Luis Sariñana is a Big Cry Baby

Challenger Anna Perez (www.AnnaPerez2008.com) and incumbent Luis Sariñana squared off in a debate aired on Saturday on KVIA in their bid for the County Commissioner’s Seat for Precinct 1 representing El Paso’s east side. The debate was short, lasting only a few minutes, but there was one development not recently seen, at least by me, during the campaign. 

 

It appears that the incumbent, Luis Sariñana, is feeling the heat and is now trying to position himself as a victim or martyr. When asked what were the biggest issues facing the Commissioners Court, Sariñana replied that it was the sports park! I’m not sure what planet he’s been living on, but apparently they don’t have any news from El Paso there.

 

Maybe Sariñana forgot about the guys in blue coats with the giant yellow letters FBI stamped on the back that went through his office. That’s entirely possible given that Mr. Sariñana swears all that was taken was a few pens. C’mon, who’s he kidding? Why would the FBI only take a few pens? I’ve been to county offices, trust me when I tell you that there is nothing special about their pens!

 

When the challenger, Anna Perez was asked the same question, Ms. Perez mentioned a couple of issues and among them, the on-going public corruption investigation. She made no specific allegation against Sariñana, only mentioning that the investigation was a concern to voters and a distraction to county business.

 

This is when Sariñana decided to show his new strategy. He said that Perez had “attacked” him! Talk about playing the pobre sito! That’s what he calls an attack? Did he not see another challenger’s signs, Tomas Rey (that’s right, the guy who owns a town!) who failed to make the run-off? In case you live in another part of town or didn’t see the signs, check it out. Do you see the big letters FBI?

 

Or how about this other version of the same sign?

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On a sidebar, for a guy who owns a town, he had the cheapest, ugliest signs of any candidate in any race this season! And trust me, that’s saying something when he had Maria Guadalupe Dempsey’s and Alejandro Lozano’s signage to compete against for the title.

 

Though I think it’s hilarious, it’s not an attack, and neither was Perez’s answer to the question. This is a clear effort by Sariñana to position himself as a victim. Clearly he’s hoping for some amount of sympathy from voters.

 

Pathetic if you ask me.

 

Since he obviously doesn’t know what an attack is, I thought I’d demonstrate one to him. An attack would be if the opponent mentioned the on-going investigation by the FBI every chance they had. Or if they reminded the voters of his press-conference he called to profess his innocence and then refused to take questions. If he were under attack, someone might say, “If you didn’t do anything wrong Luis, why not take a couple of questions?” Or heck, they might say that the most recent person to make a deal stated that two sitting members of Commissioners court took bribes. They might remind the public that the only members of the court that were around then and are still sitting members are Anthony Cobos, Dan Haggerty, and that’s right, you guessed it…Luis Sariñana. Haggerty never met a camera crew he didn’t like and the other two refuse to comment.

 

An attack might also remind the public that no one that has fallen under suspicion in this investigation has walked away from the scandal without some sort of prison sentence. Plus, what is going to be the cost to the taxpayers for a special election to replace Luis if he goes down? That’s what an attack sounds like Luis, since you obviously don’t know what one sounds like.

 

Perez hasn’t gone after him on the public corruption scandal, as some, including me, think she should. She’s only mentioned the obvious distraction it has caused the county. Voters tend to have a short memory and I would hate to see him skate by because people have forgotten about the FBI investigation. Even though I think Anna Perez should go after Sariñana more strongly, the fact that she hasn’t says a lot about her character and her ethics draw a sharp comparison with those of her opponent.

 

I am urging all fellow east-siders to send Luis Sariñana packing. It’s time we improve the east side and get rid of at least one of the areas elected officials that are involved with an ethics investigation!

 

Then we can focus on giving Rachel Quintana that change of venue she wants so bad.

 

 

 

 

Twelve Minutes with Richard Wiles

In all the chaos over the last week about the Democratic Party County Convention, and my run-in with Carlos Leon’s daughter, I forgot to mention my interview with Richard Wiles, candidate for sheriff of El Paso County.

 

Mr. Wiles was gracious enough to spend some time answering some questions for me at the convention during a lunch break. As I’ve said before, it says a lot about a candidate when they choose to spend time answering the questions of a constituent (hear that Luis Sariñana?).

 

Our conversation really revolved around three questions. One was about Leon’s change in message to “family values”, the other about Leon pushing the fact that he’s bilingual and Wiles is not, and about an allegation made by Leon on the Barbara Perez show.

 

I asked Wiles what he thought about Leon’s new message of family values and if he felt that it was code for bringing up Wiles’ sexuality. Wiles told me that he wasn’t going to discuss his personal life but went one to tell me about his own family values, that fact that he’s a divorced father of two, and that he was a Christian. He stated that he hoped that the message wasn’t insinuating that Leon was the only candidate that had strong family values. I finished up that line of conversation with a question about how relevant he thought the family values issue was to the sheriff’s race. He answered by stating that he didn’t feel it was all that relevant and that experience and qualifications were more important.

 

We then talked about being bilingual. Wiles said the he does understand Spanish and is learning everyday, but doesn’t feel comfortable enough with the language to try to speak it in public. He cut right to the chase and said that the main issues is whether or not he’s able to communicate with his staff and the people of the community. To that, he stated that he’s been doing that over his entire career and feels that he is very capable of communicating with constituents. He also mentioned that communications means more than just knowing Spanish because there are several languages spoken in El Paso and utilizes interpreters of various languages, and American Sign, when the need arises.

 

Our conversation ended with a discussion about the allegation made by Leon on the Barbara Perez Show a couple of weeks back. He alleged (see previous posting for details) that Leon reassigned the Internal Affairs Unit to fall under his friends, insinuating that Wiles had something to hide. When asked to clarify, Leon stated that he could so no reason for doing so other than personal benefit. Wiles was unaware of the allegation and stated that I was the first person to bring it to his attention or ask the question. Wiles explained that he made the move as a cost-saving initiative and to “flatten” the organization. Wiles stated that he initiated the changes but left the specifics of the various reassignments to the incoming interim-Chief.

 

Wiles told me that the move eliminated a couple of positions, increased efficiency, and saved the city about $70,000.

 

So there you have it. Time to make your decision on who to support. All I know is it’s getting late in the game and I still haven’t made up my mind.

 

It seems to me that the race will come down to a battle for east El Paso. From the data I’ve seen so far, it appears that Wile’s strength is in the Northeast and Westside, Leon’s is central and the valley. Looks like who ever wins the east side may end up being the next sheriff.

 

At least we have the option of choosing between two well-qualified candidates instead of two jokers. Who ever wins has big shoes to fill.

Jerome Tighlman Has Some ‘Splainin’ to do!

Jerome doesn’t answer or return phone calls or emails. I have tried to track him down, literally for months. At first, I was going to help him out. Not because I thought Reyes was doing a bad job, but I have the uncontrollable urge to root for the underdog. After everything I’ve learned over the last few days, I can no longer hold my breath for a returned call nor support his candidacy. Between you and me dear readers, I doubt he gets the signatures necessary to make it on the ballot. In fact, I’d be surprised if he’s able to get more than 100 signatures.

 

And underdog he is. Jerome’s never won a public election in El Paso. Not for anything, ever. Even when he was in the run-off and had the chance to win against a political novice with questionable residency in the district, he still lost.

 

So with that tradition of losing (and problems like this from the last time he ran: http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/sworncomp/2005/250461.pdf), I can’t understand what makes him want to take on arguably the most popular, and definitely the most powerful, Congressman to ever represent El Paso.

 

Living here only a few years sometimes puts me at a disadvantage because I don’t always know some of the back story of stuff that transpires here in town. When Jerome filed to run for Congress as an Independent, I naively thought it was because he really was an Independent, or someone who’d recently become disillusioned with the Democratic Party.

 

But after attending the convention and listening to him on the radio during the following week, I started to snoop around to find out more about him. What piqued my curiosity was the fact that he even attended the Democratic event in the first place, but also the language he used on the radio in the following week. He kept referring to “we”… as in “we” need to focus on what’s most important to us, “we” need to stop all the in-fighting, and “we” discussed this and that in our caucus.

 

We????? I thought he was an Independent?!?!

 

So I did some poking around and found out he has a deep and rich history in the party. Actually, it wasn’t all that hard to find out, he was bragging about it on the air. It’s the one election, albeit only within the party, that he’s won.

 

Dave from Downtown, aka Dirty Downtown Dave, aka Dave from the Darkside, formerly known as Dave from Chaparral, had called into question Jerome’s character last summer. He said that Jerome had invited Dave and another Dave to have lunch to talk about issues. The other Dave in question was the famous All-Talk, No Action-Car Washing-Shoe Shinning-Drunkard from the Lower Valley. DDD said that it was nothing more than a recruiting ploy on Jerome’s part.

 

Jerome is very beguiling. He does his best to come across humble, intellectual, and studious. The guy lays it on reaaaalll thick.

 

Oh, and did I mention the fact that he loves the thesaurus and cheesy, overly-complex metaphors? This guy could over-complicate a trip to the bathroom. I’ve heard several people talk about how he’s a great speaker and I must say that he never struck me as a good speaker. He knows a few big words, so what? There used to be a skit on the show In Living Color of a guy that misused big five-dollar words because he was trying to sound smarter than he was. Reminds me a lot of Jerome.

 

A good speaker doesn’t take all day to make his point. A good speaker is easily understood by his audience. This guy overshoots his audience and half the time you are left wondering what the hell he just said.

 

He must bore his students to tears.

 

The part that I don’t get is why he’s running as an Independent. Actually, I do know. He’s running as an Independent because he didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell (see, I can use clichés and metaphors too) of beating Reyes in the primary. He doesn’t have one in the general either, so it makes no difference.

 

I suspect what he’s going to do is take a stab at getting the signatures and then drop out and make another stab at the city council. Here’s the problem that he’s facing. He has no constituency and has no large, steady flow of money to mount and effective race for Congress, city council, or anything else.

 

He hasn’t figured out the reason he gets beat, aside from the metaphors and flowery language, he gets out-worked. He hasn’t figured out that the key to winning a race in El Paso is to knock on every door of every regular voter in the area. No amount of money can change that. Just ask Joe Wardy.

 

There are a couple of people I know that are eyeing a run for city council to oust the very vulnerable Melina “Candyland” Castro. At least one of them has a real shot at beating her. Jerome has already lost that battle and if he enters he will only hurt the chances of a challenger.

 

As a veteran, I can’t get passed a major (no pun intended) point of contention that I have. He’s not a true Independent and therefore his candidacy is based on deception. There is no honor in that. Honor still means something to a lot of people, especially veterans.

 

So, taking a page out of Jerome’s playbook, a leopard doesn’t change his spots. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, the grass is always greener on the other side, many hands make light work, he who laughs last, it ain’t over til it’s over, and read my lips. Oops, sorry. All this talk of Jerome gave me the sudden compulsion to spout out metaphors. You get robbed by gun point or by ball point, if you can’t take the heat, don’t worry, be happy, life is like a box of chocolates, that dog won’t hunt.

 

Help, I can’t stop! I’ve been possessed by Jerome’s metaphors.

But seriously, I hope people who sign his petition realize the words of another famous cliché from another world-class slick talker, “there’s a sucker born every minute.”