On June 14, Deborah Paz created a PAC called “Women’s Voices for Political Reform” and then sent out a media alert proclaiming she was initiating a petition to recall an unnamed member of City Council.
Her announcement was utterly ignored by the media, although Martin Paredes reported that the target of her recall was Rep. Joe Molinar of District 4.
You will recall that Molinar, a distinguished US Marine veteran and retired police officer, was accused of asking a woman to dance, twice, at a City luncheon and of making the complainant feel uncomfortable. (Sounds like a capital offense 😂)
We then learned that Paz, a service clerk at Walgreens since 2010, had been a paid employee of Rep. Cassandra Hernandez’s 2020 campaign for reelection and that the address of her PAC has the same address as the political consulting business of Hernandez’s husband, Jeremy Jordan.
Paz went on to file ethics complaints against Chief Internal Auditor Edmundo Calderon (dismissed), Rep. Alexsandra Annello (dismissed), and Rep. Brian Kennedy (hearing pending).
In short, Paz targeted all the major political opponents of Cassandra Hernandez, who was recently reprimanded for abusing her City gas card privilege and is among those facing an investigation by outside law enforcement.
So far, Paz’s batting average is zero.
If her complaint against Kennedy is dismissed, she will have a perfect 0-4 record of failure.
RECALL PETITION TARGETING REP. MOLINAR FAILS
Paz had until today at 6:00pm to submit a petition to the City Clerk with thousands of required signatures of District 4 registered voters.
At 6:01pm, we confirmed with Assistant City Clerk Diana Nunez that nothing was ever submitted to her office and that the petition has legally failed.
Here is the truth. Paz never intended to assemble a group of blockwalkers to gather signatures for a recall. Her chief aim is to do as much political damage as possible to Molinar, much as she is trying to harm Calderon, Kennedy, and Annello.
PAZ FAILS TO FILE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REPORTS
Paz was required to file a Finance Report with the State of Texas by July 17 but filed it more than one month late, on August 24. She reports a single in-kind contribution of $100 made by herself for designing her PAC logo! She did not collect one single penny from any donors as of June 30, the end of the filing period.
Paz was also required to file a Finance Report with the City of El Paso by July 15 but failed to do so, which is a clear ethics violation.
Jordan should have helped her more!
The big loser in this fiasco is, of course, Cassandra Hernandez, who will soon be recalled from office by thousands of her enraged constituents.
More on that soon…