Democratic Congressional Candidate Voted for Trump

El Paso Democratic candidate for the 16th Congressional District Deliris Montanez-Berrios voted for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election. 

She volunteered that information in a conversation I had with her at the Tejano Democrats of El Paso meeting last month. When I asked her why she voted for Trump she replied, "Come on. If I voted for Hillary I'd be wearing a hijab right now."

Seriously, she said that. I recently asked her in an exchange on messenger what she meant by that because obviously that is a really provocative thing to say, and she said it was a figure of speech related to the Clintons' relationship with the Saudis and don't take it literally. 

Montañez-Berrios is taking issue with voting history as of late. Recently on the Democratic Party auxiliaries had a candidate forum. As is customary for most auxiliary organizations in partisan races, the voting records of the candidates are compiled. The information shows what primary elections a person voted in and in which party's primary election they voted in. 

She wasn't happy about the publication of her record. She has said publicly that she was a lifelong Democrat and later she said she's been voting in El Paso for 20 years. But records clearly indicate that while she's previously voted in other elections in El Paso - the last primary was the first time she voted Democratic. 

Which won't surprise you when you hear some of her positions, but I'll get to that later. 

Lets talk about Democrats who have voted Republican in the past for a moment. There's a lot of them. I'm big on the values of the Party - have been my entire life. I'm big on being consistent about values as well. One of the realities of the Democratic Party is that we are a big tent party. We have conservative Democrats in the same party that we have Democratic Socialists. 

I'm a progressive Democrat and conservative Democrats frustrate me sometimes. But the truth is, there are a lot of people that couldn't support Hillary Clinton when she ran the two times she ran because represented the Neo Liberal establishment that was neither Neo nor Liberal. 

I get it. 

But then there are the people that didn't like Hillary because they thought she was some kind of extremist Liberal - and also because she's a woman. 

People are entitled to make mistakes and be wrong. They're entitled to see the err of their ways and reform. We have to make room for those folks because there's a lot of people who are completely wrong politically and eventually realize it. 

So we should always embrace those folks that want to come in from the cold once they realize they made a mistake - if the conversion is genuine. 

Here is a comparison of the voting records of the two congressional candidates. First, here is Delirious' voting record:

For those of you not familiar with these records - anywhere you see a D or an R, means its a primary election. As you can see, her first primary election appears to have been in 2020. Records indicate that she participated in the general elections of 2020, 2019, 2018, 2016, and 12. She also participated in a special election in 2021. So her voting record indicates she voted in about 9 elections total.

Her opponent, Congresswoman Escobar, participated in every primary and primary run-off election going back as far 2006. She also participated in the municipal and school board elections in addition to general elections and a special election. So Escobar's voting record indicates she voted in 41 elections total.

And revealing the voting record - which is public information - really bothered Montañez-Berrios. You see later in the forum we explained why some candidates didn't have voting information available - which is something extended to judges and members of law enforcement as sort of a safety measure so that people don't get a hold of where they live. 

At that point, Montañez-Berriors reached out to me to saw that because she was law enforcement, her voting record wasn't published. 

Which is untrue. 

Being law enforcement or a judge, allows you to request that your records not be made public and then no information will show up at all. As if you didn't exist. 

Her public voting record exists - she just apparently wishes it didn't. 

I honestly don't know why she tried so hard to convince me that her voting record was inaccurate - which it isn't. I guess she was embarrassed by such little participation in primaries. But it makes sense, no one in the Democratic Party ever heard of her before she became a candidate. 

Her voting history isn't what she should be embarrassed about - it should be her policies. 

But that's a future post.