Hurd Retirement Throws CD23 Race Wide Open

As of last week Democratic congressional candidate Gina Ortiz-Jones would've been an odds-on favorite to win the seat currently held by retiring Congressman Will Hurd.

She would have been running in a presidential year against a President that is poised to lose swing districts (what little there are anymore) like Congressional District 23.

But with Hurd retiring, the door has flown open for other candidates to make the bid for the seat that I now affectionately refer to as The Purple Throne, and it wouldn't surprise me if a couple of candidates from El Paso threw their hat in the ring.

And that would be a really bad scenario for GOJ because she'd have to do something she didn't do last time - she would have to take El Paso County seriously and not for granted.

Hurd won a razor-thin victory in the Texas 23rd that GOJ should've handily won. That razor thin margin of victory happened in El Paso County and most of them voted at Pavo Real all on one day.

Ortiz-Jones lost that race because she didn't put any real money or effort into the El Paso County portion of the district and she made some really poor hiring decisions.

For one, she had Josh Carter running field for her in El Paso County in the early part of the campaign. Josh has never won an election. He's now fresh off of another embarrassing loss in which he had the most amount of money and people power at his disposal and he came in 3rd out of 4 candidates. Now he moved to San Eli and has visions of running for office there...again. But that is a blog for another day. Along with some severely censored photos.

Josh Carter was so bad of a field guy that when Gina Ortiz-Jones was in the valley to do a block walk, Carter skipped the block walk to attend a Chihuahuas game.

Later as things were heating up Gina Ortiz-Jones hired a couple of field people but didn't give them much money to work with. At least one of the field people hired to do such an important job - that ultimately led to the loss margin - was someone who wasn't from the valley and had never worked a congressional race before. Having never worked a congressional race before wasn't that big of a deal, but not being from the valley was a HUGE problem because there wasn't a lot of money put into the field operation. Essentially the GOJ plan was to make the field work largely volunteer-driven.

That severely handicapped her team and the only way it would've worked is if you had staff that were experienced in running campaigns in the valley. They would've been able to pull off a volunteer field program because they have more contacts of people that actually do that sort of thing.

But what she should have done is hired a crew of paid block walkers. Then, as long as they were bilingual, it wouldn't have mattered where they were from or how much experience they had. They'd have been able to hit doors.

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Possible EP Candidates

You can basically put just about any elected official in the Lower Valley in the mix for that seat right off the bat -if it was something they were interested in.

But you also don't have to actually live in the district until later, so that could put a lot of local politicos in the mix for the seat. Three names come to mind right away.

Senator Jose Rodriguez, State Rep Cesar Blanco, and State Rep Mary Gonzalez.

Rodriguez has long been rumored to be going back and forth between retirement and another term as Senator. But an open seat like this, for a senator that represents not only El Paso but some of the key counties between here in San Antonio make him a pretty viable option for the seat. He's certainly got the Democratic Party credentials, the policy chops, and the ability to raise money. I'm sure Congresswoman Escobar would love to have Jose Rodriguez by her side in congress and they worked together at the County when he was the County Attorney and she was the County Judge. I think he'd be the strongest El Paso option for the seat.

State Rep Cesar Blanco would probably be the next best option. Lets face it, we all know Blanco is going to be in Washington some day, or at least that is his plan. He's got experience working in DC as a staffer for more than one member of congress and he's worked in this actual congressional office in the past. He's very well packaged, has the street cred on Democratic Party issues, could handle himself very well in a debate. He looks like he came out of central casting as a Latino member of congress from the border. As a State Rep, he's also got the capacity to raise the money necessary for that seat.

State Rep Mary Gonzalez is also someone who I think should look at the option of running. While she doesn't have very many accomplishments under her belt, she has a great back story. She's also the only one of those candidates that currently resides in the district. What would be rough for her is she's not likely to get the support of the Pueblo, and they turned the last election in favor of Hurd. But, she has always had a mixed urban/rural message since she came back to El Paso to run for office a few years ago. She's a Latina and bilingual, which takes a lane away from Gina Ortiz-Jones. Gonzalez has also had to fight for her seat a couple of times so she knows how to throw money at the valley to get people to the polls.

All three of the candidates I mentioned would do well in the portions of the district like Del Rio and Eagle Pass, thus making it harder for a San Antonio based candidate to win the seat than it normally would.