Perez Announces Re-Election; Highlights Holguin's Funneling of Money to Husband's Firm

County Commissioner Vince Perez announced his re-election campaign Sunday morning after mass in San Elizario, Texas.

As you may know, San Elizario exists as its own independent community because Commissioner Perez led the charge against a City Council in Socorro, led by the infamous Gandara family, that had unlawfully extended their terms in office and tried to orchestrate an annexation of San Elizario.

And the contrasts between the candidates couldn't be more clear. The Holguin family are going to try to appeal to the establishment and anyone with an office or title. Perez made it a point to announce his reelection in San Elizario, the place were he married his wife, El Paso Mayor Pro-Temp Claudia Ordaz Perez and the place where he chose to be sworn in as County Commissioner - among a crowd of supporters that don't have fancy titles, don't have staff, and were from every sector of Precinct 3.

Former City Rep Eddie Holguin, spouse of challenger Iliana Holguin made it a point to send out invitations to every person with a title in town that he could think of - which interestingly landed the day after Chairwoman Holguin filed for office...

But spending money on political advertising before having a treasurer in place - and the optics of that happening from the Chair of the Democratic Party - is a blog post for another day....

The point is, the two are targeting very different people in their appeal for voters. Holguin wants the politically connected class and Perez is taking his reelection message to the people.

Which is good for Perez because anytime Norma Chavez is supporting your opponent, its a sign you're doing the right thing.

Perez's message to voters was mostly about some of the work he's done - but there is a very sharp criticism of his opponent in his speech that you should pay close attention to.

The entirety of his speech is at the bottom of this post, but this particular part of his speech I thought was the most interesting - and the rank and file of the El Paso Democratic Party may be surprised at the revelations.

Let be real, did the Holguin's really think Vince was just gonna roll over and play dead for them? Fat chance - Commissioner Perez sent a strong signal that he was going to not only defend his record as Commissioner for Precinct 3, but he wasn't going to shy away from pointing out some really questionable problems Holguin will have with finances and relationships.



But hey, you should never believe what someone says without checking on whether or not its actually true, right?

So here you go - here are screenshots underscoring the expenditures Perez mentioned in his speech. Those funds came from contributors to the El Paso County Democratic Party and ended up in Iliana Holguin's husband's firm - in just one election cycle.

This one is from the January 2019 Semi-Annual Report:

These are from the 8 day and 30 day reports, right before the 2018 general election:

Also, lets pull over for a minute for a little bit of inside baseball with the Democratic Party. The Holguin's led the charge to oust Michael Apodaca from the treasurer position within the Party and used minor accounting issues as the reason to oust Apodaca as treasurer. So its pretty surprising to see that the Chair appears to have steered almost 9 G's go to her husband's firm under her time as chair of the Party.

Now let me make some things clear before people start scrambling to come up with a narrative to try to 'splain this - yes the County Executive Committee votes to authorize the expenditures, but who is selected to provide whatever services is authorized isn't a decision the precinct chairs make.

That is left up to the chair and there's no way around the optics of the Chair selecting her family's firm to get the money.

I guarantee the rank and file membership don't know about the money, because I didn't know about it and I am the one who designed the mailers for the Party! I thought it was an in-kind contribution to the Party from Eddie Holguin's firm because they had Carl Robinson as a client. The mailers were for Carl Robinson and straight-ticket voting - both meant to benefit Carl Robinson's campaign, which is why I thought they were an in-kind contribution to the Democratic Party.

So if I am the one who designed them, and I didn't know - I'm sure most of the Democratic Party doesn't know.

Not surprisingly Eddie Holguin also had a mailer done for his client, Carl Robinson paid for by the Tejano Democrats.

Eddie Holguin is the chair of Tejano Democrats and it appears that he was even paid to do the mailer from his own organization, for his client, by his own organization.

Perez speech demonstrates the weakness, and a criticism that has plagued the local El Paso Democratic Party for years - that a small group of insiders control the money - and control the candidates, no matter how shitty they are or how often choose not to show up to do their jobs.

Iliana is a super nice woman and probably one of the 10 most intelligent people I know. But Iliana can't use the chairwomanship of the El Paso County Democratic Party as her stepping stone for her bid to be county commissioner without also being responsible for what has transpired under her watch.

She either knew about the money being directed to her family's firm - and lets be honest, there's really no way she didn't know - or that kind of thing could happen under her watch and she didn't know.

Neither case are good and you just can't have it both ways.

Here is the rest of Perez's reelection speech.



Looked Me in the Face and Lied to Me

As you know, Commissioner Perez and I go way back. As many of you in the Party know, Eddie Holguin and I go back even further.

So when Iliana Holguin announced her intent to run against Perez Friday before last, I was blindsided by it. To her credit, she called me personally to tell me she was doing it because she didn't want me to hear it from someone else first.

Obviously the rumors of Iliana Holguin and/or Eddie Holguin running against Perez were floating around for a long time. How could ol' LionStar - the guy that usually breaks developments like this - have been blind-sided by them?

Simple.

Because when it comes to people I consider friends, I had this really nasty habit of taking them at their word.

I know, its a big weakness of mine.

I'd been working on some projects with Holguin and the Party recently and Eddie has always been a really good friend of mine. So I asked Eddie Holguin numerous times about the rumors. I asked if he was going to run because Mary Bowles Gasca had mentioned to me that she was going to run until she found out Eddie was going to run. I had asked him at least 7 other times.

I asked him if he was going to help someone else run for that seat. I asked if he was going to support someone else for that seat. I asked if he knew of someone else running for that seat. I had asked if he had heard rumors of someone else running for that seat. I even asked why I kept hearing - from people in the valley - that he was going to run.

I basically asked him the question every possible way it could be asked.

And he looked me directly in the face and lied to me.

I mean I get it, he didn't want me to know. I wasn't asking the vato to take sides against his wife.

But there is just something about being lied directly to my face that always bothers me (anyone, really)- half because I feel stupid for having believed someone's word and half because when people reveal their character, you should believe them.

I honesty feel stupid for having believed Holguin despite knowing how much it bothers him that City Rep Ordaz Perez always out-performed him. At one point Eddie Holguin squeaked out a win against a white guy in the valley - meanwhile COP has always demolished her opponents and has never received less than 70% of the vote in an election.

She even out-performed Holguin in his own precinct and I know that has always bothered him, so I honestly shouldn't have been surprised.

But I was.

Because I asked him directly.

And I believed him.

Candidate Priorities

Now that its clear that Commissioner Perez isn't just going to roll over and play dead, the problem for Holguin is that he has some big name clients like Oscar Leeser and Sheriff Wiles that he's consulting for - along with a few other candidates that he's doing work for in the upcoming Democratic Primary.

But lets be real, no matter how much money he's being paid to run the other campaigns - who do you think is going to be the candidate he prioritizes above everyone else?

He's already hired someone to work on field work for his wife, I'm pretty sure he hasn't done that for the rest of his candidates.