El Paso Politics

If you watched the ABC7 Xtra debate on KVIA Sunday night that featured the candidates for Texas House District 79, you might have noticed a portion of the debate in which former City Rep Mike Noe was asked about his attendance record. The question comes from Art Fierro, chair of the El Paso Community College Board of Trustees. Not exactly a household name when it comes to elected bodies, but Fierro makes the point that he's never missed a meeting while in that elected position. Fierro has been on that board for 12 years. He hasn't missed a meeting in 12 freaking years. So he rightfully challenged Noe on his attendance record. The contrast in the two candidates is pretty clear - Fierro has had zero absences in 12 years and Noe has had 27 absences in 8 years. Here's a clip of the debate, along with his his answer, that you should watch before going forward, because his answer to the critique of missing meetings is pretty important. The truth is very different from how Noe fra...

I've gotten away from community-based posts, which is a shame and something I will remedy. The government shutdown is now over (for now) and government employee families will start receiving pay again. But I wanted to shed a little light on a local business that stepped up to help out during this tough time in our community. Its certainly not the only community, but its the one I found out about and they opened up their doors to talk about it. They are offering basic staples at a discounted rate for government employees. They are socially responsible and I dig that. Also, they have a really cool bakery section where they use a brick oven, which I'm told is the only one in town and the tortillas are his nana's recipe!

The finance reports in the race to replace State Rep Joe Pickett had some interesting developments. Democratic candidate Art Fierro raised pretty much the same amount as his opponent Michiel Noe. What was interesting is where Noe got his money and where the money went. Thus my chingón hip-hop reference in the title that most of you probably didn't get. First, lets talk about where his money came from. Most of his money came from two PACS, the Texans for Lawsuit Reform and a medical PAC. This revenue is a bid deal for a few reasons. First, it represents 60% of all revenue he raised, or $30,000. TLR is a very Republican organization. Sure they will occasionally support a DINO here and there, but the overwhelming number of candidates that they back are Republicans. And Noe has made no secret of the fact that the supports tort reform. He explained it years ago when he was trying to run for city council and I raised the question about his contributions to a Republican PAC at a candidate...

So there is a segment on KTSM's news broadcast that features something called "The EPISD Minute". Here's a link to the latest one . There are often little segments that are really just a commercial disguised as a news segment that stations sell to whoever wants to purchase the airtime. EPISD is closing down schools because they don't have the money to keep them open but there is a frivolous vanity segment that the district is spending how much money on? Its seriously the most tone-deaf thing in the world for a district with financial problems to be blowing money on a vanity segment on TV when barrio kids are going to be shoved into classes together because you know that shit ain't gonna happen on the westside. I don't recall when it started, but an open records request for how much money the district spent on the segment and for how long should provide some answers. David Candelaria is the general manager at KTSM and sources indicate that he's good pal...

Beto is going to run for President. Biden isn't the front-runner. We are going to have a big field of presidential candidates, we are going to have a rigorous debate in our primary. No one has ever gone end zone-to-endzone as the front-runner in a contested field of Democratic candidates. Don't confuse the most well-known Democrat in the field with being a front-runner. As soon as people get a good whiff of Beto, Kamala, and whichever Castro brother it is that is running - along with two sitting senators that have already thrown their hats in the ring, Ol' Uncle Joe is going to run out of steam and won't be there at the finish line. There is too much youth and vigor in this race. And quite frankly, young and hopeful candidates that inspire support is the exact contrast we need to present to voters as the antidote to Trump. Don't get me wrong - there is a very juvenile part of my brain that would love to see the scrappy guy from Scranton in a debate with Trump where ...

The week before last, the city council voted unanimously to have an outside investigation conducted to look into matters relating to Mayor Elia Garcia. Again showing the level of transparency synonymous of the City with a Mission, there were almost no details released as to specifics of the investigation. Apparently their city council hasn't learned from the last time there was an investigation of their mayor about being transparent with the community. But aside for making the same blunder again, the fact that it was a unanimous vote to conduct the investigation is a pretty big development. Mayor Garcia has a very close ally on council in Ralph Duran, and even he voted in favor of the investigation. However sources within the city of Socorro indicate that word around the water cooler is that the investigation is related to the court case I've written about in which Garcia (an attorney) took on one of her own constituents as a client and against her own police department. Many p...

Its not getting a lot of coverage but the race for HD 79 has some really interesting developments, one of which is how remarkable it is that Dr. Michiel Noe appears to be having a major problem getting any traction of support. Art Fierro's social media platform has been pretty much releasing a new endorsement every day. If you go over the list, you almost wonder who is left to endorse Fierro. Noe I think has two endorsements. Fierro released more than that in one day this week. But its not just the sheer number of endorsements that Fierro has over Noe, but it is also WHO is endorsing him. As I have mentioned previously, endorsements don't necessarily indicate who is going to win - but the fact that at least three, possibly more, sitting members of city council are endorsing Fierro over Noe says something. So far only one member of council has come out to support Noe, which is City Rep Henry Rivera, who is married to Noe's campaign operative, Dora Oaxaca-Rivera. All of Fierr...

I try really hard to be factually accurate and when I get it wrong, I have no problem correcting the record. So I have to correct two errors I made over the last month about City Rep Cassandra Hernandez. First, I erroneously identified her as the City Rep for District 7 when she is the City Rep for District 3. Second, I mentioned that she was removed from the MPO yesterday. That is correct, but I didn't give the whole story and that isn't fair to Rep Hernandez. So my bad, let me clear the record. Rep Hernandez was actually replaced on a few boards, rather than just the MPO. Rep Hernandez deserves accuracy as much as anyone else and I should have been more accurate about how things went down at city council the other day. I got it wrong and I try hard to get it right. So mea culpa - Hernandez is now off of most, if not all the boards she was appointed to - not just the MPO. My bad. I'll try harder to get things right in the future and not be in such a rush to blog something ...

There was an item at city council that no one is talking about but had it been any other city rep than Cassandra Hernandez, it would have made news. City Representative Cassandra Hernandez was unceremoniously and abruptly removed off of the MPO at council yesterday. No one said a thing about it. It was really hush-hush and there was no discussion. The MPO is a board that city reps fight to get on because it is so influential and important. I can't recall an instance where a city representative was removed from the MPO in the middle of their term and when it wasn't a change in mayors. Why it isn't being discussed is a mystery to me, but there must have been a reason that led to this sudden change because it certainly wasn't because she wanted to be off the MPO. She was taken off. The question is, why?

Art Fierro had his fundraiser last night and I went to check it out. It was held at Landry's which is where a lot of fundraisers for politicos are held. During the height of the Reyes - Beto campaign a few years ago I went to a fundraiser Congressman Reyes held there. There weren't half as many people at Reyes' fundraiser last night as there were for Fierro's fundraiser. People couldn't actually fit inside the room and there was an overflow of people outside when he was speaking. I didn't get a good look at everyone that attended and I was late so I probably missed a few people but it was pretty much a roster of people from all the "cliques" in El Paso. There were a couple of union bosses there, one from law enforcement and one from a teacher's union, several judges, school board trustees, constables, the County Attorney, the District Attorney, Justices of the Peace, and Democratic Party officials like officers from the Eastside Democrats, Tejano D...

It could be a concern about fielding questions about his political affiliation, but in a bit of a surprising development Dr. Michiel Noe was a "no-show" last night at the Eastside Democrats meeting. The organization unanimously endorsed El Paso Community College Trustee Art Fierro for the position. Being the only auxiliary of the Democratic Party on the Eastside, the endorsement is the most important endorsement of this brief election season. Interestingly, the Chair of the Eastside Democrats is former City Representative Emma Acosta. She was not in attendance at the meeting. She and Dr. Noe served as colleagues on the El Paso City Council. Her former staffer Dora Oaxaca is also a former staffer of Dr. Noe and is working on his campaign, so Acosta's absence was likely strategic. But it wasn't unnoticed. Noe Democrat? For his entire political career Dr. Noe has been under a cloud of suspicion about his political affiliation. At one point at a political function Noe men...

The Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo had a major leadership shake-up last week and it couldn't have come at a more precarious time for the Tiguas. The tribe has important legislation at the federal level - which is why they backed Republican Will Hurd over Democrat Gina Ortiz-Jones. Hurd is the one carrying the ball for the Pueblo on that legislation and the YDSP was the margin of victory for Hurd. Had they not voted for him, he would have lost. They also have important economic development issues with the City of El Paso in the works right now as well. All of that is up in the air now given the change in leadership. Not necessarily a sign that any of that is going away, but with an entirely new group of leaders, what exactly will happen with these important issues is certainly in question. Tribal Tradition Let me take a quick moment to bring you up to speed on how tribal government works with the YSDP. I've written about it before but it has been a while and some of you may not remember ...

There is no group more prone to hypocrisy than a bunch of self-righteous Republicans in their circle jerk of elitism on their social media echo chambers. But the hypocrisy of a guy named Anthony Aguero is egregious even by GOP standards. So let me start by explaining who he is. He's a younger member of the El Paso Republican Party and worked with the train wreck that was the Rick Seeberger congressional campaign. The last time I saw him was when he and a few other young guys were trying to ambush Congresswoman Veronica Escobar at a debate forum. However a lot of you have seen him online lately and filled my phone, inbox on Facebook, and email about the guy. He's the guy that has been harassing immigrants that have been dumped at the Greyhound station in the cold and middle of the night. He's gun enthusiast (so am I) and is a danger to this community. Not because of the guns or any particular persuasion of violence - he fancies himself a tough guy until he's caught and c...

Apologies in advance but you might want to be careful with reading the following post because of the content. Today is the filing deadline to run for the vacated seat and a new name has surfaced as a candidate. Adrian Guerra II. I read somewhere that he was thinking about running as a Democrat. Well that guy is no Democrat. I went through his social media and he's a major Trump supporter. And quite frankly, he's an extremist and his social media is filled with hypocrisy. And I'm talking major hypocrisy. But more importantly I question the guy's judgement on a lot of things. First, if you're going to run in this day and age, clean up your social media. Over the last decade I've been doing this, how many times has something come up on someone's social media that is controversial? Pretty often and yet people just don't learn. You'd think after Eric Stoltz's marijuano munchies posts that people would think, wow I really outta go through my social med...

Hans Sassenfeld filed to be a candidate for the seat being vacated by long-time State Rep Joe Pickett. The election is coming at the end of the month but fun fact, there is no primary. So if there are enough Republicans that go to the polls to vote, they may make it so that no Democrat can win without a run-off election. Sassenfeld was apparently a Democrat until the 2016 election when he flipped to the GOP. And I assure you, he flipped. He's a solid Republican now, to the point that he's an office-holder within the GOP. He's even participated in the process of adopting their platform issues, which is why its important to stay informed about candidates and their positions. Elections have consequences. Their platform has a lot of extremist stuff in it, including anti-immigrant positions, opposition to a woman's constitutionally-protected right to choose, and bathroom bill/anti LGBT positions. There are a little over 77,000 people registered to vote in HD79. Looking at ju...

So if you recall in a previous blog post Dr. Noe went after the delegation for supporting Art Fierro for the now vacant seat for the state legislature that was held by Joe Pickett for many year. Noe made a comment when the first three members of the delegation came out in support of Art Fierro about how he "is a better fit in their little club". Well State Rep Joe Moody was one of the first three members of the delegation to support Art Fierro. So over the holiday break I saw this post from Moody that was clearly a shot back at Dr. Noe's comment in the El Paso Times. Like I said a while back, I knew the way Noe came out was going to be something that was eventually going to bite him in the butt. Members of the state delegation are all pretty nice, but they are battle tested. They are used to playing hard-ball partisan politics and they really didn't like Noe smack-talking them.