now acting like her finance report is somehow a good thing. Here's the truth - Chavez is doing exactly what I said yesterday that a lot of people where concerned about...she's going to tarnish Dolores Huerta. Chavez already has a loan listed from family - her family members on a fixed income at that - that far exceeds the limits set out in the law. She came up with some BS excuse that its a joint account that she shares with family. But if that is true, that report is even more fraudulent that it appears to have been on face value based on her commen...

According to campaign finance reports Dori Fenenbock, who is currently trying to call into question Susie Byrd's activities as a trustee working for her opponent, has paid $12,000 to a firm involving Scott Himelstein. Himelstein was the consultant who was paid $1,500 per day (of tax payer money) by EPISD to set up meetings between Cabrera and and Gafcon, who ultimately won the bid to oversee the bond that was pushed through by Fenenbock. That was the largest bond ever attempted in El Paso County, to the sum of $669 million. The reason that the contract came to light was because Trustee Susie Byrd raise concerns about the details of the contract and the circumstances around it according to an article in the El Paso Times . This is a big development because Dori Fenenbock's campaign has been throwing out allegations of corruption against Susie Byrd, but contributed $12,000 to the firm involved in that questionable deal that has been characterized by many as a bid-rigging scheme. ...

Former State Representative, who filed at the very last minute for congress has now missed her second required financial filing with the FEC. Election law requires candidates to be transparent with the fundraising activities and disclose that information in filings. The fact that Chavez isn't a top-tier candidate doesn't absolve her of her requirement to follow the law. This underscores a fear among many Chicano activists about Norma Chavez. Many have been concerned that Chavez would be her normal self and ultimately tarnish the image of her treasurer, Dolores Huerta. The fact that she lists Dolores Huerta as her treasurer but hasn't filed the required financial disclosures is troubling and Chavez has an extra responsibility to make sure that her antics don't tarnish Huerta. More importantly however, its part of a disturbing trend that Chavez has had throughout her career with being transparent. If you recall, Chavez was pretty much the only local elected official that ...

A very reliable source has indicated to me that the dispute between Judges Patrick Garcia and Ricardo Herrera is now over. The anti-climatic end came earlier this week when the two essentially agreed on a something similar to a plea deal, without Judge Garcia having to officially acknowledge wrong-doing. But as a practical matter, he seems to have acknowledged culpability. Judge Garcia agreed to going to anger management classes in exchange for a dismissal of the charge. The dispute arose a while back when Herrera and some other judges were in the parking lot of the courthouse and Judge Garcia allegedly approached cursing and shouting at Herrera over a court case. Garcia allegedly threw the figure at Judge Herrera. I know, real mature right? Kudos to Herrera for actually going through the legal process on this issue. Most people would've figured this would have just went away.

Well when your campaign is in its final death throws and you have to go super negative in order to try to make a run-off, you have to throw a few bombs. But the problem with throwing political bombshells is every once in a while, they go off in your hand. Looks like this whole Susie Byrd nontroversy ended up blowing up in Dori's face with the revelation that Dori Fenenbock actually took money from multiple contractors that are doing business with EPISD tax-payer funded bond projects. You remember the bond projects don't ya? That is what Dori pushed through and used as a stepping stone on her bid to be congresswoman. Turns out the lady who allegedly cleaned up corruption at EPISD has taken contributions with contractors that have, or are, trying to profit off of the bond she pushed through. Interestingly this happened while she was a trustee and while she was "exploring" the idea of running for congress. Fenenbock and her clan of followers have alleged Susie Byrd had s...

Pretty dramatic image huh? I did it to make a point about how if you alter a perspective, anyone can look bad. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, it really surprises me that a white male candidate would attack a woman of color on the campaign trail, but apparently Darron Powell isn't at all concerned. Word around the courthouse was everything was just fine between Powell and the probate court judge Patricia Chew until Powell had a ruling against him that he didn't like. Then he chose to make it personal and filed to run against her. Once he filed then things got ugly. He started gunning or her basically right out of the gate. Now I'm not one to be shy about a negative message. An issues-based negative message is an effective message. But if all you're doing is throwing bombs, well eventually you're gonna lose a few fingers. I found in my mailbox today, a piece from Powell. He has now resorted to going after Judge Chew's personal life. Thats not a negative messa...

So as you know Alyssa Perez has this issue hanging over her head that has taken her off the bench until there is an opinion from the County Attorney's Office given to the Council of Judges on a possible conflict of interest. At issue is Perez being an attorney for CLEAT, an attorney in private practice taking indigent defense cases, and being a part-time fill-in jail magistrate. So I have been getting a lot of feed back from the courthouse about this issue - and still have yet to hear from a single person who thinks its no big deal - and several have mentioned that the have never heard of a CLEAT lawyer also taking cases. Well there might very well be a reason they have never heard of that. If you look at the CLEAT website they tout some interesting things about their attorneys. You can click this link to read the entire page, but they pretty clearly state that CLEAT lawyers only work for members. "CLEAT attorneys specialize in working only for Texas law enforcement personnel....

I attended what is probably the last debate of the campaign season last night, save for KVIA tapings today, because I had a feeling that if the proverbial stuff was gonna hit the fan, it would be at the last debate. And it didn't disappoint. there is plenty to talk about that I'll get to in another post, but I want to zero in on former State Representative Norma Chavez and her comments in the closing segment. First, these candidates have to realize that they have to really hope there is a run-off. Apparently none of them have ever taken Politics 101 but one of them has to make it into a run-off and not a single one of them, other than Dori, is smart enough to set themselves up as a viable #2 option. Why? Because of emotion. Most of them know they are losing and at this point are throwing haymakers hoping to land something big. Ultimately Norma will go down, much like her political career, as the biggest disappointment of all because she's not thinking strategically, which i...

Forma is synonymous with two things - excellent negative mail, and often sending that mail to the wrong places. Looks like it happened again. I was block walking near Bel Air High School today and I caught a glimpse of a negative piece they sent out against Commissioner Stout. Honestly, it was a pretty effective piece. Quite impressive actually. Too bad they sent the mail out of the district (again) and sent it to voters in Precinct 3. Forma has struggled with mail for literally years. In a very close city council race, they once infamously sent out the last GOTV post to land on a Monday. Problem was, municipal elections were on Saturdays. So people got the mailer after the election was over and by then, Tania Chozet had already lost. C'mon team, whats the point of great negative mail if you can't hit the right mail boxes with it?

I went to the We (Fill-in-the-Blank) debate last night and Dori Fenenbock said something that made me laugh. In her closing she went after Judge Escobar and said that people deserve to know the truth. Its pretty freaking ironic that someone like Dori Fenenbock has the nerve to talk about the truth. Quick side bar: I really wish Escobar would stop trying to channel her inner Michelle Obama and the whole They-Go-Low, We-Go-High thing. She should stop allowing Fenenbock and her crew to say things about her that aren't true. She's been making it too easy for Fenenbock. Michelle wasn't a candidate and we lost that election to the Republicans. There's a lesson there. Anywho - lets actually talk about Dori Fenenbock and "the truth". She's not very good at telling it. She said a new whopper of a tale last night - she is now taking credit for "cleaning up corruption" at EPISD. Here's a quick run down of things Fenenbock has said that aren't true: ...

An attorney working in the County Attorney's Office, Amy Monsisvais, has asked Felix Castañon, judicial candidate for the 243rd Judicial District Court, for her money back. Castañon says its political payback. Monsisvais made a contribution to Castañon earlier this election cycle in his bid, who along with Selena Solis and Robert Ramos, are trying to unseat Judge Luis Aguilar. Aguilar has since purchased ads, but not spoken to media, indicating that he does not want people to vote for him and that he is not actively seeking the seat despite his name still being on the ballot. Monsisvais said in a social media post that she was no longer supporting Castañon and laid out the reasons why. In a phone interview she also indicated that she had reached out to Castañon's campaign team to ask for her money back. I don't recall a candidate being asked to return a contribution by the person who made the contribution in recent memory. Here is part of what Monsisvais said in her social ...

Next time you see a debate, I want you to notice something. Dori Fenenbock typically dodges her Republican voting record. Whenever she's asked about it, she usually says something along the lines of "I'm glad you asked that, because I get that questions a lot" and then proceeds to not actually answer the question. She did it at the Tejano Dems event the over the weekend but she also did it at the Black El Paso Democrats event the other day as well. Take a look for yourself: Go back and look to every time she is asked about it. She ducks it lately, but the answer has actually changed. She's said everything from she voted Republican because they were candidates that she agreed with about Israel, to trying to influence the outcome of the GOP side of an election because El Paso is a safe seat. If you take note of how the question was framed at the BEPD forum, you'll notice that they asked why she was so committed to the GOP back then and is running as a Democrat n...

Justices of the Peace don't lower truancy. At one time, parents would be held legally liable and have to go to court if their kids didn't go to school. But there's no evidence that it every actually cut down on truancy. But more to the point, every time you see a Justice of the Peace candidate talking about how they cut truancy or they are going to keep kids in school, they are lying or ignorant to the law. Or both. In fact, here's a door hanger of Jesus Urenda who actually had the audacity to put it on a piece of literature. Its a straight-up lie. John Chatman uses the same line. Are truancies down since they have been in office? Sure. But what they don't tell you is that they are down because they are almost never referred to the JP court anymore. They law changed. Its not criminal anymore. That is why truancies are down, not because of the JP's. The JP's had nothing to do with it and whenever you hear one taking credit for it, know that they are lying to ...

Don Williams became the latest casualty in an ever-growing offensive by Carlos Sierra's pro-Fenenbock PAC over the weekend. At the Paso Del Norte Tejano Democrats endorsement meeting this weekend, members were sent a text message and email that specifically mentions Don Williams. Mr. Williams has done an exhaustive search for any mention he allegedly made of Dori Fenenbock's husband and wasn't able to find a single instance of mentioning Mark Fenenbock, who has voted Republican in nearly every Republican primary for the last decade and contributed to several extremist Republicans. The email contained a link to a video on the YouTube channel run by Keep El Paso Honest, the PAC run by Carlos Sierra who has failed to comply with finance regulations. The videos that have been played on local television were arranged by a firm on behalf of Keep El Paso Honest that places ads for many GOP causes and campaigns. For whatever reason the Keep El Paso Honest ads seem to be pretty poor...

And that is not a good thing. I told you it was gonna happen. I'm surprised it took this long, and after how well she did at the Black El Paso Democrats event, I was starting to think that she really had changed. But good ol' Norma proved everyone right last night, that leopard doesn't change her spots. Last night at the Tejano Democrats endorsement event, the old Norma came roaring back. You memmer, memmer? The bully. The angry, emotional, temperamental politician who over-stayed her welcome. The bull in the China shop. The one willing to say and do anything to win. The one obsessed with "her place". The one who felt like she was entitled to accolades and was angry she didn't get them. The only thing missing was "lesbian gay woman". Before I talk about last night, earlier in the week at Black El Paso Democrats, Norma was great. Classy. On message. She did so well, I even told her that night that I thought she did really great. And then the Tejano De...

I love alliteration when it comes to Dori Fenenbock. I don't know why, but I do. And you know what Fenenbock loves? Flip-Floppin' apparently. No, I'm actually not talking about her position on charter schools, though she's flipped on that as well. I'm talking about her position on taxes. See when she's running for congress, or hell back when she was running for school board, she talks about controlling spending. When she ran for EPISD she said in an interview I've posted a couple of times that she wanted to control spending - and then proceeded to push for the largest public debt ever attempted in El Paso county - and passed it. Now she's going after Escobar for taxes while she was County Judge. Here is video from just this past Thursday night at the Black El Paso Democrats Forum: But is that how Dori deals on debt in real life? I seriously get tired of pointing out the hypocrisy in her campaign, but this is egregious. Check out this email from Dori to J...

"We prided ourselves on being transparent and being accountable and there was a complete lack of accountability and impartialness from Trustee Byrd" was how Trustee Loweree began an interview with KVIA yesterday that alleged that she didn't know about Susie Byrd working on Veronica Escobar's campaign. Pretty strong words huh? But there's more... She went on to say that "being on the Board and trying to maintain some neutrality, its just impossible to do" when talking about AFT endorsing Veronica Escobar over Dori Fenenbock. EPISD Board President Trent Hatch also jumped into the self-righteous finger wagging and  told KVIA in this story that, "There's no room for politics on the board." Remember those words because they are important, and tell you quite a bit about Trustees Hatch and Loweree. Hang on tight people, because you aren't going to believe the level of hypocrisy you're about to see. First of all... Trustee Hatch, you memmu...

If you check the campaign finance reports, which I do regularly, you'll notice a whole lot wrong with finance reports this go-around. I'm gonna do a post later focusing on all the finance report screw ups, misfilings, and interesting little tidbits later, but I really want to zero in on one particular problem with one particular judicial candidate.  See, when you're a candidate running for a position in which you are supposed to interpret the law, and you can follow directions or break rules/regulations/laws, you send a really loud message that you don't belong on the bench.  Sorry, there's no gentle way of saying that, but if you can't get reporting right, how in the hell are you going to be trusted with interpretations of the complexities of the law? Trust me, that sentence applies to several judicial candidates, but for now the one I'm talking about is Judge Mike Herrera. You know, the guy that has been on the bench forever, who runs every 4 years and out...

So things are getting ugly at EPISD over the congressional race and now an appointed member of the EPISD Board of Trustees is weighing in on the endorsement process of the American Federation of Teachers. Suddenly Trustees Loweree and Hatch are saying they were unaware of Susie Byrd's involvement with Veronica Escobar's campaign. But interestingly, it was not so long ago that EPISD School Board President Trent Hatch had a much different tone. Here's his quote in an article from last year in the El Paso Times : "Understood, this is the last thing we need on the board is to start political wars in the media with members of the board," Hatch replied. "I will tell Dori and Juan the same thing." Byrd then sent Hatch a link to the  El Paso Times article  about the conversation between Cabrera and Haggerty. "This is not impressive at all and only brings a black eye to EPISD and the board," Hatch replied. This was an article about Juan Cabrera, who is ...

I've said it several times, Donald Trump has forever changed politics. There was a time in this country that if you said something that wasn't true, your career would be over. Because the truth used to matter to people. Those days are over, so this likely won't go anywhere but I still feel the need to call out what looks like a deceptive ad. Alyssa Perez, who at least for the time being has been removed from the bench as a part-time fill-in magistrate pending an opinion from the County Attorney's Office on a possible conflict of interest but still uses the word "Judge" on her campaign material, has something else interesting on her campaign material. I was mailed something from her campaign and as you can see, she has an awkwardly phrased statement about having 15 years of experience on all sides of justice. I chuckled over it because I thought it made it sound like she found herself on the other side of the justice system. But it got me curious because it was...

Who would have thought that a PAC operated by the shady GOP political operative Carlos Sierra would've not filed a finance report as required by law? Shocker, right? So apparently Keep El Paso Honest doesn't really mean open and honest.  Sierra's Pro-Fenenbock political action committee known as Keep El Paso Honest was required by federal law to disclose expenditures once they exceeded the financial limit of $10,000. They were required to notify the public through a filing with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) within 48 hours once they had done so.  I previously wrote about the pro-Fenenbock PAC's ties to the GOP. Click here to read more about that . In the same post, I included information about the ad buy they made. I found this on the FEC website, “Once an individual’s or committee’s aggregate independent ex- penditures during a calendar year reach or exceed $10,000 with respect to a given election at any time up to and including the...

So for whatever reason people stealing signs seems to be happening more often than normal. Hell, I've personally filed a police report. And...some candidate for some race I could give a shit about was running around the valley saying he heard I was stealing his signs in Tornillo. Me, personally. In Tornillo of all places. Seriously, the fact that you think you need a sign in Tornillo, and that you have multiple, and that you care that they are missing from there, tells me you have never actually looked at voter data. Because if you had, you wouldn't waste a sign in Tornillo. But anywho, I never really paid attention to the guy until I heard about him saying I was jacking his signs. By now people should know that if you're going to talk shit about me in the valley, I assume you want me to know you are talking shit about me because everyone knows its going to get back to me fairly quickly. Don't know why the hell he would spread that rumor, but I'm clearly annoyed by ...

When Norma Chavez ditched her clients in exchange for her own political ambitions, it caused a big headache for those candidates. They had to scramble to figure out what to do between the filing deadline and Election Day. It took them quite a while to get on their feet again. Well at least one of them, County Judge candidate Richard Samaniego ultimately landed with Forma Group. But he's loaded so he can afford their steep fees. Its too late now but the best thing they could do for Samaniego is fix is logo. I'm guessing that was done by Norma, but its REALLY busy and looks a little like the old school Superman movie font. Either way, its a big shot in his arm and will probably be the reason he becomes County Judge. He will now have a mail program. So far his campaigning efforts seem to be going to events and putting up a bunch of signs. Now there will be mail that hits homes. Laura Enriquez has pretty much done nothing that I can see and Mayor Cook says he doesn't have any m...

I'd expect Fenenbock to have a pretty sobering morning after reading the campaign finance reports and its hard to see how she doesn't start cutting her massive staff pretty damn quickly. She's burning through money faster than she can raise it. That, or she's gonna have double-down and dump a whole lot more of her personal funds into her campaign to afford that massive overhead she has. Bottom line is that it is getting more and more difficult to believe things coming out of the Fenenbock campaign. The El Paso Times ran an article about the amount of money raised by the candidates. Click here to read the story . There was an interesting remark in the article from Veronica Cintron, who is the campaign manager for Fenenbock (ever notice how Fenenbock never talks to media?) when asked a question about how much of the money raised is from loans. Cintron's answer made my political BS detector go off like crazy. Apparently Cintron replied that she didn't have the figu...