El Paso Politics

For some reason it seems this years' edition of El Paso's political novela has more twists and turns than La Reina del Sur ! The latest turn is the growing whispers of a political campaign of Dora Oaxaca. The talk around the courthouse has been that she's considering jumping in to the HD 75 race. Talk around town is also that embattled County Commissioner Willie Gandara Jr. would be eyeing that seat as well. I checked with Oaxaca to confirm or deny the idea and she replied, "I am a woman of faith and I have no comment." For those of you that don't speak politics, anything but a solid "no" means either yes, or they are considering it and haven't made up their minds yet. There is no indication of whether she has informed her boss, County Commissioner Willie Gandara. This raises several scenarios which would be interesting for local politics, including a race were both Oaxaca and Gandara are candidates (not likely), or it can be another indicator th...

Former Probate Judge Yvonne Rodriguez is now a candidate in the 388th court. The 388th is a court that most candidates didn't know was going to become available. Rodriguez recently lost her re-election bid to Judge Chew. Don Williams is the other notable candidate in that race, though there may be a few more names. Rodriquez would be the only Hispanic female in the race so far and Hispanic females have a pretty good track record for winning elections in El Paso. Rodriguez's formal announcement will be at the Garden on Octorber 20th, at 5:00pm.

There's a reason I posted the information about the amendments to the constitution. There is also a reason that County Commissioner Willie Gandara is toying with the idea of getting his behind out of the County Commissioner's race and jumping in to the HD 75 race. From The Lion Star Blog by Jaime Abeytia I doubt the media has figured it out yet, so here it is. Willie is a business man and wants to have his cake and eat it too. The filing deadline is in December of this year. Since that is before January, then a rule kicks in that has come up before. Its called resign to run . Since the deadline puts Gandara more than a year before the end of his term, if Gandara wanted to run for State Legislature, he would have to resign from County Commissioner's Court. This came up before a couple of times. In the case of Jose Rodriguez when he resigned to run for State Senate and Jo Anne Bernal was appointed as the County Attorney. When County Judge Veronica Escobar was thinking about r...

There is an election in November to think about. This November. There are several important Constitutional Amendments on the ballot, one with big implications locally have to do with making an exception for some elected officials that would state that they no longer have to resign from the office they hold to run for another. Thanks to Robert Grijalva, there is this guide to help you through. Hope it helps. Analyses 11 Condensed                                                                                            

This is a recording of Beto O'Rourke speaking last night to the LTNA. O'Rourke speaks for a while and then opens it up to a question and answer session. O'Rourke makes some interesting remarks about education, the violence in Mexico, immigration, and federal dollars in El Paso.

I am speaking of course of campaign season. That means a couple of things. It means you will start to see signs go up all over the place. It means a lot of them will be put where they are not supposed to be put and a lot of them will be done incorrectly. It also means crazy campaign shit will happen in Socorro at some point. I guess its fitting to get things kicked off with this fun sign. This is a sign for former Mayor of Socorro, Trini Lopez Socorro is quaint, so homemade signs like this are not unusual. If you look really closely, this might actually be a recycled sign from a previous election. Looks like the NOV part of the sign might have said something else at some point. I'm betting it said May 10, which was the last election date. Also visible looks like a hyphen before the word "Elect". And its missing the legal disclaimer that is required by law to be on campaign signs. Well, it turns out the sign above is actually one of his better signs. As you can see here, h...