El Paso Politics

The question mark implies that it might have been a mistake. Maybe, but given his track record, I don't think it was a mistake, I just think he doesn't give a damn about rules. El Paso ISD Trustee Mickey Loweree is running for re-election in the Coronado area and appears to have made a video for her campaign and used at least one EPISD campus to do so. You are not allowed to campaign on school grounds unless that campus is a polling location and only during the time that it is being used as a polling location. You also can't use public resources to campaign. But in a recent campaign video posted on her social media page, you can clearly see that she is actually on an EPISD campus. Here's a screenshot and I pointed an arrow at the name of the school. As you can see in the bottom corner, that is her campaign logo - which clearly identifies that this is a political spot. This was from a video shoot that Carlos Sierra posted about a few weeks ago where he was talking about ...

Every once in a while people that don't like the outcome of and election decide that they want to do a recall. And I laugh every single time. Why? Because if these people were any good at winning elections, they wouldn't be pissed about the outcome of an election in the first place. There is currently an effort to recall Mayor Dee Margo and a bunch of members of council. Its going to fail just like the last effort to recall Margo and all the other efforts to recall members of council in the past. The only difference between this effort and the previous effort to recall Margo is that the previous effort at least started off strong. This one - which most of you reading this didn't even know was happening - started off weak and is going to end up not even being in the neighborhood of collecting enough signatures. If you can't even collect that incredibly small number of signatures, you have no hope of actually winning a recall. And guess what? Now you recall people are REA...

How did they cram all that douchedom into one pic? It shouldn't surprise anyone that a race involving Carlos Sierra is getting ugly - but its getting pretty ugly in the two EPISD Trustee races on the westside. And I don't know that I've ever seen school board races get this bad before. This is getting so ugly that it would make campaigns in the lower valley blush. First, Carlos Sierra had a survey run last night at homes on the westside for Mickey Loweree. He and his partner is douchedom, David Saucedo, dropped mail this weekend for Mickey Loweree. Sierra is running the survey because he wants to know if he should go negative against Daniel Call, Mickey Loweree's opponent. The poll is going to tell him that Loweree is in big trouble. So Sierra is going to go negative against Call. So expect to see that happen in the next 7-10 days. And while I'm on the topic... Why in the waste-of-money-hell does anyone hire David Saucedo to do anything other than make a copy of key...

Xavier Miranda's candidate for EPISD School Board Trustee Gary Berglund, ditched the El Paso County Democratic Party's candidate forum despite every accommodation made for him to attend, but apparently made it a priority to attend the GOP candidate forum over the weekend. I don't fault him for going, its a non-partisan race. I fault him for going after having dissed the Democratic Party's forum after they made accommodations for him to be able to attend. Here is a picture from the forum where you can see Mr. Berglund addressing the crowd at the GOP headquarters. As you can see the banner behind him says West El Paso Republican Women and there are anti-Clinton signs hanging in the background. It is also pretty ironic considering Xavier Miranda attended the forum that was sponsored by the local El Paso County Democratic Party. If you recall, I wrote about it a while back, that was the forum in which Miranda accosted one of the candidates who chose not to attend the forum ...

Trump has really wagged the dog on this one. He said there was a state of emergency not the border, which there wasn't. But, his deliberate policies have actually created major problems for local communities along the border by placing the burden of federal functions on to the local tax base. My friend Susie Byrd posted something recently about some items needed to help some more migrants that have been released on the streets of El Paso. And it got me to thinking about something important. Here's a dirty little secret you probably don't know. We use the Officer of Emergency Management to deal with this issue. A Volunteer Coordinator position has been created to deal with the Trumps immigration problem. Actually you probably do know about it now that news reports have come out about it like this one from KVIA . In fact, someone should look into the fact that the city of El Paso had voted to not participate in SB4, but if you ride along the border highway there are frequentl...

I've been covering El Paso politics longer than just about anyone else in town in the legitimate media or the blogosphere. I supported Bernie Sanders for president in the last primary. I'm supporting Beto right now and I'm a little sick of seeing my former Bernie Bro brethren, disgraced former State Rep Norma Chavez, and some local folks try to re-brand Beto as some sort of Republican in Democratic clothing. So since I happen to have a little institutional knowledge on the matter, let me remind you of a younger then-City Representative Beto O'Rourke when he was running for congress a few years ago against incumbent Silvestre Reyes. Team Reyes was portraying Beto has too liberal for El Paso. Maybe some of you forgot about that, but they most certainly said he was too liberal. Before that 2012 election cycle he advocated for domestic partner benefits to be expended to gay couples. Isn't it weird that just a few years ago that was such a controversial policy? Yeah, wel...

County Judge Richard Samaniego is now in an awkward position thanks to a race for El Paso Community College Board of Trustees and his nephew Christian Samaniego. Young Christian is the campaign manager for one of the candidates in the race, El Paso attorney Frank Macias. I know, some of you have heard that he had a different campaign manager but it is in fact, Christian. That race is a district that runs from the Willows down to my precinct in the Lower Valley. Talk about some ugly gerrymandering, amirite? The seat was last held by Judge Selena Solis, who had to vacate the seat when she became a judge. Which is weird because Brian Haggerty is a JP and he holds a seat on that board, but that is a post for another day. Anywho, the seat is currently held by prominent El Paso Attorney Christina Sanchez. Here's where things get awkward for the County Judge. As you can see from this screenshot of Macias' campaign website, it clearly shows that his campaign manager is Christian Samani...

Oh man, this is hilarious but also a pretty sad statement on EPISD. Carlos Sierra's candidate for EPISD Trustee Mickey Loweree is having some of her credentials challenged and her re-election just became that much more difficult if true. In a letter sent out yesterday by El Paso AFT Union Boss Ross Moore, some problematic statements by Trustee Loweree are being called into question. Namely her assertion of being a former teacher in EPISD. The letter titled,   OPEN LETTER TO DISTRICT 7 TRUSTEE - WE DESERVE INTEGRITY starts by outlining Trustee Loweree's assertion that she was a teacher in EPISD for 10 years. The assertion appears in Loweree's bio located on  the  EPISD website.  Here's a screenshot of the page. It clearly states she was a teacher in the district for a decade.  Moore says that back in 2017 when she was up for the appointment to her current position that she told the AFT at that time that she had been a paraprofessional.  I guess its technical...

Klayel-Avalos being interviewed by KVIA Funny story on the campaign trail I thought was worth sharing about the District 6 EPISD race. Lets be honest, if EPISD is a desmadre, you knew at some point that the election would devolve into one too.  Former EPISD Trustee Dan Wever and Xavier Miranda really dislike Freddy Klayel-Avalos for some reason. I’m not exactly sure what it is, other than they are big supporters of Gary Berglund, one of the two other people running for the Franklin seat.  Wever is a guy who normally is a pretty thorough researcher and a strong advocate. Truth be told, I admire the guy.  So I about thoroughly confused as to why he didn’t catch a major mistake yesterday.  A source indicates that Wever was calling for Klayel-Avalos to be kicked off the ballot. The attempt to remove him was predicated on a lack of a birthdate on Klayel-Avalos’ application that is on the EPISD website.  The problem is, he and Miranda either didn’t bother checking the...

EPCC Board of Trustees Candidate Nina Piña (I'm not making that up, its really her name) is running for the office formerly held by Art Fierro. Now here is what really bothers me about her...she's an adult in her 50's and the fact that she's never voted for any other election but a presidential is pretty embarrassing. The fact that she didn't think enough of community college to have been bothered to vote in any of the community college elections prior to running for office is even more embarrassing. She's being run by Ed Escudero. Anywho, Escudero apparently is trying to become a political figure these days, being on the board of directors for CREEED, a pro charter school group of El Paso's upper-crusters. I guess he's Piña's cuñado or something. Now I don't know what his beef is, but he's got something against Sun Circle. He recently tried to strong arm a candidate into firing the firm. The candidate told him hell no and it made Escudero lo...

Since school board races are the only meaningful thing on the ballot, I figure I better lay out why some of them are so important. My kid goes to school in Socorro ISD so I have a deeper interest in those elections for a purely selfish reason. There are a three seats up for grabs on that board, two at-large seats and one in the Montwood feeder pattern, which is the one I will focus on in this particular post. And trust me when I tell you that it is literally the battle between the good, the bad, and the ugly. The incumbent Hector Gonzalez is a Trump support extremist zealot who is racist, homophobic, sexist, and decidedly anti-immigrant. Absolutely terrible traits of a school board member who only won his seat last time because no one else ran. I assure you, in this story - he is the ugly. Much like his idol, his Twitter feed is fulled with your typical ugly zealot stuff. Its awful. I really, really, really don't want that guy on a school board making decisions that will impact my ...

Well as they say, a picture says a thousand words. A while back some folks saw that Carlos Sierra was bragging about the work he does for his candidates for EPISD. Candidates, meaning multiple. It was pretty evident who they would be considering everyone already knew that one of them was Trustee Mickey Loweree. So by process of elimination the other candidate had to be Tom Hicks, the candidate in EPISD District 6, which is the Franklin area. Trustee Loweree posted this picture at a recent campaign event and as you can see in the photo, Loweree is pictured with Carlos Sierra, failed mayoral candidate David Saucedo, Tom Hicks, and David Rodriguez. If you recall there was controversy around Rodriguez and his social media posts that were pro-Trump and very anti-immigrant back when he endorsed Dori Fenenbock in her bid to be congresswoman of El Paso. Here is a story in the El Paso Times that discussed Rodriguez's pro-Trump anti-immigrant stance. KTSM ran a news story that also discusse...

I warned all of you long ago that Max Grossman is nothing more than a Trump-loving extremist Republican who is hell-bent on using brown people to serve his goals. And a lot of you fell for it, and some of you for some reason, are still okay with him using you, your skin color, your faces, your culture, your heritage, your language, and your dignity, to help him get what he wants. Well for the few of you out there that still think this fool is some sort of crusader for Raza, he's not. Here's an email he sent out recently attacking Beto O'Rourke's candidacy for President. I know, most of you have already seen The Dandy for what he is, but the guys likes to play dress up and pretend he's someone he's not. So this is who he really is, like I said all along, a Trump loving extremist conservative. Remember who he is and what his politics are the next time you find this guy in front of a camera pretending to speak for brown people. He doesn't care about us. He does...

I spoke with State Rep Mary Gonzalez and she clarified her support for whichever Castro brother it is that is running for President. She's sticking by her endorsement and after hearing her out, I completely understand it. Gonzalez has known the Castros since she was a teenager and loyalty is the coin of the realm in politics. For Gonzalez in particular, she's got a lot of candidates that she can identify with, so picking any one of them is probably problematic. There are women candidates, LGBT candidates, a Latino candidate, and a candidate from El Paso. So she's sort of damned if she does, damned if she doesn't right now. To punctuate this, she was asked to endorse whichever Castro brother it is that is running for president early on. She's known them for years. She didn't know Beto was getting in the race at the time and she didn't know the endorsement would be released on the day that Castro released it.

Carlos Sierra came up in this candidate forum and he is going to be one of the primary reasons that Loweree is not re-elected, although not the only reason. Sierra once again proves to be a major boat anchor around any campaign he touches. Here is video of the Franklin and Coronado candidates vying for seats on the EPISD Board of Trustees. District 6, which is the Franklin area features a race between entrepreneur Freddy Klayel-Avalos, former teacher Gary Berglund, and business owner Mike Hicks. Klayel-Avalos is endorsed by both major teacher associations in EPISD - the El Paso Federation of Teachers and the El Paso Teachers' Association. Gary Berglund is not in this video because he chose not to attend. Arrangements were made to ensure  that Berglund could attend and he was made aware of the accommodations made in order for him to attend and he still chose to not attend. The District 7 race, which is the Coronado area, features a match-up between incumbent appointed Trustee Mickey...

The Castro campaign sent out an email of mostly San Antonio area elected officials that are supporting his candidacy for President on the day that Beto O'Rourke made his bid official. Now an email is a very weak response to the coverage that Beto is getting and Castro's campaign that never really got off the ground too much to begin with is going to probably start a long slow death. But it is interesting that in the list of mostly San Antonio Texas elected officials supporting Castro, that there was only one sole El Paso area name on that list. That elected official? State Rep Mary Gonzalez. Gonzalez is the State Rep for El Paso's HD 75 - an area that covers Far East El Paso, Montana Vista, Clint, Horizon, Sparks, San Eli, Fabens, Tornillo and most of the colonias. I tried to contact Rep Gonzalez to verify if it was accurate that she was endorsing Castro and if she was previously, is she standing by that endorsement now that El Paso's Beto O'Rourke has entered the r...

Here is a look at the candidates for the District 3 candidates for EPISD Board of Trustees. That is the Austin area that was formerly represented by Susie Byrd. Cynthia Cooper, Ben Mendoza, René Vargas, and Josh Acevedo are all vying for the position. You don't need me to tell you this, but if you watch the videos you will see for yourself that Ben Mendoza and Cynthia Cooper are simply not equipped for the position. This is going to come down to Vargas and Acevedo. To make it easier, I split the four candidates into two videos. Share with your friends and family that live in the area, this is an important election cycle.

If you don't know, its now pretty apparent. The El Paso Speak's blog is allegedly a few different people, but one of them I know for a fact is Xavier Miranda. I've known this for quite some time, but I never said anything. But now it'll be different for Miranda because he's actually going to have to stand by what he writes. Anyone can take a position on issues when you don't have to stand by what you say, its harder to do when you put your name by what you write. He's going to use the blog to push his candidate for EPISD Trustee. He's a big backer of Gary Berglund. As I've written previously, a lot of people started dropping out of his forum once he publicly criticized AFT's endorsement of candidates. Interestingly the other big union in EPISD is the El Paso Teachers' Association. They endorsed the same candidates as AFT - so there is consensus among labor about who the best candidates are and it really bothers Miranda. Miranda is trying to h...

I'll have video of the EPISD Forum soon, but for now I wanted to do a quick run down of the forum because the video I post, or the live-stream on my blog FB page, is likely the only time you'll be able to get a look at the candidates. The only other scheduled forum has candidates dropping out of it like flies because they feel like its not going to be an even-handed forum. I'll get to that later. All of the nine candidate for the EPISD races up for grabs - every candidate participated in the candidate forum with the exception of Franklin area candidate Gary Berglund. Of all the candidates that are vying for a seat on the EPISD school board, he's the ONLY candidate that was a no-show. The El Paso Teachers Association had an event at the same time, but every other candidate was able to participate in both forums without a problem. The El Paso Democratic Party learned about the schedule discrepancy and reached out to the EPTA to coordinate schedules to ensure that all can...