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We have long known that El Paso Matters engages in political bias, but we never expected they would permit a paid consultant of a mayoral campaign to publish a guest column attacking his client’s political opponent.
According to the Secretary of State, former El Paso City Rep. Peter Svarzbein is the registered agent of El Camino 18, LLC, which was recently paid $5,000 by the Renard Johnson campaign for political consulting services.
Svarzbein, whose abysmal tax-and-spend voting record as a City Council representative rivals Gassandra’s, published an essay yesterday accusing Kennedy of “mismanagement,” of having “limited experience,” and of focusing on “personal ambition rather than the needs of the community.”
Should we be surprised that El Paso Matters CEO Bob Moore and Editor Cindy Ramirez would allow Svarzbein to use their “media” outlet to support Renard Johnson’s mayoral campaign?
Let’s not forget that since its incorporation in 2019, El Paso Matters has received substantial financial support from Johnson’s major supporters, Hunt and Foster and WestStar Bank, with smaller donations from Ortega, Houghton, Beto, Escudero, Shapleigh, and Yellen.
Their Board of Directors includes Cindy Conroy of WestStar Bank and Ralph Espinoza, an executive of Foster’s company Franklin Mountain Management.
We reached out to Svarzbein but he declined to comment.
Shortly after 3:30pm, a disclosure was appended to the end of Svarzbein’s screed: “A consulting company owned by Svarzbein was paid by the Johnson campaign for political consulting work before the Nov. 5 election but has not worked for the campaign during the runoff.”
Does Moore really expect us to believe that Svarzbein’s commentary is ethical simply because Johnson’s campaign paid him before November 5? How does he know that he was not paid after November 5?
Soon after we posted this report on Facebook, Bob Moore provided a comment, to which Max Grossman responded:
So Moore is telling us that El Paso Matters provides its readers with “tools” for evaluating op-eds by paid campaign surrogates. Now we’ve heard everything.
He and Ramirez should retract Svarzbein’s commentary and issue a public apology.
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