Former Rep Hernandez Replacement Election Set

The election to replace former City Representative Cassandra Hernandez will take place in November. The vote was 4-3 and there was another vote that ended in a time with the mayor breaking the tie, which was a vote about whether or not Hernandez should be able to vote on the item to place the election on the ballot.

So let me set a few things straight about Hernandez's argument about how its not a public announcement. But I'll get to that in a bit.

First I want to talk about the vote about Hernandez being able to vote on the item regarding the election.

It was an item in which Hernandez had a personal interest in. I don't understand how any members of council could've voted for her to be able to vote. That should've been a 7-0 vote.

When it came to the actual vote to put the item on the ballot, I understand two of the three people who voted for Hernandez. Annello is her BFF on council and will suspend rational thought and ideological consistency when it comes time to vote on something. She's got a long track record of that.

Svarzbein is Svarzbein. No other member of council has built up a more consistent record of inconsistency than Svarzbein. You can always predict that he's always gonna find the least painful way for him, or politically expedient way, to get out of a situation that he's uncomfortable being in.

But Rep Salcido's vote is a head scratcher. She normally is pretty consistent with following a pretty easily understood vote.

Lets just address something about the politics of all of this. Hernandez is been crying all over town saying that this was politically motivated and was meant to help Mayor Margo.

Well, former Rep Hernandez wouldn't even be running for Mayor if she felt like Margo was going to win reelection. The only one that doesn't know Margo is dead meat is Margo.

The kicker on this is that if this was a political move - then its the least effective political move in the history of the City of El Paso, which is saying something.

You see two of the three votes for Hernandez were Svarzbein and Salcido. What do they have in common? They are Forma candidates.

You know who else is a Forma candidate?

Mayor Margo.

If it was political then why did 2/3 of Hernandez's votes come from Forma candidates?

Public Announcement

Team Hernandez has been trying to sell the argument that it was unintentional and therefore not an announcement for Mayor. But the reality is that there was an image of her in front of the plazita and the caption said Cassandra Hernandez for Mayor.

Thats pretty freakin' clear.

But you can try to pretzel any legal argument that works for your narrative but its pretty clear that Team Hernandez thought it was an announcement too.

How do I know that?

Because they deleted it right away. But they only deleted it AFTER I posed a question on the announcement post if it triggered the resign-to-run clause.

That is literally the only reason that thing got pulled down. So clearly, they thought it was too.

See... here's a screenshot with my comment at 9:57pm.

And here is a screenshot of my attempting to go back to the same page just 30 minutes later. If they didn't think it was a public declaration, they wouldn't need to remove the post. 

Fumbling the Ball

Former City Rep Hernandez really screwed this whole situation up. As if the Facebook post wasn't bad enough, she continued to stumble around looking for a life vest on the Titanic for the following days.

She should've just said, screw it - I'm running. But this really is all about her still having an income. She needs to be able to get paid while she campaigns for mayor full time except for when she's grandstanding at a meeting.

But she made a negative news cycle and kept extending it, instead of changing the narrative. Now she has three options - Option #1 is to do what she should've done from the start and just announce her campaign for mayor. Option #2 is to run for her old seat, and forget the mayoral bid. But with several people ready to run and her being particularly politically vulnerable she's probably going to lose. Option #3 (I call this the Romo option) run for her old seat, somehow win, and then declare candidacy for mayor after November.

And then she'll lose the following November.

Just kidding. She only has two options. Run for mayor or run for nothing. You can't run for the same office if you're in hold-over status.

At this point I think she might be the only person that could actually lose to Dee Margo.