El Paso Politics

Sorry everyone, been busy and haven't had time to write much. Don't worry, the loser post is coming. But I wanted to take a short minute to write about something we shouldn't forget about just because the election is over. Carlos Sierra, who is behind the PAC "Keep El Paso Honest" and is President of Sierra Public Affairs and a partner in Renegade Public Affairs missed another filing deadline. How the hell the guy still gets work in politics when he has such a terrible reputation for playing dirty and not complying with campaign laws is beyond me. But you can't miss the irony of someone having the audacity to have the word Honest appear anywhere in something he is connected to - especially when said PAC hasn't made one single reporting deadline. Seriously, the guy has become a political punchline. The main point of all of this, and he's featured prominently in the upcoming election losers post, is that we have campaign finance laws for a reason. He ap...

Like every election season there are winners and losers.  Lets start with the winners because there are far fewer of them this cycle than losers.  Obviously, former County Judge Veronica Escobar is the biggest winner in this cycle. Even though there was a crowded field of candidates, a ton of money spent, and a PAC against her, Veronica Escobar stomped a mud hole in her competition.  It was a statement win if I ever saw one. There were a few but loud dissenters out there but the reality is that no matter how you try to spin it, winning by the margin Escobar won by is a statement.  She won by more than Beto won his seat and it was a decisive with in the biggest race this town ever sees.  Susie Byrd got thrown into the mix with the Vero-haters and several of her colleagues that were essentially working for Dori Fenenbock’s campaign.  I really hope Susie walked into the following EPISD school board meeting and said to each of them, “Scoreboard, bitches.” But s...

Thanks to a reporter who went on Facebook like I was able to catch the press gaggle after a hearing that just ended that found no reason to hold sanctions against Norma Chavez, Enrique Garcia, and John Carrillo for their lawsuit that they dropped last week. And as usual, Norma Chavez lives in an alternate reality where she is some sort of constitutional rights vanguard. In ever story Norma tells, she is the hero. Essentially what the three are now arguing is that they dropped the lawsuit because they weren't able to get a forensic examination on the hard drives used in the last election. That is half-true. What they fail to mention is that there was a hearing on the matter in court, before the date that Election Administrator said the data was going to be disposed of (which is a normal course of action with any election). In that hearing, a judge ruled that there was no grounds to warrant such an investigation. They lost in court. They had their day in court to argue their alleged ...

So last week I was reading El Diario and there was an interesting ad I saw that had been placed by out-going Judge Luis Aguilar. I seriously don't understand it. The ad mostly tries to explain his decision to hang up his robe and step down from the bench, which is fine. Here's the ad if you missed it and want to check it out. But the part that really draws my attention is this paragraph. For me, it blows my mind that he would include it. So the judge that won't do an interview explaining why he wanted to step down despite being asked multiple times by multiple outlets went through the trouble of paying for an ad to be placed in the paper criticizing another newspaper their coverage of him not speaking to the media about why he's stepping down? Are you kidding me? If he felt that strong about it, why didn't he actually return calls from the media. Specifically, why didn't he pick up the phone and call the Times? For context, Mike Izquierdo, who works for the Coun...

Okay, my  little  break from the  blogosphere   is  over, time to get back to work. So here we go... The law suit alleging that El Paso County Elections Administrator Lisa Wise tampered with the election results is stupid. But you guys don’t need me to tell you that, you already know that it is largely about sour grapes.  It was bad enough that exactly what I said was going to happen, disgraced former State Rep Norma Chavez under-performed a madre , but she had to surrender what little dignity she had left after borrowing money from her parents who are on a fixed income and cashing in her Bitcoin, by filing this ridiculous lawsuit.  What I’m trying to figure out is how the hell she got Enrique Garcia and John Carrillo to go along with it.  Like many of you who chuckled when I first heard the news of the lawsuit, I said aloud, “let me guess, it was the Russians.”  Back earlier in the election season when Chavez was doing campaign Ricardo Saman...