Republican Candidate Files for HD79 Seat

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 just a really rough thumbnail of who is voting in that area, there are 4,095 people that voted in the last three primary elections. Of those voters, 2706 of those voters are voted Democratic in all three of those primaries, compared to just 774 that voted Republican in all three primaries.

So there is no path to victory for a Republican to win the HD79 seat. They just don't have enough of a base to work with and based on the energy shown recent elections, the Dems are likely to perform well.

But I can tell you what they are thinking over at 120 Paragon Lane (GOP HQ for those of you that don't know). They like to tell each other that El Pasoans are basically stupid and only vote for someone because of the party designation. Which is incredibly insulting because it basically is saying we are stupid, don't put thought into who is getting our vote, but they somehow aren't stupid and put thought into their votes. They've always had that elitist mentality that "El Pasoans are Republicans, they just don't know it".

Seriously, they really say that and convince themselves that its true.

So in their mind they believe that this election is going to be like a general election and that people will be free to vote for either candidate, Democrat or Republican, therefore giving themselves a better chance at winning.

One flaw in that theory, it doesn't happen to be true. In general elections El Pasoans pick Democrats by huge margins. They've convinced themselves that people who vote straight ticket Democratic won't turn around and just vote for Democrats on the ballot now that the option of voting straight ticket no longer exists.

Boy are they in for a rude awakening...

Anywho, watch education in this race. Its likely going to be the main issue of this race because there are some significant contrasts in policy. Although if the GOP wants to make immigration the main issue of this race, that also hurts them.

Mr. Sassenfeld's support of Trump's wall policy as demonstrated in this picture, are not going to help him. Thats him standing on the right.

Tomorrow is the final day to file to run for the seat. So far only Art Fierro and Sassenfeld have filed to run. Long-time City Rep Michiel Noe has indicated that he is going to run but as of the time of publication, has not done so.

Early voting is from January 14-25 with no voting on MLK day due to the holiday, which seems like the least MLK thing ever, but that is just my opinion.

Election Day is January 29th.