When Mayor Renard Johnson decided to give an exclusive media interview to discuss his first six months in office, he did not go to Adam Powell, Lesley Engle, or Julia Spencer.
No, that would have meant tough questions from actual investigative journalists.
Instead he went to Bob Moore of El Paso Matters because he knew he would be treated as royalty, asked useless questions, and be permitted to bloviate aimlessly for as long as he wished.
We invite you to read Moore’s interview with the Mayor in its entirety but with a critical eye. It stands as a supreme example of how not to interview an elected politician.
Moore begins by asking Johnson what he likes about his job, to which Johnson gives a meandering reply, claiming the City is making “progress” without explaining what constitutes progress.
He then asks the Mayor what he is doing to get the City “moving faster.” The Mayor gives an empty, rambling reply without making a single substantive point.
Towards the middle of the interview, Moore questions the Mayor about our property tax without mentioning his campaign promise to lower it if elected or citing the 4.3% increase for FY 2026, giving him a pass on his most glaring policy failure.
When the Mayor falsely claims the City is providing seniors and the disabled with $380 per year in new tax relief, Moore (to his credit) reminds him the correct figure is $19, just enough enough to buy a grande caffè latte at Starbucks every four months!
At one point, the Mayor concedes the FY 2026 budget for streets is only $10 million, the same as FY 2025 and about $35 million short of our needs. He states “We’re going to have to figure out a way to come up with a dedicated funding mechanism to get that done.”
During his campaign, he promised repeatedly to fix our streets and has had six months to think about how to achieve this. Moore did not press him on this issue or remind him about his pledge.
When Moore brings up the proposed Debt Plaza for the downtown tract of Interstate 10, he does not ask the Mayor about the price tag, estimated to be $412 million, or press him on what he means when he states that “an opportunity of this magnitude should not be fully on the backs of the taxpayers.”
Let us be clear. Not only has the Mayor failed to keep his primary campaign promises, to lower our property tax and fix our streets, but he has also failed to propose a single major policy initiative during his first six months in office.
He has had an opportunity at every City Council meeting to put up agenda items and provide administrative and fiscal direction to the City Representatives and staff, yet he has done absolutely nothing of substance and Moore refused to put his feet to the fire.
The interview is a fluff piece for the record books that reveals nothing we do not already know.
It is media reports like this that keep the voting public strategically uninformed so the Oligarchs can continue to maintain their iron grip on the City, County, and State Delegation.
What else could we expect from El Paso Matters, which shamelessly promoted Johnson’s mayoral campaign while attacking his opponent at every opportunity?
El Paso deserves better.