Seventeen Years Later and Still Right About Manny Barraza: The Barrio Nostradamus

Let me start by saying this: being right doesn’t always feel good - especially when being right gets you dragged, cursed out, and labeled a vendido by people who think “Chicano” has a silent Q.

But here we are.

Seventeen. Years. Later.

And once again, su servidor was right.

Back in the prehistoric era of El Paso politics - when Facebook still required a college email and people pretended the courthouse was holy ground - I warned the El Paso Democratic Party about one of our candidates for a judicial seat: Manny Barraza.

And whew. You would have thought I slapped the Virgen de Guadalupe with a voter registration card.

The establishment and Old Guard wanted to tar and feather me.

Run me out of the party.

Burn my D card like it was confiscated contraband.

Why? Because I committed the ultimate political sin: I told the truth about someone on our own team.

See, one thing I pride myself on is holding my party accountable. I do it better than any Republican in this town ever has - especially their Chairman, Mike Aboud, who is objectively stupid, but that’s a blog for another day and maybe a stiff drink.

Anyway.

I told anyone who would listen that Manny Barraza wasn’t just a bad candidate - he wasn’t a good person. The vato literally went out of his way to represent the Night Stalker to get a little shine. Fame chasing via serial killer defense is… certainly a choice.

That election remains the one and only time I supported a Republican: Don Minton. Minton was, and is, a stand-up dude. We don't agree on policy, but I saw him in a courtroom many times and he was like Hall of Fame Boxing Referee Joe Cortez, fair but firm. 

And for that, I was treated like I’d defected to the CIA.

I was called a sell-out by people who couldn’t spell “Chicano” even if you spotted them all the consonants and a dictionary. The old guard in the Democratic Party circled the wagons around Barraza like he was the second coming of Thurgood Marshall.

And then - oh, the irony - Barraza himself declared, very triumphantly, that there was no corruption in the County Courthouse.

You member?

I member - I still have the video!

Click here to walk down memory lane on that one. I know, the quality and editing is cringe, but hell it was almost two decades ago, cut a vato some slack!

Because shortly after that declaration, the public corruption scandal broke like a piñata at a 5 year old's backyard boogie in the Lower Valley.

Barraza won the election.

And within 30 days of being sworn in, he was under investigation for corruption. 

Publicly. Loudly. Embarrassingly.

If memory serves (and it does), the allegations involved attempting to trade sexual favors for favorable rulings. 

Not a rumor. Not chisme. An accusation serious enough to end his career.

And end it did.

He was kicked out of office shortly thereafter.

Disbarred.

Career torched.

And just in case anyone thought he learned his lesson about, you know, following the law—he was arrested in 2019 for holding himself out to be an attorney, despite being disbarred. Apparently even six years ago, respecting legal boundaries was still optional in his mind.

So yes—history proved me right.

Painfully. Publicly. Undeniably.

Now you might be asking: “Jaime, why are you bringing this up now? Why you bringing up old shit?”

Because life has a sense of humor. 

A dark one. Like gallows humor. Like El Paso politics humor.

For all the hell people gave me back then for supporting a Republican in that race, Manny Barraza is back.

Oh yes.

He’s running again.

And here’s the plot twist M. Night Shyamalan wishes he wrote:

He’s running for Congress.

As a Republican.

Let that marinate.

The same guy the Democratic establishment swore by.

The same guy I warned them about.

The same guy who imploded under corruption allegations.

Now rocking red like it was always the plan.

Turns out I wasn’t a sell-out - I was just early.

So to everyone who yelled at me, shunned me, questioned my loyalty, and acted like accountability was betrayal:

I don’t need an apology.

I just need you to recognize a pattern.

Because once again—

loudly, clearly, and for the people in the cheap seats—

I fucking told you so.