City Council Races Finalized

This one is gonna be long, but hopefully worth it. One sitting city rep is helping a challenger against another city rep, so stick around for that one...

Incumbents have a bigger advantage in this election cycle than they ever have before in municipal elections. Essentially these races are going to be name ID races.

Normally in municipal elections you have a finite number of folks that regularly vote and you know who is going to come out and what doors to knock on. That is how its usually done and how you can level the playing field when it comes to money. If you can out-hustle the more well-financed candidate, you can win.

But this election is going to be different because its the first time the election is going to with a general election. So the number of people that will vote that have ZERO municipal voting history is going to out-number the number of people that have good municipal voting history. That makes it a much steeper hill to climb for challengers.

Here's what you need to know about municipal voters versus general election voters. They are generally more conservative. They are also more informed (generally) that other voters. General election voters have a more casual voting history. So while city council candidates are generally a lower caliber candidate, by contrast the voters in those election are generally of a higher caliber.

And having a municipal election during that cycle will now blow up their voter targets. You have no historical data to go on, so essentially when it comes to targeting voters, you're essentially just feeling around in the dark. And it'll be that way for a few election cycles, until there are a few elections to start making comparisons.

Another big problem for targeting voters that will impact challengers more than incumbents is what I call, the Beto Factor. Beto's campaign has inspired a new group of voters that don't typically vote to come out to the polls. Furthermore, there is an actual targeted effort to reach out to voters that haven't voted very regularly before to get them to come out. Then there's the number of people that will come out for the midterm elections that normally wouldn't, but are doing so because of Trump.

As a consequence, the cost to run a municipal campaign has probably doubled, if not tripled because of the differences in the electorate of a general versus municipal election.

So the candidates with the higher name idea have a big advantage. Can't think of a challenger that has more name ID than any of the three incumbents.

But its a different dynamic for District 5. That is an open seat. Here's the run-down of the candidate fields:

District 1

Incumbent: City Representative Peter Svarzbein
     Pros: Incumbency, money, and time. He has a name people will remember even if they can't        pronounce it. He has more money than the other candidates and can probably leverage it more effectively than the opponents because they haven't run a campaign before. Time is on his side because while he has some vulnerabilities, the clock is ticking on how to define him and leverage his vulnerabilities. His biggest advantage, his campaign team. He has the same campaign manager as he had before and he has an experienced consultant out of Austin that knows how to win.

    Cons: His voting history, the trolly, and public perception. He's pretty much known as the biggest flip-flopper on council. He will almost always take the path of least resistance when given the political choice. He will never take the road less traveled or blaze a new trail. His vote against the budget is a perfect example of my point. The trolley is pretty much seen as a boondoggle and it hasn't even started yet. Wait til the novelty of it wears off, it'll only get worse. The bad part for Svarzbein is that it is arguably the only thing of substance he's accomplished so far. His public perception of being sloppy, a bit of a slacker, unaccomplished, and immature is a big problem for him. But he's wearing suits now, looks put together, and is starting to be more responsive(that is universally the biggest critique of Svarzbein). That is mitigating things a bit, but as I previously stated time is running out for opponents to leverage it.

Challengers: Carlos Corral, Roni Frescas, Richard Bonart

Carlos Corral
     Pros: Young, dynamic, hungry to win. He was pretty much the first one to put himself out there to run against Svarzbein.
     Cons: He didn't do anything with that lead time to move the ball down the field. He's perceived as another "film guy" artist, instead of policy-centered professional. His campaign team is mostly made of rookies. He needs experienced talent but I doubt he can afford it. He doesn't have the time, budget, or experience to leverage the weaknesses of Svarzbein. And man, does this vato LOVE to ride coat-tails. He's riding Beto and Vero's coat-tails harder than Lupe Valdez and Gina Ortiz-Jones. Seriously, he's riding it pretty damn hard.

Roni Frescas
     Pros: Smartest candidate in the race in terms of policy. I agree with almost none of her stands on policy like the TIRZ and Duranguito, but she knows the issues very well. She will likely work harder than everyone else. She's got the political chops to be the alternative to the incumbent.
     Cons: Money and time. I don't know what her political team looks like, but I'm assume she's doing it on her own and if she is, she's one of the few candidates that is capable of being candidate and campaign manager. But she needs money and I don't think she has it. If she gets it, she's probably the one challenger of all the challengers in all the races, that is best suited to beat an incumbent. But time is running out on taking advantage of Svarzbein's weaknesses.

Richard Bonart
     Pros: He's been on a ballot before. He has some money and if he self-finances, he can level the playing field. Genuinely a good guy and seen as such by most people.
     Cons: Association with Max Grossman. Its not the policy stances that hurt Bonart, they are essentially the same as Frescas' stances. Its the association with someone that wants to, according to public perception, buy a city council. His association with Grossman will make people question if he's his own man and based on how Grossman has turned on people he though were on his side before, its not something Bonart wants or needs hanging over his head. Same deal for him, time is running out and he has no one in the field. But he can afford to get them in the field if he had a field person on his payroll.

District 5

Incumbent: Open Seat

Field: John B. Hogan, Kizito Ekechukwu, Benjamin Miranda, Jason Osborne, Isabel Salcido.

Pros: Salcido was the last person to get in this race but she has the inside track. Young, professional, and the only Latina, she stands out from the rest of the field. She's also the only one that has a campaign team behind her. It was a mistake to wait so long because despite the fact that its a really weak field of candidates, tactically it makes no sense to wait until the last minute. But as I said, lucky for her, its a really weak field of candidates. If she's smart, she'll dump a lot of money into signage and plater them on the eastside. Again, this is a name ID race and because she waited so long its going to be expensive for her but she's probably got the money to dump into the race.

Cons: Hogan is trying hard to not sound like the Trump supporter he is, but he is a hard core Trump supporter. He's coming along on policy knowledge but he's got no campaign infrastructure to make anything happen. Plus David Saucedo is his campaign consultant. I don't know why people who have never won a race think they should be consultants. I guess its the Josh Dagda school of thought. I mean, everyone loses - but if you've never actually won, how do you have the audacity to ask someone to write you a check? Ekechukwu is really stumbling out of the blocks. He appears to have taken a company check - which is a no-no, and he hired and then quickly fired Emma Acosta as a campaign consultant. He spent most of the $7,000 he had on his last report, which was before he hired/fired Emma Acosta. So no clue how much money he has left but he's not gonna do well. Oh, and he's been arrested for domestic violence charges and there is no way that is going to be resolved before election day, so even if the charges are dropped or he's acquitted, he's a long way away from that. Miranda is a Republican, Osborne has almost no voting history.

This race is Salcido's race to lose.

District 6

Incumbent: City Representative Claudia Ordaz-Perez
   
     Pros: Incumbency, track record, money, union support (police and fire), time, message, and campaign team. Ordaz-Perez is the only incumbent not facing a field of challengers, which is probably an expression of her popularity within her district. She's done a ton for her district and there's a couple of newsletter's full of what she's done so far in office. She should have a fundraising edge on her opponent. Police and fire like Ordaz-Perez so they will likely donate to her campaign. Her opponent has been campaigning since February, probably longer than anyone else running for any office on the ballot other than Beto O'Rourke. He still doesn't have enough time. Ordaz-Perez has the edge in leveraging a message and she has the best campaign team in town. Her signs started going up over the last few days. Pretty sure they'll be everywhere within a week.
    Cons: Can't really think of one.

Opponent: George "Eric" Stoltz

     Pros: Energetic, passionate, hard-working, and dedicated. He has field experience. Stoltz has been working it a la madre. He was out at the polling locations during early voting and election day (mostly on the eastside portion of the district) handing out push cards letting voters know he was running in November for the city council seat. Effective? Absolutely not. Pretty much a waste of his time. But no one can accuse the vato of not working it hard.
     Cons: Money, lack of a track record, no base, time, message. Stoltz doesn't have any campaign money and the only place that he can possibly even get money from is a huge liability for him because Ordaz-Perez's campaign probably has a mailer ready to drop the minute they get wind of the contribution. Stoltz is really young, so he doesn't have a track record to run on yet. He still lives with his parents and lists his occupation as "student". Also because of his age and lack of a track record, he has no base of support, which isn't that big of a problem if it weren't for - time. He's running out of it and he doesn't have a base yet. He doesn't have the opportunity to play for overtime, a run-off, because its just the two of them in this race. His message is a big problem too. He sounds like he's running for city council in Sunset Heights, not the Valley or the Eastside.

     Interesting Tidbit: There's an interesting piece of information I'm going to share about help he's been getting from a sitting City Rep. But after a little altercation I've decided it needs to be a stand alone piece to fully-appreciate the situation. (Stay tuned).

I will say this about Stoltz, someday he's gonna be the kind of person El Pasoans want to represent them, just not yet. Once he has some work experience under his belt and gets his own place, I think he's going to be the progressive type of candidate that people can get behind.

District 8

Incumbent: City Representative Cissy Lizarraga
   
     Pros: Incumbency, money, time, and message. She's an incumbent, even if its recent. She has money to drop into the race and time is short for her opponents. She went with Forma according to sources, so her mail message should be sharp.
     Cons: She went from having a great field game to absolutely no field game. Forma doesn't have a track record for being proficient in field work. She's gonna write a lot of checks and very quickly wonder what she's getting for her money. But its a name ID race pure and simple. She already has a campaign logo, all she really has to do is get a bunch of signs printed. Maybe her strategy is to rely on a mail strategy, but that is going to make her race way more expensive than it has to be.

Challengers: Nicholas Vasquez, Richard Wright, Dylan Corbett, and Gregory Baine.
Remember what I said about District 1 earlier? Cut and paste it here. Its the same issues for the field of challengers. The stand-out at this point is Dylan Corbett. He is the only one I am aware of that has a consulting firm behind him, but time is not on his side. I'm guessing Richard Wright and Corbett will duke it out for 2nd place. Corbett is a REALLY nice guy. If he's able to shake hands with enough voters, he's going to have a shot, especially if the rest of the field does their part and forces a run-off election.

Trump makes the Latinas in District 1, 5, 6, and 8 a little stronger than normal because of the type of voter that is going to turnout in this general election.