Jaime is Back! Give Him and Lyda a Click!

I'm kind of joking about the "him and Lyda" thing, but serious about you supporting Jaime's blog.  Some of you might remember that he quit blogging recently and went out with a head full of anger.  I said he'd be back in a week and I was close!  It's been more than a week.  The good news is that he's back.  You can read his blog by clicking HERE.

You must remember that after the election Jaime will still be a blogger and Lyda Ness won't be pulling his strings.  I truly believe he makes for interesting reading when he's not carrying water for someone - and I know the interesting reading part will be back right after the runoff. 

With that said...

Jaime is back blogging because Ness and her team are freaking out over the fact that they can't generate more negative media attention for Lilly.  An inside source (someone who is feeding me all the stuff that goes on behind closed doors at the Ness campaign) tells me that they tried like mad to make yesterday's El Paso Times opinion piece generate some buzz, but failed to do so.  The Times, Channel 4 and just about everybody else is tired of the Ness' constant pitching and they proved it by putting her story about Lilly on a Monday... The worst day for local news other than summer Fridays with Sunday and Saturday being the best days. 

Ness' media strategy is identical to the one she used in her judge's race, only this time she's running for an office people actually kind of care about.  Her wild accusations, grandstanding and constant harassment of assignments editors and news directors have turned everyone off and she needs someone like Jaime to keep spreading the nasty rumors she's inventing.  Poor Jaime can't say "no" to a damsel in distress, especially when he's taken this whole mess so personally (I have advice for Jaime going forward in a bit) - so he jumps back into the game on her behalf.  Boo hoo for his reasoning, but it's good that he's back because he will eventually move on to new topics - topics we enjoy.

What Lyda hasn't really planned for is that her strategy to paint Lilly in such a bad light, doesn't transfer votes to her, it just takes them away from Lilly.  In order to win a runoff when you are behind, you need to get people to switch from the other side to your side - Ness isn't achieving this.  However, Lilly is masterfully gobbling up all the votes she can from the other candidates.  More agonizing for Ness is that the EP Times editorial from Monday that admonished Lilly for switching sides on an issue, actually ended up being printed off and handed out at a well attended bible study last night as evidence of Lilly's commitment to the voters.  Not mentioned on the editorial is where Ness stands on those issues and from what I understand the room full of people felt Lilly made her stance on the issues clear!  The plan to all go early vote together as a part of their weekly bible study.

Remember, if Lilly brings 25 to 50 new voters to the polls, she can't be beat.  Ness must have every single person who voted for her come out and vote plus another 100 or so new voters.  I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm saying it's almost impossible. 

Another issue both Lyda and Jaime haven't thought about is the fact that the rumor around the Texas Ethics Commission is that her complaint might be the most frivolous one made in years.  Word is we're about to get some info on what they've decided in the case and Lilly stands to be able to hit Ness with a counter claim that could result in a fine of up to $10,000!  And let's not forget, the police department/ DA's office looked at her criminal complaint, laughed and went back to eating their donuts. 

You must remember that Ness included an email in the complaint from the city attorney's office to Representative Lilly on the subject of Ness' open record request.  Ness cites this as evidence that Lilly was campaigning on city time... even though it's required by the rules the city attorney alert Lilly and the fact that Ness' own actions were the catalyst for her name being mentioned in Lilly email.  The laughter was quite loud when certain parties were apprised of this email and Ness' claims.

Also, it may come out that Ness' name appeared in 10th floor emails because they're from Ness and they're invites to the sitting members of council to her fundraisers.  So it seems as if Lyda thinks it's okay for her to send campaign material to the 10th floor, but it's not okay for other citizens to do so?!?!?!

I could go on and on, but you get the piont - Ness is desparate and it's going to cost her money and quite possibly cost her supporter some money too. 

Also, the ridiculous claim that Jaime is now repeating that I, or Ann Lilly has threatened her family is going to get them both sued.  You can't acuse someone of committing a crime when you know for a fact that no crime has been committed (remember this when you file charges against someone and they aren't true).  Stop making stuff up to make yourselves look like victims!  It's very childish and everyone who reads, or hears you two make that claim thinks little of you.

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I think it is important to point out here that my involvement in this race was only spurred on by what I saw as an unfair media strategy (using the comments section of my blog in some cases) by the Ness campaign.  I simply wanted to throw my weight around to show Ness that you can't get away with spouting off bullshit for headlines when you owe the IRS and many other people significant sums of money.  The tax thing bothers the hell out of me because I pay my share and only a low-own piece of you know what would shirk their responsibility on purpose, which she has done. 

Anywho...

I don't fault Jaime for working for Lyda - she has a power over her followers that is Koresh-like to the say the least.  He feels he's going to get something for his work and he might need whatever it is he is getting. 

I fault the local media for being used by Ness.  The one thing I love about Sito Negron is that he will never let himself and his pen be used to lob campaign bombs.  At Newspaper Tree he never allowed himself to be compromised.  I can't speak that highly of the news outlets in this town after the abysmal coverage they supplied to the public during this race.  They glossed over Ness' tax and lawsuit issues in order to attack Lilly with an unsigned judge's order.  WTF?  The local media blew it big time and I'm not sure they even know it.

I've spent a lot of time on this issue on this blog because somebody had to say something to somebody.  Too bad nobody reads my blog, so this was just an exercise in therapy for me like yelling at a tree in a forest to pour out all that pent up frustration. 

I don't mind writing to an audience of zero like I do here every day - it's therapeutic to know that I'm my biggest, and only fan. 

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My advice to Jaime is pretty simple - don't take things so personally.  It's the blogosphere and we don't matter.  Getting so mad that you make mistakes like posting emails from "Lower Valley Dave" and claiming that I (David K) wrote them when it's clear I didn't, is just plain dumb and born out of severe anger.  He should never let a nobody like me get to him.  What do I matter?

He should have never fully quit!  The furniture stores always say they're "going out of business," but they never actually do it!  If you quit and you come back you lose lots and lots of credibility/face.  Take a break, write about cloud formations, but never quit unless you are really going to quit. 

Jaime doesn't allow negative comments about him to be posted on his blog, but he reads all the ones you submit for his approval.  To him it hurts just as much as if they were posted.   He can expect some mean words and he could have avoided it.  Again, he takes this all too personally. 

In the future I would not be so involved in people's campaigns and then put the weight on my shoulders of trying to make all their lies come true through your blog.  He should have told Lyda a long time ago "stop lying to me, you're making me look like an asshole."  Every lawyer in town felt for Jaime when he posted the unsigned judge's order and then a bunch of nonsense orders from the judge trying to prove his claim that Lilly owes $117,000.  Those lawyers know that Lyda set Jaime up to look like a fool if anyone actually took the time to read the documents.  Well, I did look and he looked like a fool and it hurt me in the long run to be the guy who had to show Jaime that lesson.  Lyda knew they were no good when she put him up to posting them.  That's not a nice thing to do and the whole time Jaime was angry at me for proving him wrong, he should have been angry at her.  She knew!

The golden rule to doing someone's bidding is to admit it up front.  I have never shied away from the fact that my living comes from designing and constructing housing developments, commercial developments, roads, bridges and all kinds of utilities.  Where I stand on issues related to that industry is clearly defined.   Jaime should start thinking about saying "I'm working with Lyda Ness to get the word out on how back Ann Lilly is for El Paso."  It's an easy thing to say and it makes your audience know they can trust you... and God knows he wants his audience to trust him!

Lastly - there are no winners and there no losers.  At least there isn't supposed to be.  I don't win or lose if Ness is elected.  She won't do much harm in the few months they let her serve (she will be removed from the office within one year and I have that on great authority) and if anything she will make for some wonderful open letters.  If Lilly wins... okay... who cares.  The next race is right around the corner and it's a big one!  What Jaime doesn't get is that none of the candidate I really like ever win in this city.  I'm in an extreme minority!  I'm the green and blue penguin here in El Paso and always will be.  I'm used to not having my candidates win - hell, what would I do if they won?  I'd have to find something new to bitch about!

The bottom line?  It's good to have Jaime back.  I'm really going to be either not doing this at all or at best very sporadically in the near future due to some major changes in my life, so you're going to need something to read when I'm gone. Go click the link and read what Jaime has to say today... and tomorrow and the day after that.

Comments

[Lisa Turner]

Ness doesn't know a single issue facing the city and that is why her campaign is being run the way it is. Ness is a a MESS

[100% voter]

Agree. Lisa - you ran a good race - you stuck to the issues and had a sense of humor too!

[Diana]

Don't give up, Lisa.

As for Rep. Lilly, I was very disappointed in what she did. I read all your reasoning, David, but it still looks bad. I LIKE Rep. Lilly and hope she wins. All she had to do was keep quiet and she would have won it hands down. Now I am not so sure. Aligning herself with Manny Hinojosa was a BIG mistake.

[Manny]

Saw Jaime at Jo Anne Bernal's fundraiser last week sitting with Eddie Holguin. Rumor had it that he was Ness' campaign treasurer and left the blogging world in anticipation of gaining a REAL job and working for Ness, then the run off and now the potential that she is not a shoe in and her negative campaigning may have hurt her and not helped her. Perhaps that is why he returned because his job depends on her win? Interesting to see Ness and Mejia sitting in the same table as well. Not really interesting more like FRIGHTENING.

[sees him too]

Jaime shows up to all the fundraisers I go to. Everybody feels sorry for him because we all know that nobody wants him there. He is a turncoat and will do anything for money or some quick power. Mrs. Bernal was mortified to see him there. It's a theme I see now at all events. Some people have told others not to tell him they are having a fundraiser. He only gets calls when they want gossip to get out. He is always used by others but thinks he is important. If he knew what they said it would not be good.

[bernal fan]

I like Joanne Bernal and I am sure Messy Nessy and Mejia showed up to "see and be seen". I am sure Joanne had nothing to do with them showing up and probably wished they would go away.

I used to go to a lot of fundraisers and the most fun was watching the wannabe's try to connect to the super cool. Just like high school.

[reader of a blog]

It took me three tries over two days to finally connect to Jaime's crappy website. My computer literate son told me that whoever made that page didn't know sh!t about making web pages.

When I did finally get there I see he's got a few comments that appear to be from his family and friends. How pathetic.

You can't read his work because it's mundane and poorly written. His news is old news or unimportant news. Most of what he writes is done as a favor to some group. He clearly doesn't write his own thoughts, he puts out other people's garbage.

I won't be going back, I tried to support the bloggers but his page won't load and he is not interesting.

You're a right-wing crazy wingnut but you are at least funny and you don't take yourself too seriously. If you could get over your Bush love I'd be more happy with what you write.

I hope you aren't going away.