Forma's Funeral

I waited a while to write this post because I wanted the dust to settle and do some post-election analysis of numbers in the emergency election for HD 79 on the Eastside. That analysis points to one really obvious fact - Forma Group simply didn't get the job done.

For all intents and purposes Dr. Noe was an incumbent. He had more name ID and more money than now-State Representative Art Fierro. Noe won his previous elections pretty handily. On paper, Noe should've been the obvious favorite to win that seat.

The fact that he didn't, is a failure of Forma Group, not the candidate. I'll be the first to say that in a traditional race with plenty of time to organize and work a field operation, a candidate is the driving factor and winning or losing is more a function of the candidate than the consultant. For the most part.

But when you have an election that was what, 5 or 6 weeks, you simply don't have the time necessary to conduct a normal field operation unless you spend a lot of money to basically triple the amount of walkers you'd normally have in order to cover that kind of ground in that short of a time frame. As a result, mail and other campaign activities play a bigger role.

Forma simply didn't execute.

They got out worked, out-smarted, and out-played.

They've lost a lot of elections before. You almost never heard them take the blame when there's a loss, but they take all the credit when there is a win. They have lost close elections, elections that they should have one, and elections where they had a huge advantage in fundraising. This is hardly their first loss.

But what makes this one different is the fact that the money guys, who usually go with the Forma candidate, didn't do so this time. They split their money. And now that they see that the candidate with less money and less name ID won, they now see that Forma isn't their only option anymore.

And the timing is really bad for Forma too. They are going to go into another election cycle for another high profile race - the mayoral election. They are going to be the campaign team for Mayor Dee Margo.

In case you haven't heard about it yet, the worst-kept secret in El Paso is the fact that former Mayor Oscar Leeser is going to run for the office again. Hell I saw a "Draft Oscar Leeser" page on Facebook recently, so it is not exactly a guarded secret.

Leeser is probably going to have the same team as Fierro - Sun Circle Strategic Group - and Leeser is going to beat Margo and probably going to beat Margo pretty solidly. Sun Circle is coming off a couple big wins including Commissioner Carl Robinson and City Rep Cissy Lizarraga.

Leeser still is a household name, he has a clean bill of health from what I'm told, and he's much more popular than Mayor Margo. I honestly feel pretty bad for Mayor Margo. He took the right position on the border wall and for pushing back on Trump's lies about El Paso. There are some in the Democratic Party who will do anything they can to avoid admitting it, but Margo sounded like a Democrat. The easy play for him was to go along with the pro-wall thing, ignore the part Trump said about crime and the Trump-drones would fiercely support Margo. He'd at least have that going for him and in an election that is sure to have a low turn-out, that was the way to go for Margo.

So what did doing the right thing instead of the easy thing do for him? Well allegedly Margo was supposed to ride with Trump in the motorcade from the airport to the coliseum but when the White House heard Margo all over media sounding like a good Democrat, they allegedly nixed that. Then, which is much worse for Margo, Trump attacks him during his speech.

Now even the crazy, ignorant, Trump nuts won't event support him - and Margo is the only Republican in El Paso County to hold elective office right now!

But back to the HD79 election...

Noe struggled to beat an unknown Republican candidate in a part of town that had previously elected him by wide margins. That isn't the candidate's fault, that's the team's fault. The candidate has proven to be popular among the electorate and hasn't had any scandals and yet the following election he manages to somehow get blown out of the water to the extent that he did?

Again, to a Republican that was largely unknown even in GOP circles. Yes its true that Dr. Noe was up against a guy in Art Fierro that was just a better candidate than he was - especially in the category that matters most next to money - likability. Fierro had a massive edge in what I call the Theresa Caballero rule of politics, before they vote for you they must first like you. Fierro is really well-liked by people so its easy to get people to vote for him.

Seriously, Noe didn't even win a precinct in an election that featured the entire area he represented on city council. How you manage to lose every single precinct in an area you represented is beyond me., especially when you were elected and re-elected with strong numbers.

Also, speaking of "consultant" failures, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention yet another loss for Dora Oaxaca. I think I'm gonna start calling the DORMA GROUP, you know like how they mash couple's names together in Hollywood? Dora has always been synonymous with dirty pool when it comes to campaigns and she tried it again. But Socorro's answer to Roger Stone failed to get any traction against Art.

Yet word on the street is that CREEED is bankrolling candidates to keep their majority on EPISD's school board and they are allegedly going with Forma.

Well, there goes that campaign budget!

Oh yeah, one more thing - Mike Apodaca gets sprinkles.