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.”