El Paso Politics

The buzz around the courthouse lately is about who Judge-Elect Samaniego is going to hire for his staff. Word around the courthouse is that is going to be Chris Acosta. As I mentioned yesterday, Acosta appears to be Carlos Sierra's "in" to local campaigns. She was Carlos Sierra's "in" to the Samaniego campaign. There are many in the courthouse that are concerned that her hire could signal Carlos Sierra's "in" into County government. Sierra famously declared war on three politicos following an arrest a few years ago in an article in the El Paso Times. Two of the three politicos he declared war on were at the County. One still is, which would likely have an impact on the working rapport at the County. Samaniego has faced several stumbles on his way into office. Sierra working on his campaign, taking credit for his victory, came to light shortly after Samaniego won a very tight election against John Cook. That was a major controversy and Samaniego...

Once again Carlos Sierra finds himself in controversy. Sierra's ironically named PAC known as Keep El Paso Honest has had yet ANOTHER complaint filed against them. Another entity has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission by another non-profit organization. The story was in the El Paso Times the other day. Sierra famously bragged about working with the Samaniego campaign and putting them over the top in a facebook post following the election. Yet again he was disavowed by a campaign. Samaniego tried to distance himself rom the campaign but had difficulty doing that because of Chris Acosta. Acosta was his campaign staffer and is Carlos Sierra's "in" to campaigns locally. The heart of the complaint against Sierra's PAC is that they didn't disclose the names of the contributors to the PAC in ordnance with election rules. Some have long speculated that the reason Sierra hasn't disclosed that information is because its possible that the only pe...

You're not allowed to campaign on County time if you're an employee. Its considered the public's time. You're also not allowed to campaign using a public resource. In this case, it appears to have been county email. And according to the email, it sounds like the sender of the email was doing so at the direction of their boss - who is a judge. This seems to be a pretty blatant violation, although I don't know what specific repercussions a county employee is subject to for violation of these rules, nor do I know if there is any mitigation if the employee was doing so under the direction of their boss. As you can see in the screenshot of the email, it very clearly shows the sent time. That was obviously during a regular business day. I blurred out the employees name but left the last part of the email address so that you can see the email came from a county email address. The email was sent at 1:42 yesterday afternoon. I'm on Don Williams' email list and was fo...

There are a few of my social media friends that are total Beto haters. They are progressive liberals, but they are major Beto haters and man...do they look freakin' stupid. They look stupid because they kick and stomp and hold their breath about Beto, but the alternative is Ted Cruz, who's policies they don't support, but they still hate on Beto for what looks like one, and only one, very stupid reason. His name. Disgraced former State Rep Norma Chavez used to be famous for making fun of his name. But the Beto haters seriously look really stupid about this name thing. Normally I would be saying who the hell cares what his name is or what he goes by. But when you have people hating on Beto because he's a rich white guy using a Latino nickname, but you don't say anything about Latino who uses a white nickname, well then you're just a massive hypocrite. Seriously that is some next-level dumbfuckery. Beto isn't trying to fool anyone into thinking he's raza. ...

The City of El Paso should be telling you this, but quite frankly, the City has always sucked at telling their own story. Its like they go out of their way to find the worst communications people possible, and then make sure they hire them. There's something you should know about the TIRZ that you aren't being told. There's a reason no on is telling you either, its because the westside still has a strangle hold on the power base in this town. So allow me for a minute, to talk to all the people who DON'T live on the westside for a minute. What no on is telling you is that if there is no TIRZ in place (the one with all the controversy about some Lost Dog), WE will have to pay the bill for the westside's stormwater infrastructure. With the TIRZ in place, the westside pays for its own stormwater infrastructure, from the taxes collected from the TIRZ in that area. It goes right back into funding their own infrastructure. If the TIRZ is not in place, what changes is that ...

El Paso GOP Chair Adolfo Telles sent out a press release yesterday afternoon that was allegedly responding to a press release from the El Paso Democratic Party Chair Iliana Holguin's press release back in June criticizing County Commissioner Andrew Haggerty for voting against a resolution condemning the Trump administration for their kiddie concentration camp in Tornillo. I say allegedly because the press release was really the GOP's excuse to go on the offensive against Carl Robinson, who just so happen to be having a fundraiser two hours after there press release was sent out. Strategically it was a major mistake on the part of Chairman Telles. It gave the El Paso Democratic Party and Robinson's campaign the opportunity to comment once again on Commissioner Haggerty's vote in support of the Trump administration. With friends like that, who needs enemies? The GOP was trying to get the media to stick a mic in front of Robinson's face at his event last night and ask ...

Editor's Note: As a courtesy to all candidates I post any campaign announcements sent to me, regardless of party affiliation. I missed a couple, but had some family stuff going on so I apologize to those candidates. Former City Representative Carl Robinson is a candidate for County Commissioner Precinct 4. He is having a fundraiser tonight in El Paso at the Brass Monkey, located at 3233 N. Mesa. The fundraiser starts at 6pm. The details are on the flier below. Robinson is taking on the ONLY Republican member of the El Paso County Commissioner's Court, Andre Haggerty.

File this under surprising, but not really. I've talked about how bottom-feeder consultants pretty much have no moral political compass. They'll basically take a check to do anything. Like a crack fiend or a guy who doesn't shower enough that sells Chinese junk solar panels and tries to pass them off as American. But for someone who went to great lengths to try to tell everyone that her congressional bid wasn't her own personal vendetta to try to beat Veronica Escobar, she sure is doing a shitty job keeping up the lie. So according to a reliable source close to the disgraced former State Rep, Norma Chavez has apparently sold out to the GOP...AGAIN. According to my source, Chavez approached Republican candidate for the 16th Congressional District Rick Seeberger to work as a consultant. Apparently after initially agreeing to bring her on board, a source in the campaign says she was recently let go from the campaign. A source inside Seeberger's campaign didn't indi...

In a vote that left a lot of people scratching their head yesterday, the El Paso City Council voted 6-2 against raising a tax on utilities. The proposed increase would have affected residential electric and gas rate payers. Only two members of council voted to keep the tax in place in order to capture more revenue for the City of El Paso, City Reps Alexsandra Annello and Cassandra Hernandez. Annello has been largely ineffective as a city rep, having had difficulty passing much of anything and usually ending up in the minority of most votes. Hernandez is now facing talk of a recall and most of her votes will now likely face a higher level of scrutiny, which is why this vote on her part is so surprising. The backdrop of the petitioners has been partially centered around tax increases. The duo on council are BFFs and argued that the vote was more about public safety, Annello going so far as to characterize the city's action yesterday as "irresponsible". Had council voted in ...

A source indicates that the recall effort is well on its way to collecting the required number of signatures to force a recall of Mayor Dee Margo. Multiple sources have also indicated that the plan is to go for a recall against two other city representatives. I'll tell you who the other two are in a minute. A source close to the recall effort told me last night at an event where signatures were being collected to recall Mayor Dee Margo that they have exceeded 1,000 signatures so far. In order to successfully recall Mayor Margo, the petition circulators have to collect 7,000 signatures in 60 days. That means the effort has to get 117 signatures per day for the next 60 days. So they are off to a pretty strong start and if they can sustain that effort, they should be able to make some history. My sources also indicated that following the attainment of a sufficient number of signatures to recall Mayor Margo, they will then focus on a recall effort against City Rep Cassandra Hernandez B...

The move was almost genius. Petitions are now going to go out to recall Mayor Dee Margo. The circulators of the petitions have 60 days to gather 6,000 signatures to force a recall of Mayor Margo. That means they have to get at least 100 signatures a day between now and October 9th. Had they pulled the trigger on this sooner, they could've been collecting signatures and had time to get on the November ballot. Had Margo been on a November ballot - especially this November - he would have been trounced. Bigly. The hill to climb would have been gathering the signatures. Recalls are rare, as I recall only one has been successful in the County - and that had to be in Socorro and involve a Gandara. But based on the timing now, the gathering of signatures will now be a lot easier for the circulators. The Democratic Party is likely going to help circulate petitions because, well, Margo is a Republican. There is an obvious and pronounced anti-Republican sentiment in town that has been buildi...

The other westside seat also has several candidates running. The incumbent City Rep Cissy Lizarraga is facing four opponents, which will likely mean another run-off election. Lizarraga is in a decent position right now, even though she hasn't been in office long. She has far more name ID than her opponents. She won a tough special election that was made necessary when Cortney Niland vacated her seat. Back then she faced candidates with some money and name ID, namely Gilbert Guillen. She won handily thanks to a strong ground game run by Mike Apodaca. So there are some things for Lizarraga that are different than they were when she won this seat recently - Apodaca is out of town right now working on Beto's race, she now has a voting record she can run on, she now has a voting record her opponents can run against and the field of candidates she's facing is pretty different than it was previously. Unlike the District 1 race, there aren't any candidates that are well-funded ...

Armando Rodriguez apparently is taking the fact that I questioned the appearance of a conflict between his participation in statewide education boards and his employment pretty personally. Unfortunately for him, he didn't think things through and likely got on the bad side of the wrong person as a result. Rodriguez, who is a bit of a controversy magnet but goes by the motto "Mandito can", apparently really wants this seat on the Texas Association of School Boards pretty badly. He's facing EPISD Trustee Al Velarde and Tornillo ISD Trustee Marlene Bullard for the position. Rodriguez has been calling trustees all across the county kissing ass to get their votes. Mandito can what, is beyond me. I can't honestly tell you anything of note that he has accomplished for his community while a trustee in Canutillo. But Rodriguez did something that was pretty petty, which I guess underscores his character issues, that either shows just how badly he wants (needs?) the seat, or...

Williams (L) - Seeberger (R) The two Republican candidates facing Congresswoman-Elect Veronica Escobar in the November general election have apparently turned on one another. Obviously that brings me great joy. But its actually really funny. Let me back up a bit and explain what is going on. Samuel Williams is an ultra-conservative Donald Trump fan. He's running as an "independent" but he's not independent at all. He's a Republican. He just didn't get his Party's nomination. Trust me, he's the right of just about anyone that has ever run for office in El Paso. The other guy is Rick Seeberger, the guy who actually won the GOP nomination. But make no mistake about it, they are both Trumpters. As you may recall, I wrote about some of Seeberger's dirty laundry, which consisted mostly of bankruptcies but there is also that issue that some have called colloquially, taking candy from babies. Which despite how some have characterized it, isn't exactly ...

Politically speaking Eastsiders have a reputation of being fat, dumb, and happy. I don't mean they are actually fat and dumb, I mean that in generally they don't have much to complain about. Generally speaking you have a lot of younger families that tend to be upper middle class and more educated. Their persona is very different than say the westside, where everyone pretty much thinks their entitled to every thing and the Northeast, where everyone seems to hate living there and complain about everything. Like people in Fabens. I'd like to be able to give some in-depth analysis about this race but frankly there's not much there. And trust me when I tell you, there really isn't much there. District 5 is hands-down the weakest field of candidates, even by El Paso standards. There are four candidates and between the four of them, they have almost no voting history. John B. Hogan is an older guy at 62. He's only voted in two general elections (2016, 2017) and the Dem...

Westsiders apparently have a pretty low threshold for their elected officials. Both westside city reps are facing a lot of opponents, which makes a run-off election more and more likely. Incumbents in elections generally lose, although lately that trend isn't the political death sentence it used to be. Late last week two more opponents for Svarzbein made it official by filing at the city clerks office. Richard Bonart - who is said to be sitting on $20k - filed is paperwork late last week. Svarzbein isn't going to raise anywhere near as much money as he did in the first election so the fact that Bonart has that much starter money is pretty significant. If that is ALL the money Bonart is going to have, then its not so significant. Enter, Veronica Frescas. "Roni" as she is commonly known as - if she can get funding - is the one to watch in this race. The only Latina running for the seat, Frescas has deep policy knowledge which is going to be a huge advantage over Carlos ...

Normally no one cares about the Texas Association of School Boards. Actually, you probably still don't care about them after reading this. Nonetheless there is an election for the local representative to the TASB and its between three people - Marlene Bullard from Tornillo ISD, Al Velarde from EPISD, and Armando Rodriguez from Canutillo ISD. Bullard has a steep hill to climb in this one primarily because she has a smaller base to work with as a trustee in a rural community, so the race is really between Velarde and Rodriguez. In the next couple of weeks most of the school districts will be voting on this issue, with several of them voting on the same night. Both Velarde and Rodriguez are working the phones to try to get support from the various trustees in the county. District trustees vote on who they want to represent the area by passing an agenda item in favor of their choice. So unlike most elections, you can get a sense of who is winning and who is losing before the election i...