El Paso Politics

I haven't had a chance to interview Al Weisenberger, candidate for District 1 on city council until last night. Weisenberger spoke at the Westside Democrats meeting last night and I have video of his remarks. As I mentioned before, my video camera battery died so I had to do an audio-only interview with him.

As I mentioned previously I was going to try to get as many interviews with candidates for school board as possible and I conducted an interview with Dori Fenenbock, candidate for EPISD District 7 last night at the Westside Democrats monthly meeting.  Normally this would've been an on-camera interview but I didn't have a full charge on my camera battery when I went to the meeting. I think I got some video of her addressing the membership and if I have that, I will post it later today. For now, here's the audio of our interview in which I asked her about her background, what she thought of charter schools, questions about the budget, etc. 

What is it with candidates and District 6? A few years ago Zulema Lazarin challenged Eddie Holguin for the District 6 race.  She didn't actually mean to. She was actually going to file in District 5 but didn't realize that she didn't actually live in District 5 until she went to file.  So she ran in District 6 instead. She picked up the nickname "Wrong-way Lazarin" after that. B-t-dubs...there was a Lazarin sighting a few weeks back at that ultra conservative women's group run by District 5 candidate Rosa Cabrera (Arellano). Current District 6 candidate Mike Pickett  is apparently this cycle's "Wrong-way" candidate. And this time, quite literally. He was urging a friend from California to move to El Paso because of how great it is here. (I was genuinely glad to see that he really is positive about El Paso because I'm sick of everyone running this town down every chance they get, so good for him). Anywho, he told his bud to pack up and point h...

If you're a candidate in EPISD, YISD, SEISD, EPCC, or SISD and are interested in being interviewed to give voters a chance to hear you, shoot me an email at thelionstarblog@gmail.com I'm trying to get to as many of you as I can so sending me your contact info will make it a little easier on me. You probably aren't going to get many chances to get your voice out there so send me an email.

Rick Bonart, candidate in the crowded race for District 1 was the first candidate in that race to drop mail. It's surprising considering how many candidates are in the race. It's actually pretty late. The rest of candidates will likely start dropping mail as well. Those that can afford to anyway which is likely just the top-tier candidates.  I took a quick look at it. Lots and lots of text.

Tax cuts. We'd all like to see them. Some candidates are saying they would cut taxes, which is great. Everybody wants a tax cut. But alas, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You see with a tax cut, there has to be something else. Spending cuts. The voters approved all the projects for the bonds. So that leaves services. What services would be cut in order to pay for the tax cuts. Thats the thing no one tells you, a tax cut really isn't free. You have to pay for it somehow. In this case, it would be paid through reduced services. There's a $30k tax exemption that takes a big bite out of the city budget according to news reports last week. One candidate wants to more than triple that exemption to $100k. So the "cut taxes" crowd are perfectly happy to tell you that they will cut your taxes, but do you know what they won't tell you? How. They won't tell you the ugly truth. Cutting taxes will be painful. It will be painful to the tax payer because you w...

Another of the "transparency" candidates supported by Jaime O. Perez and his allies made a remark a while back that I wrote about regarding a debate. Candidate for District 5, Rosa Cabrera (Arellano) stated that she was ready to debate her opponent City Rep Mike Noe but he was a no-show. As I mentioned before that turned out to not be true. As I was perusing social media over the weekend I came across a post that actually confirmed that Cabrera's (Arellano) assertion that her opponent was a no-show was in fact, not true.  Here is a post from the debate moderator David Crowder that confirms that wasn't true.  As Crowder states, she's cleaned up her Facebook.  But I happen to have the post in question.