El Paso Politics

The question mark implies that it might have been a mistake. Maybe, but given his track record, I don't think it was a mistake, I just think he doesn't give a damn about rules. El Paso ISD Trustee Mickey Loweree is running for re-election in the Coronado area and appears to have made a video for her campaign and used at least one EPISD campus to do so. You are not allowed to campaign on school grounds unless that campus is a polling location and only during the time that it is being used as a polling location. You also can't use public resources to campaign. But in a recent campaign video posted on her social media page, you can clearly see that she is actually on an EPISD campus. Here's a screenshot and I pointed an arrow at the name of the school. As you can see in the bottom corner, that is her campaign logo - which clearly identifies that this is a political spot. This was from a video shoot that Carlos Sierra posted about a few weeks ago where he was talking about ...

Every once in a while people that don't like the outcome of and election decide that they want to do a recall. And I laugh every single time. Why? Because if these people were any good at winning elections, they wouldn't be pissed about the outcome of an election in the first place. There is currently an effort to recall Mayor Dee Margo and a bunch of members of council. Its going to fail just like the last effort to recall Margo and all the other efforts to recall members of council in the past. The only difference between this effort and the previous effort to recall Margo is that the previous effort at least started off strong. This one - which most of you reading this didn't even know was happening - started off weak and is going to end up not even being in the neighborhood of collecting enough signatures. If you can't even collect that incredibly small number of signatures, you have no hope of actually winning a recall. And guess what? Now you recall people are REA...

How did they cram all that douchedom into one pic? It shouldn't surprise anyone that a race involving Carlos Sierra is getting ugly - but its getting pretty ugly in the two EPISD Trustee races on the westside. And I don't know that I've ever seen school board races get this bad before. This is getting so ugly that it would make campaigns in the lower valley blush. First, Carlos Sierra had a survey run last night at homes on the westside for Mickey Loweree. He and his partner is douchedom, David Saucedo, dropped mail this weekend for Mickey Loweree. Sierra is running the survey because he wants to know if he should go negative against Daniel Call, Mickey Loweree's opponent. The poll is going to tell him that Loweree is in big trouble. So Sierra is going to go negative against Call. So expect to see that happen in the next 7-10 days. And while I'm on the topic... Why in the waste-of-money-hell does anyone hire David Saucedo to do anything other than make a copy of key...

Xavier Miranda's candidate for EPISD School Board Trustee Gary Berglund, ditched the El Paso County Democratic Party's candidate forum despite every accommodation made for him to attend, but apparently made it a priority to attend the GOP candidate forum over the weekend. I don't fault him for going, its a non-partisan race. I fault him for going after having dissed the Democratic Party's forum after they made accommodations for him to be able to attend. Here is a picture from the forum where you can see Mr. Berglund addressing the crowd at the GOP headquarters. As you can see the banner behind him says West El Paso Republican Women and there are anti-Clinton signs hanging in the background. It is also pretty ironic considering Xavier Miranda attended the forum that was sponsored by the local El Paso County Democratic Party. If you recall, I wrote about it a while back, that was the forum in which Miranda accosted one of the candidates who chose not to attend the forum ...

Trump has really wagged the dog on this one. He said there was a state of emergency not the border, which there wasn't. But, his deliberate policies have actually created major problems for local communities along the border by placing the burden of federal functions on to the local tax base. My friend Susie Byrd posted something recently about some items needed to help some more migrants that have been released on the streets of El Paso. And it got me to thinking about something important. Here's a dirty little secret you probably don't know. We use the Officer of Emergency Management to deal with this issue. A Volunteer Coordinator position has been created to deal with the Trumps immigration problem. Actually you probably do know about it now that news reports have come out about it like this one from KVIA . In fact, someone should look into the fact that the city of El Paso had voted to not participate in SB4, but if you ride along the border highway there are frequentl...

I've been covering El Paso politics longer than just about anyone else in town in the legitimate media or the blogosphere. I supported Bernie Sanders for president in the last primary. I'm supporting Beto right now and I'm a little sick of seeing my former Bernie Bro brethren, disgraced former State Rep Norma Chavez, and some local folks try to re-brand Beto as some sort of Republican in Democratic clothing. So since I happen to have a little institutional knowledge on the matter, let me remind you of a younger then-City Representative Beto O'Rourke when he was running for congress a few years ago against incumbent Silvestre Reyes. Team Reyes was portraying Beto has too liberal for El Paso. Maybe some of you forgot about that, but they most certainly said he was too liberal. Before that 2012 election cycle he advocated for domestic partner benefits to be expended to gay couples. Isn't it weird that just a few years ago that was such a controversial policy? Yeah, wel...

County Judge Richard Samaniego is now in an awkward position thanks to a race for El Paso Community College Board of Trustees and his nephew Christian Samaniego. Young Christian is the campaign manager for one of the candidates in the race, El Paso attorney Frank Macias. I know, some of you have heard that he had a different campaign manager but it is in fact, Christian. That race is a district that runs from the Willows down to my precinct in the Lower Valley. Talk about some ugly gerrymandering, amirite? The seat was last held by Judge Selena Solis, who had to vacate the seat when she became a judge. Which is weird because Brian Haggerty is a JP and he holds a seat on that board, but that is a post for another day. Anywho, the seat is currently held by prominent El Paso Attorney Christina Sanchez. Here's where things get awkward for the County Judge. As you can see from this screenshot of Macias' campaign website, it clearly shows that his campaign manager is Christian Samani...