El Paso Politics

Moving the elections for city council to November is an experiment that has run its course. It has turned out to be a bad deal for El Paso voters.  I'll circle back to this point in a bit, so lets not open that 12 pack just yet.  As basically everyone predicted, Oscar Leeser won convincingly over Dee Margo for the Mayoral seat. To his credit, Margo did what no other Republican on the ballot in El Paso did - he conceded.  Not that he really had a choice. He took a beat down.  Gacho, too. He changed is social media page today to reflect the loss.  I'm not going to kick the guy while he's down but I do want to point out the ridiculousness of something he said on election night in an interview. Margo blamed the loss on marketing from Leeser.  He didn't lose because of marketing. Well not in the traditional sense. The reality is Leeser has been investing in his name for years - long before this election. That is likely how he made it into the run-off - but after...

I've been sitting on this for a very long time, but its time I let y'all in on a little secret. I'm the longest running political blog in El Paso. There's others, but they aren't based here in El Paso. I've been doing this for a long time and over the years, I've pissed off a lot of people. Powerful people.  Judges. City reps. State reps. Commissioners. Members of congress, water board members, school board members and at least one union boss. And don't even get me started on all the Republican snowflakes who I've made cry over the years.  A lot of people hate me because of the positions I've taken.  And my philosophy is - fuck'em, they don't scare me. Least of all Marlene Gonzalez, her sister Mayte, or their tag team partners, the Caballero Coven.  Over the years, a lot of those folks have tried to inflict some level of pain on me. A lot of tried to push me around, trash me, scare me, intimidate me, etc.  Anyone who knows me knows that t...

Saturday is Election Day for the municipal election run-off. The only thing on the ballot is the mayoral election, City Rep elections in the Northeast and Central, and the municipal judge races. Oscar Leeser is going to be elected mayor again.  I'm not voting for Margo, and I didn't vote for him last time. But before you vote for the Leeser of two evils, there are some things to think about.  No one is going to vote in the run-off election because of the municipal court races, most folks don't even know they are elected positions and most people don't know who is running for them.  Until now. Lilian Blancas is on the ballot and as many of you know by now, she has passed from the coronavirus. I've known about her struggles with the virus since late October but out of respect for her family I didn't comment on it publicly. There's a very good chance that despite not having campaigned at all during the entire run-off election because she was fighting the virus,...

There was an article in the El Paso Inc regarding the District 2 race between Alexsandra Annello and lifelong El Pasoan Judy Gutierrez. The two are in a run-off election and early voting has already started.  In the article, Annello asserts that she fired Gutierrez, someone who has worked for the city for 24 years - 15 years working in District 2 - which is about twice as long as Annello has actually lived in El Paso.  I realize that things get heated between candidates, especially in a run-off, but the implication of firing someone is either meant to put it in the mind of a voter that there was a good reason to fire Gutierrez, or that Gutierrez is disgruntled. The former is more devious because it implies misconduct or ineptitude.  Thats pretty gacho on the part of Annello because she attributes being able to get through a very difficult time in her life to Gutierrez.  Whether or not someone was fired can be definitively proven. Either she was - or wasn't - fired. S...