El Paso Politics

Socorro Mayor Elia Garcia is apparently still fuming about the fact that the Municipal Judge in Socorro did what any decent judge worth a damn would have done - kicked a case that was full of conflict out of her court. Really I think she's still mad that she's not the municipal judge herself anymore. If you recall, she was aiming to triple her tax-payer funded salary in the City with a Mission. Anywho, Garcia and her partner on council Ralph Duran were trying to run a movida to get rid of the Judge that Socorro hired over Garcia. They failed and what appears to be a retaliatory move, Mayor Garcia has apparently refused to sign the contract for Judge Velarde. She also appears to have been delaying the process which ultimately has lead to an expense to tax payers. They now have to contract with Justice of the Peace Lujan to hear cases that Judge Velarde can't or hasn't because there has been a judicial limbo due to the delay. To bring you back up to speed, Mayor Garcia is...

Sunday morning District 6 candidate Eric Stoltz posted a facebook message about the need to "address campaign finance if we want a future that involves our community and not large campaign donors". In a shockingly hypocritical finance report, 80% of Stoltz's contributions come from one person - an out-of-town billionaire from Houston. This really is an about-face for a guy that has been talking about "bringing community voices to City Hall". In the post that Stoltz was being critical of Ordaz's contributions he featured a screenshot of a report to council about regarding her campaign donations. She had a fundraiser thrown for her by Latino business leaders in this community. Stoltz would have very happily taken their money if they had given him their support. Hell many of them were realtors and he competed with Ordaz for that endorsement. Now that the 8 day finance reports are out we get a clearer picture of the fact that while Stoltz has been talking up add...

It takes some next-level hypocrisy for me to actually come to the defense of Mayor Margo but the level of hypocrisy from City Reps Cassandra Hernandez and Alex Annello is legendary. They sent out a letter complaining about the fact that yet again, El Paso's dynamic duo of failed leadership lost on another vote. And its the most middle school bullshit I ever heard. The two are apparently pissed because the majority of council selected a home-grown El Pasoan who is Latina as the new city attorney instead of an old white lady from out of town. Why they are advocating for an old white lady from out of town over one of our own is a mystery to me, but the letter they sent out complained about the fact that Representative Noe wasn't around for most of the interview process for the new city attorney and they feel that because he wasn't around that the people that live in District 5 (El Paso's eastside) shouldn't have a vote in who the new city attorney would be. But you mem...

You know for a Republican, Andrew Haggerty is pretty cavalier about how he blows through campaign money. He dropped a mailer recently - and I won't even get started on the racial undertone to it - that he sent to Lower Valley Democrats. Why on earth the mailer would be sent to Bel Air, Ysleta, Riverside, and Del Valle areas is mystery to me and definitely an indicator of a major campaign screw up. But the bigger screw-up and waste of money is WHO he sent it to. I don't mean that he sent the mailer to voters with just some casual Democratic voting history, I mean he sent it to people with  a madre Democratic voting history. His mailer landed all over the place but its hilarious that it landed so far away from the westside and landed in homes of people that even if they actually lived on the westside, would never vote for him. I don't know who the hell screwed that up, but its one hell of an expensive screw up! Talk about a massive waste of campaign dollars. I've heard o...

So City Rep Cissy Lizarraga said in a debate recently that none of her opponents had voted in the special election she won to replace City Rep Cortney Niland. Turns out that Rich Wright in fact has. Lizarraga sent me a text a few days ago to let me know that she had discovered the error. There are a few people with his name and she apparently saw the wrong guy's voting history. I actually made the same mistake. I give credit for Lizarraga correcting the record. But the El Paso Times ran an article about the issue and fellow D8 candidate Greg Baine, who I hear may be being run by everyone's favorite slime ball Carlos Sierra, had a rather interesting quote. Baine basically said what difference does it make, and then turned it around to say that Lizarraga was attacking his integrity. I'm not sure how bringing up his voting record is an attack on his integrity, but if is voting record is in fact an attack on his integrity, then he's in trouble. Before we get into Baine'...

Ah yes, El Paso's Dandy Max Grossman has once again gone after Democrats. I hope all you slacktavists are paying attention because once again your Pied Piper has proven he doesn't really care about you. He's just using you. I warned you guys a long time ago that the guy was just using you and none of you listened. It really wasn't until he went after Beto that the majority of you woke up about him. Max Grossman is an extremist conservative. Those are his values. Although Mr. Small Government actually feeds at the government trough because he has a tax-payer funded job, which is hilarious to me. When he did that, he used the El Paso History Alliance Facebook page to launch his attack. True to his MO, he did it again. This time he used the page of the El Paso History Alliance to lob an attack on the Democratic Party. I guess he quickly re-thought the attack and deleted the post. But here is a screenshot of the post. I know what you're thinking, how can we see what the...

The funniest thing in the world to me is to see the lengths people will go to for a vote. Remember David Saucedo's boxing commercial. And the time he was dancing? Or Chente's pachangas... Or Dora's knock-off pachanga.. Or Norma's dine and booze... Or a myriad of other examples. But one of my favorite examples is Eric Stoltz. Stoltz is super liberal. He's even backed Green Party candidates. To show you just how far candidates will go for votes sometimes, Stoltz's pretty much has one consistent poll sitter. For those of you that don't live in the valley, poll sitting is something of a cultural phenomenon in valley races. It can be best described as in-your-face Democracy. Its the last chance you get to touch a voter before they go in to cast a vote. Poll sitting in the valley is the stuff of legend! I could write about the stuff I've seen for days. Anywho, Stoltz's main poll sitter is a big time Ted Cruz supporter. Today he even showed up with a home-m...

The editorial board wouldn't be doing their job if everyone agreed with all their endorsements. I think in the case of the Precinct 4 race they threw a bone to Commissioner Haggerty. Speaking of bones, I'll talk about Haggerty's assertion of being flat-footed as his reason why he wasn't admitted into military service in just a bit, but for now lets talk about the tax-and-spend Republican... The Times' editorial board cites Haggerty's "fiscally conservative outlook" in their not-so-ringing endorsement of Haggerty. What fiscally conservative outlook? Actually, what policies at all? What has Haggerty accomplished or even proposed of any substance? What is is signature accomplishment or issue? I can't think of a single one. Its comical to refer to him as fiscally conservative when his votes are the exact opposite of fiscal conservatism. In a recently televised debate Haggerty attacked Commissioner Perez's efforts at reducing costs at the County! Ha...

Apologies to Uncle Joe for jacking his catchphrase but the fact that the El Paso Times endorsed Rick Bonart is a big freakin' deal. It will likely be the most influential thing that has happened to Bonart's campaign and may be what drags Svarzbein - who until now - seemed to have well in-hand. The Times endorsement is a real shot in the arm for Bonart, though I think that had the endorsement got another way many of his supporters would have been talking about how the paper is biased and no one reads it and blah blah blaaaaah. Its not often that the Times endorses challengers over incumbents in municipal races, so when they do, people take notice. Bonart will likely get a lot of mileage out of this. But to compound Svarzbein's really, really bad day...he ends up with yet ANOTHER self-inflicted wound. He voted against the applicant that ultimately was selected as the city attorney. Ms. Neiman was selected as the city attorney. Other than trying to appease the doo-ruhn-gui-tow...

As the father a gay child, I've had to dry my share of tears off of a child for being bullied for who she was. There is one thing I want to make clear. There is no way on earth that I would ever support someone if I had any reservations at all about where they stand on equality. I'm a veteran and I know what that culture can be like. I've shared with you all in the past that when you're in that culture, its very easy to be dragged in to the high-testosterone rhetoric where gay slurs come flying out of your mouth. When my daughter came out to me, I was ashamed about how comfortable I realized I had been about using gay slurs like homo, fag, faggot, and other really bad stuff. Its terrible that it took my daughter coming out for me to realize how much of a bigot I was. But it changed me. You all know how I feel about equality. A friend of mine questioned where Carl stood on LGBT issues and frankly I had never even spoken to him about. So today I did. I grilled him. I aske...

I went to the Westside Democrats debate last night and was reminded of how much I really hate the westside. Not sure if I've mentioned that before. I used this image because I thought it would be funny to use a gangsta-ass photo for the most white-bread part of El Paso. Before I go on, can I just say that this November election for city reps is complete bullshit. I hope they move it back to may - or at least make them partisan. But, any who.... I was shocked that District 6 candidate Eric Stoltz wasn't there. As much as that guy talks about the westside I figured he'd be there in that gray suit and green and blue tie. Some quick observations about the debate are in order. First, lets talk about the difference between the campaigns west of the spaghetti bowl and those east of the spaghetti bowl. The westside candidates from District 1 and District 8 seem to genuinely like one another. They are all friendly toward one another and none of them bad mouth one another. There'...

A lot of Forma candidates end up asking themselves what were the actually paying for. I hear it every election cycle. Usually from people that don't win, so maybe the winners don't have any complaining to do, but its a pretty common refrain from their clients.  I think I've finally figured out where all that money goes! This was posted by Forma District 5 candidate Isabel Salcido on Monday.  I happened to be block walking on the eastside on Monday.  It was cold and cloudy all day. But if you're a Forma candidate, they make shit happen for you. They apparently worked it out so that it was sunny/partly cloudy in District 5 and so warm you could wear short sleeves! See, for all you naysayers about Forma not being worth the money, there you go. They go so far for their clients they even change the weather in the area they are block walking for them! Now that's service! JK - It was a typo, they meant to say that it was a pic from the previous day that they were block wal...

Republican GOP nominee Rick Seeberger has a lot of issues as a candidate, which may be why the GOP didn't want him to run in the first place. Seeberger has issues with his personal finances. But it appears he also has issues with his campaign finances as it looks like he hasn't filed his campaign finances reports. For a guy who's mentioned transparency a couple of times on the campaign trail, this commission is pretty funny. He now has questions surfacing about his residency. Now the questions about residency are largely a moot point because I don't think you have to actually live in the area you want to represent in Congress for very long. But they do go to a candidates integrity. If they say something or represent facts to be a certain way, they damn well ought to be that way. Pretty simple, right? So here is video of Seeberger's standard opening. As you can hear in the video, he talks about how he and his wife moved to El Paso 20 years ago. But if you continue wa...

So Ted Cruz came to El Paso Saturday night. He damn near filled the ENTIRE gym at Franklin High School! The funniest thing about the Cruz visit is how the Republicans act. For a Party that likes to act tough and talk tough, they sure are a bunch of paranoid babies. They posted warnings all over their social media that people were going to be asked for their ID's and they were going to refuse entry to basically anyone they wanted to. You'd think we were passed whites-only events in this town but I guess we haven't. I kid. We have monster truck rallies and they are quite popular. For a Party that gives a lot of lip service to the constitution, they sure don't like people expressing their first amendment rights. If anyone boo'd during the event, they were kicked out. What a bunch of delicate little flowers! Don't believe me? They went so far to ensure that there were ONLY people that should cheer loudly for Cruz that they had "ushers" MONITORING the crowd...

In all this talk about over-blown finance reports and over-blown checks to someone who has never won a race - which should be a lesson to you would-be candidates about not falling for a sales pitch - I forgot to talk about the other two candidates.  The one thing holding back Veronica Frescas was gonna be money. Hard for her to catch a spark without money and it appears that is what bit her. She’s raised the least of her field of candidates.  Incumbent City Rep Peter Svarzbein however, is raking it in again. If he’s shown anything, he’s a prolific fundraiser. Who knew a gimmick (Pizza with Peter) he stole from Claudia Ordaz (Coffee with Claudia) would rake in the cash. Hell I think every candidate should start doing that.  Applesauce and undermining with Annello  Hot Dogs with Hernandez Malts with Morgan Spaghetti with Cissy Ribs with Rivera Noodles with Noe  or Mierda con Margo. Hell why stop there? Every level of  government  can get in on the fun!...

I swear I'm not making it up. But if you don't believe me, I wouldn't blame you. I had to see it on finance reports myself to believe it. Everyone wants to be a consultant. A lot of campaigns blow a ton of money on consultants and there are a lot out there that really aren't worth half of what they charge. Then there's the big firm that just seems to charge a shit ton of money and always leaves candidates wondering what they paid for. And then there's David Saucedo. Everyone's favorite out of touch, eat-tacos-with-a-fork-and-grey-poupon brown Republican. He got beat by white Republican...in a town that is 85% raza. That is literally the only race he's been involved with. So it surprises me that he'd decide to put a shingle and decide to be a "campaign consultant". What surprised me more was that he got someone to pay him money to do it. What surprised me even more was HOW much he got paid to do it. On one campaign finance report alone, Davi...

A source indicates that the campaign of Republican candidate for the 16th Congressional District of Texas has sent written communication to KCOS threatening a possible lawsuit if the station didn’t either reshoot or delete the entire debate that was taped recently. The debate in question is supposed to air this Sunday afternoon on the local public television station.  The taped debates are sponsored by the League of Women Voters and are moderated by veteran reporter David Crowder.  The campaign raised several issues regarding the debate moderator, but their complaint appears to mostly hinge on the fact that the candidates were not afforded time for a closing statement. The station indicated to the campaigns that Crowder’s last question about what would their priorities be if elected was a good place to wrap up.  This apparently really bothered the Seeberger campaign and a sources says they corresponded with the station stating, “…we hereby respectfully request the debate ...

You know how it goes, you awakes want to put your best foot forward. You always want to look your best. Thats why there is always such a difference between the pics you post and the ones you're tagged in. Same thing happens with campaign finance reports. Candidates often try to make their candidacy look stronger by trying to show that their campaign raised more money than it actually did. Its a dumb strategy but for whatever reason people do it. You might as well be counting monopoly money. They always do it by inflating their "in-kind contributions". Its a common thing. And you are supposed to report in-kind contributions. But the inflated value of an in-kind contribution is how people try to balloon what they actually raised. District 1 candidate Carlos Corral came up with the most egregious instance of this type of thing I can recall seeing. If you look at his campaign finance report, he reports having $58,224.00 in contributions. That would make him the top fund raise...

Today is the day we see which candidates are on El Paso's Republitarian Dandy Max Grossman's sweetheart list. Campaign finance reports are due and we'll see who the Dandy talked his sugar daddy into supporting. Let me take this moment to pull over right quick and remind you all - I WARNED YOU ABOUT HIM A LONG TIME AGO. But you guys didn't listen until he cut his own throat on a Facebook post where he dissed Beto and supported Ted Cruz. Since then, the Dandy took a real beating. So he created a "What's Up El Paso" page on FB and he's posted a bunch of right wing nutball shit, along with his praises for what looks like his stable of candidates. Stand by, I'll be exposing his little stable as soon as the reports become available. If you're taking Grossman Sugar Daddy money, you have to answer for Grossman's right-wing dumbfuckery. Also, this is a funny sidebar. Apparently on his page that has apparently upset the publishers of Whats Up Magazin...

District 6 candidate Eric Stoltz was arrested last year for Probation Violation. Why was he on probation? Because in 2010 he was charged with Theft under $500. I realize that some of you don't understand the amount of distain I have for the Westside of El Paso and it has occurred to me that maybe my real thoughts about Stoltz's candidacy may have been lost on you, so I'll clarify. Awhile back I wrote that I think he'd be a fine candidate for city council, but for the Westside. That was really more of a commentary that he seems to care more about the Westside than he does the Valley. So let me be very clear. I've been doing this a long time. I've interviewed or met everyone who has run for anything noteworthy in this town for more than a decade, probably pushing two. Which means when I state the following, you should really should take it seriously. Eric Stoltz is among the worst candidates to ever run for local office. I'm not talking about his policies beca...

So I went to the Seeberger and Escobar debate the other night. I was interested in going because the event was being held by a women's political organization and Republican Rick Seeberger is supportive of Judge Kavenaugh's appointment to the United States Supreme Court. It was like being in an alternate reality. Seeberger said a lot of weird things, many of which were simply untrue, and some were borderline racist. He was supportive of the Charlottesville rally of white supremacists when asked a question about the First Amendment. I was surprised by that but it got much more interesting. At one point Seeberger actually said that he "had a heart for Latin Americans" which sounded a lot like when Trump said he loves "the blacks". If you weren't there, let me set the visual for what you missed. Imagine a guy that looks a little like John Gotti retreating over-the-top hyperbolic red meat conservative Fox News talking points to a crowd half-filled with suppor...

I can't recall ever having seen a local candidate admit to using marijuana before, so this is a first. Not that I think using marijuana is particularly a big deal in and of itself. Its not personally my thing, but if someone else wants to hit the sticky-icky I really don't care. If they manage their lives and careers and it doesn't harm or impact anyone else, I don't have a problem with it and its not really any of my business. Smoke all you want. Puff, puff, pass. Do you boo-boo. If you're a marijuano, as long as I don't have to smell you, I don't give a damn. If I do have to smell you, then better smoke good stuff because skunk weed stinks and every marijuano I know - and I know a lot - is apparently nose-blind. If you're running for office its a different story. You are making decisions for other people. You gotta be honest with voters. A lot of bad decisions are made when people are high. Mostly bad decisions about food. On a serious note, I think we...