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Voters Give Lilly Four More Years.
Ann Morgan Lilly won her second term as City Representative District 1 in El Paso Saturday with a significant win over three challengers.
Lilly won nearly 57% of the vote and would have won by a wider margin had the two non-candidates not been in the race. Ric Schecter and Dion Dorado garnered around 10% between them. In that case Lilly would have defeated Becky Vasquez by a wider margin.
However, it must be noted that Vasquez, herself, was acting as a non-candidate. Vasquez did not return our calls nor did she make any effort to provide her point of view to the public in person.
Instead, in a remarkable slap in the face gesture to the community, Vasquez was running as a ‘on-paper’ candidate. She failed to give any interviews and failed to show up and meet the public at the numerous forums. This form of sham-candidacy is thought to be relatively rare in the 21st century.
And while we continue to examine the fund-raising data; we can’t attest to the source of the ink or the cash to fund her campaign. However, there was a significant link in here print rhetoric and that of the ‘land-grabber opposition’ group opposing the Downtown project.
The fact that Vasquez did receive a sizeable number of votes must be troubling to the Lilly camp. Vasquez pulled in around 33%. Had there been another candidate running a real campaign there would have been a runoff election.
In the end, the fact that 43% of the district voted against Lilly may signify that all the goodwill that Lilly received after defeating Susan Austin in 2005 has been eroded by her hard-line stand on Eminent Domain. Some also indicate that Lilly is only a follower of the O’Rourke,Ortega,Byrd block.
One fact that may have impacted the size of Lilly’s victory margin was the voter turnout. While it was generally low in the whole area; low voter turnout may have actually given LIlly’s opponents the edge. Without a serious threat to Lilly, many Lilly supporters may have passed on the election. A low voter turnout usually favors the underdogs because their supporters are more motivated. District 1 total votes was more than double that of other districts. Still only 6,554 votes were cast in the district.
Lilly’s term will end in 2011 as she was serving a staggered two-year term during her inaugural council post.
(Photos: Brax- Valley Publishing Company)
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