Judicial Races 2022

Its election season and the drama over maps is largely resolved. The biggest deal on the local scene this election cycle will be the legislative races. 

Three of El Paso's delegation sold-out the rest of the Democrats, working class El Pasoans, and progressives over the summer allowing the Republicans to pass anti-Latino, anti-women, and anti-African-American voting bills in exchange to get nice and comfy safe seats. 

Trust me - we will examine that a lot more closely later.

For now - lets talk judicial seats. Unless your name is Marcos Lizarraga, if you're a male running for a judicial seat against a Latina, you can kiss your chances good-bye. Latinas are on a major roll running for elected office. 

Judge Marcos Lizarraga always seems to win no matter how hard his opponents come after him and no matter how much they spend. 

But basically every other male judge in town should be looking over their shoulders because, well, they are facing a steep climb. 

The JP courts are going to be fun to watch for a myriad of reasons, but mostly because of redistricting. Pay attention to two candidates in particular - Jesus Urenda and John-John Chatman. They are the proverbial Dead-man Walking....

Chatman is far and away the absolute worst Justice of the Peace in the county if you ask me. He has a problem keeping staff. Its been so bad that he's reached out to close to - if not every - single justice of the peace begging for staff help because he can't keep staff. And if you look at his record - he has cleared the least amount of cases over his last term. 

He will likely whine about every excuse under the sun to justify it - but the reality is he just doesn't clear cases. By every measure - except one - Chatman appears to be the worst JP in town. 

Which is why he has so many people lined up to run against him. Lucille Najera has already made it known she's running and there is a former employee of Chatman's that will be running as well - but there's a Latina candidate that is going to run and crush everyone. 

He's done. He just doesn't know it. 

Jesus Urenda is going to push his bar stool back and run for JP again but that poor guy doesn't have a prayer for a couple reasons. One - he's going to run against a Latina candidate who has already beat him for the JP 4 seat, Judge Rebeca Bustamante. 

But he has a couple of major problems in his way. One - and its a big one - he doesn't live in the proposed JP Precinct. If the maps stay they way they are, he's going to be in Judge Josh Herrera's JP Precinct. Herrera will clean his clock. 

The deadline to live in the district is over. He needed to live in the district 6 months before the filing deadline - and he doesn't. 

Second - who's going to fund him, L&F distributors? 

Not likely. 

Plus - if it weren't for Chatman - he would've been the JP with the biggest backlog of cases.