Municipal Races: District 1

This is the first in a series of posts about the upcoming municipal races. 

City Representative Peter Svarzbein is up for re-election. He's the most-vulnerable of the incumbent city representatives up for reelection and its very difficult to see how he keeps his seat.

Svarzbein has a major image problem. First, people are going to rightly wonder What has Svarzbein done?

Now what most people care about is stuff like potholes, stop signs, parks, etc. Svarzbein had a major staffing problem for a large part of his term in office. His staffer, who is no longer with his office and rumor has it is now working in some sort of capacity with a potential rival candidate, probably didn't keep track of what was done. For the life of me, I don't understand why he even hired that guy in the first place with absolutely no real relevant staffing experience but that is water under the bridge.

The only thing I can think of Svarzbein marketing is the trolley, but that is problematic for him. First, I think the project was actually something spearheaded by Steve Ortega and second, its not a super popular project. Its got a huge price tag on it and a lot of the older don't-raise-my-taxes-you-kids-get-off-my-grass voters won't be supportive of it.

So Svarzbein has to run like he has a huge target on his back, because well, he does. There are at least three candidates running against him this time, most of which have a pretty good shot at being the next city representative - better shots than Svarzbein does.

Svarzbein isn't going to be able to raise anywhere close to the $90,000 he raised in the last election. And trust me, Svarzbein earned that win last time. That was the race were Forma Group was behind him, and then "had their strings pulled" and ditched him in favor of another candidate. So Forma screwed him before, he'd have to be really stupid to use them again and it would probably end up being a news story if he did.

Word on the street is Svarzbein has $30,000 sitting in the bank for this campaign. He better make that stretch because I'll bet that is going to be about 3/4 of what he raises for this campaign.

But Svarzbein is an incumbent now. He's got a record that can be scrutinized now. Showing up late to events looking like you just rolled out of bed worked when you were a plucky little campaign of an artist trying to overcome the odds and get a spot on city council isn't going to work in a reelection campaign.

Lets look at the rest of the field.

Richard Bonart, a prominent dentist in the area, ran last time and the buzz is that he has $20k ready to dump into the race. But Bonart is going to be Max Grossman's candidate. So Grossman will likely get his sugar daddy from Houston to dump some more money into Bonart. Grossman is out to buy himself a city council and so he's going to make sure his slate of candidates are going to be well-funded. Grossman's biggest problem is his mouth. He loves the spotlight and he is going to be a boat anchor around the neck of every candidate he runs. If Bonart is smart, he'll get the money and shut Grossman up.

Remember Grossman is a HUGE Trump guy and after all the anti-immigrant stuff the administration has done, Grossman is going to be an even bigger lightening rod than he was before.

Carlos Corral is another guy that is running against Svarzbein. He's another film guy, which is what Svarzbein was known as when he started to kick around the idea of running for office, so pardon the pun but we've seen this movie before. I think he's done some political commercials for candidates and he does something with the El Paso Film Festival or Plaza Theater or something like that. Honestly I don't know much about him so I have no idea if he actually knows anything about policy or if he's running because he thinks it would be cool to be a city representative. In this day an age with my email and phone number out there if he hasn't figured out how to send me info about his candidacy then that is a little strange. But who knows, maybe he'll read this and send me some info about him. Without any info, I can't really give you much analysis about him yet - but at the very least Svarzbein won't be the only candidate with a slick presentation with video and other campaign material. The question is how much Corral is going to rely on that medium.

He had a campaign announcement event last week but I haven't heard much about what kind of turnout he had. No idea what kind of money he is dealign with but not having Grossman to weigh him down and a slick presentation (I'm assuming he will have one given his professional work) means he's gonna be someone that should concern the incumbent.

Veronica Frescas is another name that is floating around as a candidate and it looks she's going to be making a formal announcement soon. Frankly, she's the one that should be keeping Svarzbein up at night - if she can get campaign funding. Latina, educated, REALLY smart and an actual track record, she's probably the most formidable candidate as of today in terms of being prepared to take office. She's worked for a ton of non-profits - C.A.S.A., United Way, El Paso Border Children's Mental Health Collaborative, the Empowerment Zone, US Mexico Border Health Commission, GEPAR (governmental affairs director) and a host of other things I can't recall at the moment. She was almost always the public relations director for those entities. That means she knows how to frame a message for media. She's another one that will have a well-packaged presentation. More importantly she's worked on a ton of campaigns. If she gets a handle on field operations and a little cash, she's probably the best positioned to defeat Svarzbein.

The Wild Card. I don't now if its still an option, but there was a lot of talk of Kathleen Stout running for the seat. Dr. Stout would be a very strong opponent. Super likable, well known, probably very little problem getting funding, street cred, etc. But I've heard that she's not considering a run anymore.

Svarzbein's Advantage - A lot of things that people on the westside are upset about, aren't his fault - namely traffic. The westside is the worst place in town to try to get around lately. Its a big flustercuck. But those are TxDOT problems. Svarzbein can overcome that. Most of Svarzbein's problems can be overcome with dressing like an adult who takes his job seriously instead of showing up to meetings wearing sneakers. Although I'll be honest, Svarzbein has really great taste in sneakers. His shoe game is strong.

His biggest advantage is field work. He won because of field work last time. He's the only candidate that has the ability to leverage a strong field operation, today. Everyone else will have to play catch-up or learn on the fly unless they hire someone who knows field, but most of the talent out there is tied up in other campaigns already, thereby multiplying Svarzbein's field advantage.

This will be the most hotly contested race in the city. D8, the other westside seat, also has the potential to get interesting, but not as competitive as D1. This will be the race to watch.