EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – Early voting for the District 2 city representative seat is underway, and the four candidates have already been knocking on doors around neighborhoods.
Joshua Acevedo, Veronica Carbajal, Judy Gutierrez and Ben Mendoza are running to take over the seat from current representative Alexsandra Annello who announced she is running for Texas House of Representatives District 77 seat.
KTSM spoke to three candidates who were available. Ben Mendoza did not respond to our request for an interview before the deadline.
Joshua Acevedo
Joshua Acevedo is currently in El Paso ISD Board of Trustees.
He said his experience with budgeting will translate into managing taxpayer dollars and making sure departments that are lacking resources get what they need to function.
One of his top priorities is to pick the right new city manager for El Paso.
“I really look forward to hiring a city manager that is going to be community oriented. It’s going to be ethical. The past one did a lot of damage to our district, and I want to get to work on getting a lot of our streets clean, the very basic stuff,” he said.
He also wants to improve neighborhoods and increase safety.
Veronica Carbajal
Veronica Carbajal currently works as an attorney and has represented El Pasoans in multiple suits against the City of El Paso.
One of the more notable ones was representing residents of Duranguito neighborhood that was facing demolition.
She said she believes her experience as an attorney and abilities to negotiate, and compromise would make her the right candidate for this role.
She also wants to prevent further increases to property taxes and find ways to make the best of taxpayers’ money.
“I have proposed a number of ways of reducing our tax burden on residents. One of them is to stop subsidizing the projects of the wealthiest El Paso and they can pay for their own projects. We need to bring that money back to the neighborhoods,” she said.
Judy Gutierrez
Judy Gutierrez worked as a staff member for four different city representatives and has previously run for city council and county commissioner’s court.
She vowed to give up her salary if elected as a city representative saying that the cost of special election was already enough of a burden for taxpayers.
Gutierrez is vying not to raise property taxes and to ensure safety in neighborhoods.
One of the ways she plans on doing that, she said, is to remove migrant shelters from neighborhoods such as the one at former Bassett Middle School.
“And my pledge to not raise taxes is for [constituents] because we are losing our homes at a high rate, because of taxes. Keep going up. So, I’m running, I’m donating my salary and I’m doing this for all of these people,” she said.
Ben Mendoza
Ben Mendoza did not respond to KTSM’s request for an interview.
According to El Paso Times, he is working as a mediator and is focusing his campaign on tackling rising crime in El Paso as well as forming a citizen police commission.
Early voting ends on December 5 and election day is December 9th.
Candidates for District 2 seat share their plans if elected
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