Northeast El Paso City Council Candidates Plagued With Issues

The elections are upon us and one of the most overlooked and underserved areas of town has got some pretty slim pickings when it comes to their candidates.

First of all, this is not meant to help or harm any candidates run, it's all fact. Secondly, I'm not doing this with the other districts because I don't live in them and don't know much about them or about how they have been treated over the years. I have lived in the northeast pretty much the entire time I have lived in El Paso and I know it well.

Well enough to be able to recall all the things we've been passed over on by developers. (Unless it involves buying up the Franklin mountain range but that's no longer an option thanks to several preservation acts). Not to mention big businesses, amusement style attractions, general repair work, and city projects like museums, arts, and entertainment services, etc.  Every year the candidates swear that this time it's going to happen and nothing changes. Mostly due to the area's outdated and long outgrown reputation for being a bad part of town. 30-40 years ago, parts of it were pretty rough but, today we don't have many more problems than any other side of town.

According to El Paso Matters, the candidates face the following issues:

• One will soon go on trial for felony and misdemeanor domestic violence charges.
• Another is currently IN JAIL for allegedly financing his campaign via bogus checks.
• A third has a felony theft conviction on record.
• Another recently lost some goodwill ground for comments downplaying the severity of COVID 19 and hinting that George Floyd bore some responsibility for his own death.
• The final candidate seems pretty clean although, he is taking some flack for, truthfully, being inexperienced. Read more on all of this here.

They do all agree that NE's reputation is its biggest issue and that is true. However, it's a reputation that I believe has been allowed to flourish and has even been played up by certain folks in order to keep people and businesses scared of El Paso's best-kept secret so they can award the various projects and amenities to other, more favored, areas.

You fill in the "folks."

No matter what, my prediction is ... as far as these candidates go ... things will go unchanged, no matter the winner. IF they don't get worse. With the exception of one but, I can't get into that here.

I know this is the country where anyone can grow up to hold office but, geez,  I think we've gone way overboard with honoring that pledge. At every political level.