El Paso Politics

If you know Sierra then you know how much it bothers him that everyone is scrambling to distance themselves from him after his public bragging about electing County Judge-Elect Ricardo Samaniego. Actually what probably bothers him more is that Samaniego contradicted the substance of what Sierra said about Escobar and went out of his way to make sure everyone knew he had no beef with Escobar. Seriously Sierra gets denied more times than Peter denied Jesus. He's not even like a sancho a girl doesn't want her vato to find out about, he's more like a case of herpes that she denies ever having but it just won't go away. Had the public known about Sierra's interaction with the Samaniego campaign, they never would have elected Samaniego. That is a fundamental point to understand given the razor-thin margin of victory for Samaniego. Think about it, the turnout was super-low and Sierra's involvement would've pushed people that only voted in the congressional race to ...

If you read Max Grossman's periodic musings he sends via email, which sound more to me like a manifesto written by some weirdo who lives in a small secluded cabin "off the grid", then you know that Max Grossman is now trying to elect himself some elected officials. He uses some Houston billionaire to bankroll the little op and it looks like he will considering he already kicked in like $15K for the county judge's race. Just read finance reports, the proof is easily found. So who does the Republican Max Grossman team up with? Well if attendance at a candidate's kick-off event for District 8's city council race, it appears to be another infamous Republican, Carlos Sierra. Expect Grossman, Sierra, and probably at least one other political wanna-be to start fielding a slate of candidates. I've heard rumblings of them wanting to set up meetings with potential candidates so that they can identify who they are going to support. The problem is, they have a messagi...

Four trustees at the Socorro Independent School District voted against teachers in a recent meeting of the SISD Board of Trustees. The four trustees voted against a measure that would provide teachers with a small 3% raise and a $1,500 bonus. The trustees that voted against teachers are Board President Cynthia Ann Najera (District 2), Hector Gonzalez (District 1), Angelica Rodriguez (District 3) and Tony Ayub (At-Large). It is beyond believe that with charter schools opening within the boundaries of their district that they would not do anything they could to make sure that they continue to provide their students with the best possible teachers. A couple of these trustees are actually Republicans. And I don't mean just regular run-of-the-mill Republicans, I mean Fox-News-Dismantle-Public-Education-Republicans. But since they are Republicans, lets explain it in a way that they can understand. This is a matter of being competitive in a market. Charter schools opening means that SISD ...

So Trump is now separating families when they are apprehended during their migration. We also now know that the feds have lost a lot of kids somewhere in the system. I've seen the outrage from my fellow liberals all over social media this weekend. Thats the work of your party of family values people. Here's my question for all of you good Democrats out there that want comprehensive immigration reform. Are you still okay with the fact that we are housing more undocumented immigrants in our downtown jail (at a loss to taxpayers) than any other community in Texas? Because you can't really be all outraged about what Trump is doing when you support a jail contract that has a major local impact of this new national policy. How do you all feel about that jail contract now that it has the impact of separating families? Remember when so many of you bought that line that people were going to be shipped far away, God knows where, and be away from their families? Well...the Otero facil...

Richard Samaniego won a razor thin victory in the County Judge race on Tuesday night. Apparently Carlos Sierra was running his campaign from the shadows, which is a bit of a surprise that Samaniego would be so willing to risk affiliation with Sierra coming to light during his campaign. You don't have to take my word for it, read Sierra's own words for yourself. That must be why Sierra is not on his campaign finance report. So either Sierra worked for free, or there's a big problem for Samaniego on his finance report. Had the public gotten wind of the fact that Sierra was running his campaign, he would have lost. Which again goes to the whole problem Sierra has with running campaigns in El Paso. He's got such a bad reputation for dirty pool that the minute he's tied to a campaign, its the kiss of death. By Sierra's own admission, he's been running the campaign for two months, so at the very least there should have been an in-kind contribution reported by Sama...

File this under the most Dori thing you’ve ever heard. A source in the Democratic Party says that a campaign was contacted by an employee of Dori Fenenbock asking, on behalf of Dori and her husband, to be removed from mailing lists of the Democratic Party. Yup, you read that correctly. I guess they are going back to the GOP, but for all you people that spoke about how genuine Dori’s conversion to the Democratic Party was, well she wants out. You better believe if she was still in the runoff she wouldn’t want anyone to be off of a mailing list! Truth be told, the only way she’d get mail from Democratic candidates is if they mailed to people who voted in the last primary because she doesn’t have enough Democratic voting history to be considered a reliable Democrat. Because she’s not. And she never was.

Ay raza... You realize you're following someone who in the opinion of many, doesn't really care about you, right? Since the days of the whole arena discussion Max Grossman has done everything he can to put on brown face and give you all the opinion he cares about little ol' brown ladies that live in the arena footprint. Understand that Grossman cares only about one thing, buildings. I don't think for one second that he really cares about the people living in them, and certainly doesn't care about the conditions they are living in either. But the guy won't hesitate to put an elder who is monolingual Spanish-speaking in front of a microphone if it helps his position. And you vatos stand there and watch it. Well mark my words, the minute Grossman sees the door open to protect his buildings, he's going to and then pull a Donald Trump and tell everyone how great the deal is. Yeah, thats a real picture of Grossman by the way. I know, he looks like a Scooby-Doo vil...

It really doesn't matter who you vote for in this race because neither candidate will really represent any substantive change to Commissioner's Court. Both candidates have their positives, both have their negatives. Neither have a compelling message. Two really boring guys with no demonstrable policy differences. And maybe that is not a bad thing. You have enough drama going on at city council with Heir Margo and this mess with the city attorney. Commissioner's Court is basically drama-free, other than when Ambassador Stout is trying to sneak another Doo-ruhn-gui-toe item on the agenda for Max Grossman. My biggest critique of both candidates is that they don't have a deep understanding of the machinations of county government and they don't seem to be in a hurry to get up to speed. The County Judge isn't the Mayor of the County. They are another Commissioner just like the rest. Which means they vote on every issue. There's a County Administrator but its not ...

This is a no-brainer so the post will be short. This new court is going to be a family court. Judge Jesus Rodriguez is in the run-off against Kristen Romero. Judge Jesus Rodriguez has been a family law judge for the last decade or more. There is nothing bad to say about Ms. Romero. She is a smart and I'm told a talented attorney, but she doesn't have anywhere near the experience of Judge Rodriguez. She's a Captain in the JAG Corps in the Army, but they do very little family law and don't represent soldiers in family law matters in court. Therefore, there's an ocean of difference in terms of experience. Rodriguez has a decade of experience on the bench under his belt. There's no learning curve there. He's head and shoulders above Romero in terms of experience. There is a stark difference between the candidates and this is an easiest choice, Rodriguez should be elected. End of post.

Jesus Urenda, who is in a run-off election to save his JP seat on the Eastside appears to be lying about a key accomplishment he's been hanging his hat on. As you can see in this screenshot from a campaign video he recently released, Urenda is stubbornly claiming a win on a reduction in truancy cases despite the fact that his opponent Rebeca Bustamante repeatedly calls him out on it. To be clear, there has been a drastic reduction in truancy in his court over the last four years. But there has been a drastic reduction in EVERY JP court across the state of Texas over that time period because the Texas Legislature changed the law. The law was changed by the 84th Legislature about 4 years ago, resulting in an overall reduction across the state of Texas, not just El Paso. The total number of truancy cases filed in Texas was 20,555 in school year 2015-2016. Significantly reduced from 88,576 the previous school year. If you wanna see the facts for yourself, the stats I'm citing come ...

The hypocrisy of the right has been mind-blowing since President Trump took the oath when they blindly started supporting something that was an obvious and out-right lie, the size of his inauguration crowd. But for many years the Republicans have pretended to have cornered the market on patriotism. It has been their calling card for many years. But those folks, much like evangelicals, have a lot of explaining to do when it comes to supporting this administration. President Trump while he was a candidate attacked John McCain, a former POW. Now look, I agree with very little when it comes to John McCain and policy. He's a Republican and I'm a Democrat. But regardless of his political affiliation, McCain is an American patriot. He was tortured at the hands of the Vietnamese for years as a POW. He refused to be released earlier than his compatriots. That alone, the willingness to endure captivity longer despite having the ability to leave, is the stuff that embodies selfless servic...

Okay a quick rundown of elections happening next Tuesday is what I'll be posting about this week along with some other stuff. Lets get started with the JP races that are in a run-off. JP courts hear mostly traffic tickets, small claims, and other low-level matters. They are in need of reform. They are inefficient, there's a lot of waste of tax payer money, and they line their pockets doing weddings that they perform in their court, but keep the cash for themselves. A news station could probably win a lot of Texas Emmy's doing stories on the JP courts. Hell, their travel alone is the kind of stuff that infuriates tax payers. Judge Haggerty over in the NE took is staff on a cruise last year, at least partially paid for by you the tax payer. Completely indignant about it too.  A whole court shut down for a week, no business done, because they were boozin' and cruisin' on a boat somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. And Haggerty isn't even the worst offender of travel. J...

I know, this image looks like a movie poster for the lamest villains in a (mostly) Chicano version of Infinity Wars. It is impossible to write a piece about losers in this election cycle without talking about the absolute biggest loser of them all, Carlos Sierra or Renegade Public Relations. The Republican operative who has since burned so many bridges that he can pretty much not get anymore work with Democrats that were hiring him at one point, went all-in on this cycle.  Sierra’s misnamed PAC went from creation, to most hated political entity in town, to complete joke all in one election cycle. It looks like Sierra started the PAC because he has to work as the Lone Ranger because, well no one wants to be associated with him, and clearly with good reason.  Make no mistake about it Sierra was all-in for this cycle and he didn’t care how much he ruined what little dignity he still had left. It was political jihad and I guess he figured he would strap a political bomb to his che...

I've been fortunate enough to be a part of a lot of amazing things in this community and one of the things I am most glad I was a part of was the incorporation of El Paso County's oldest community, San Elizario. Yeah, yeah, I know, this is the part where some of you roll your eyes and say, "there goes Abeytia talking about the valley again..." San Elizario is set to have another municipal election this weekend and voters in Texas' oldest community / newest municipality have an important decision - stay the course with progress, or take a massive step backward. Voters in San Elizario should stay the course and re-elect Mayor Maya Sanchez, Alderperson Becky Martinez-Juarez, and Alderperson George Almanzar. The alternative is a dangerous and expensive step backward. First, let me give you some background. Back in 2013 Socorro, under Norma Chavez's old buddies - the Gandara Clan, tried to annex San Elizario. I was in the office the day the call came in to Commissi...