El Paso Politics

Primary season for the 2020 election season has taken an early start. Judge Ruben Nuñez got the ball rolling having a fundraiser in his hid for the 346th District Court, followed by Judge Carlos Carrasco also getting his fundraiser for reelection going. But probably the earliest start to the 2020 campaign was the sheriff's race. Incumbent Richard Wiles typically has a non-viable opponent jump in and try to take him on. The last guy was a Republican named Tom Buchino challenger with really corny internet videos. Wiles trounced Buchino in that November election. There's talk that he is going to likely take another stab at the office, but the outcome is going to be the same. One of the primary challengers is Carlos Carillo, and there was some talk of El Paso Municipal Police Officer Union boss Ron Martin making a run at the job but that has recently died out. I'm doing a blog post on that race tomorrow because there's some interesting things to consider in that race. But u...

I've been attending several school board meetings lately and I noticed something that is really starting to bother me. For what good reason do we allow the superintendents (and the EPCC College President) to sit at the dais with the elected trustees? Not only do they sit up with the people elected to make decisions on behalf of the community, they almost always sit next to the Board President. Let me give you some context before I go on. First, this isn't aimed at any particular superintendent, so don't get your chones in a wad. The superintendent is the ONLY employee that the trustees oversee. The trustees are the super's boss. Same deal with the President of EPCC. The Super is supposed to execute the policy directives of the Board of Trustees. Super's are subordinate to the Trustees. Now, lets talk about other local elected bodies for a minute. The County's version of the superintendent is the County Administrator. That is the staffer that answers directly to ...

Ya know, its been too long since I've given this award out. But since TxDOT shirking their responsibilities to clean up medians has been getting some attention, I thought I'd take a minute to highlight something interesting. You really can tell a lot about a guy by the racist things they post on social media. A recently fired TxDOT district engineer and a former mayoral candidate that tried to convince everyone he wasn't a Tio Taco anti immigrant enjoyed a laugh about immigration. Now lets pull over real quick so that I can explain something in case it isn't clear. David Saucedo is not the Douchebag of the Week. That foo is an every day Douchebag. I'm talking about Bob Bielek. He refers to asylum seekers facetiously as, "just the kind of trash we need to make this world a third world country, just like the culture they bring with them." "trash". That guy was a well-paid public servant for years. He was the local head honcho for TxDOT for many yea...

Joke of a presidential candidate Benjamin Leyva, who also happens to be a chiropractor that went to Hanks High School and launched a "presidential" bid recently appears to have made some gay slurs in text messages published on a local fitness-based Instagram account. He appears to be running as a brown Donald Trump because in addition to using the gay slur "faggot" he also used the term "pussy", "bitch", and "fucking piece of shit". Also echoing the Donald Trump model for running for president - he's completely unqualified for the job. I had heard he was considering running a few months ago when a friend of mine on social media inboxed me about him. She told me that his presidential bid was likely just some sort of stunt for media attention that he could parlay into free advertising for his business. He was recently featured in a story on KTSM about his candidacy . Now I don't know what the cyber-beef here is, but it appears to ...

City Rep Peter Svarzbein is in a war of words against TxDOT over the fact that TxDOT basically doesn't care about maintaining their roads anymore. Its an issue I raised with my State Rep a while back too. But like all news in this town, no one cares when it happens to the brown side of town, it only is newsworthy when there are problems where rich, white, westsiders live. Anywho, Svarzbein is right on this one and hopefully the delegation will start knocking some heads around to get TxDOT to start maintaining the roads again. And since he represents rich, white westsiders, its in the news. TxDOT says that they have to fill pot holes and make other repairs on streets and that is why they don't have the dollars available to clean the weeds from the medians. That answer implies that they actually fix the pinche pot holes in state roads...because I haven't seen that to be the case. What is dangerous about Svarzbein's little stunt of cleaning the medians himself, is that it ...

This is a long post, but its  with  the read. For those of you that aren't sitting on the edge of your seat watching the state  legislative  session, there is at least one really important bill that is making its way  through  the legislature.  Its a bill in with the Republicans are allegedly going to fix public education in Texas by capping local entities ability to raise taxes in exchange for some  education  funding.  If that sounds like its robbing Peter to pay Paul, that is because it is.  If the sentence I wrote earlier that said  Republicans were going to fix public education also sounded funny to you, it should. Republicans are a joke on public education. But some Democratic Reps not only went along with it, but are actually bragging about it. Now for background, the state has been shirking off their responsibilities to counties for a long time now. And they have passed on those responsibilities to local taxing entities...

Okay, its impossible to write this post without acknowledging one important fact... Josh Carter got his ass kicked in ANOTHER election. Also, every single incumbent in Socorro ISD lost reelection. You'd think that was some big union-led revolution at the ballot box. But it wasn't. Socorro AFT under-performed and lost a ton of political clout unnecessarily and it is going to have a serious impact on their credibility. They didn't endorse any of the incumbents but they also didn't leverage any union power. At one point late in early voting I saw a social media post that said that a really embarrassingly small number of union members had voted during early voting. That was the writing not the wall for Josh Carter and frankly the union not being able to turn out its members in a school board race is a sign of a weak union. Why would trustees give you the time of day if they don't have anything to fear? Elections have consequences and if you're the union that determi...