HD 77: Marquez Skips Out On Debate To Dine With GOP Donor

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In the hotly contested HD 77 race in El Paso, challenger Marisa Marquez skipped out on a debate Wednesday sponsored by the El Paso County Democratic Party.

Evidently, Marquez had dinner reservations that were more important than a debate with State Rep. Paul Moreno (D-El Paso). She reportedly repeatedly tried to cut in line and disrupt the debate agenda, before storming out and telling the organizers that she had “dinner reservations.” Who were her dinner reservations with? Why, none other than a known associate of GOP donor Woody Hunt at El Paso’s upscale Cafe Central. More on Woody Hunt:

Woody Hunt’s construction company is the nation’s largest builder of housing for U.S. military personnel. Two weeks after then-Governor George W. Bush appointed Hunt as a University of Texas System regent in 1999, Hunt Building paid $8.8 million to settle a federal lawsuit. Citing shoddy workmanship on 828 housing units at Ellsworth Air Force Base, the U.S. Justice Department said 50 percent of the units were uninhabitable and that the buildings could not withstand South Dakotan winds. “Pipes were simply inserted into the ground to make it look like mandatory sewer clean-outs had been installed,” said the lawsuit, which complained that some units were plagued by improperly vented sewer gases. “No contractor should be able to get away with such shabby construction at taxpayer expense,” said U.S. Attorney Karen Schreiber. Nonetheless, Hunt Building still received $98 million in federal contracts in fiscal year 2002 alone, led by military contracts. The Austin American-Statesman, which editorialized against Hunt’s confirmation as a regent, also reported that residents of apartments that Hunt Building owned in minority Austin neighborhoods repeatedly complained about being left without basic utility services. The 2000 Bush campaign reimbursed Hunt Building $71,642 for flights that Bush took on its corporate jets. Water is the latest get-rich scheme of Hunt and Philip Anschutz, the billionaire ex-chair of Qwest Communications, which admitted in 2002 that it overstated revenues by $950 million (see Sol Trujillo). Hunt and Anschutz have bought huge land tracts around Dell City 65 miles East of El Paso, thereby attaining valuable rights to an underlying aquifer of brinish water. Hunt circulated a sketchy plan in 2003 that envisions investing $500 million on more land, a pipeline and a desalination plant to sell the water to parched El Paso for a fortune. While the controversial scheme does not say who would pay for most of this, it does call for the Texas General Land Office to spend $125 million on land–while Hunt and Anschutz pocket a four-percent commission on any water sold. As a regent, Hunt has served on the quasi-public University of Texas Investment Management Co., which awarded lucrative contracts to invest university endowment funds to firms close to then-Governor George W. Bush (see Lee Bass, Robert Grady, Tom Hicks and Charles Wyly).

From the Moreno campaign:

“It is astonishing to me that Ms. Marquez would leave dozens of Democratic Primary voters high and dry at a debate sponsored by the El Paso County Democratic Party,” said Roger Garza, campaign spokesman for the Paul Moreno campaign. “And to do so for a meeting with a Republican donor is beyond comprehension. Marisa Marquez has shown a frightening ability to say one thing and then do something completely different.”

“Marquez has repeatedly attacked Representative Paul Moreno by arguing that she will be more effective then Moreno by the simple fact that she will show up,” continued Garza. “Unfortunately when given the opportunity to live up to that promise, Marquez fails to. Saying it is one thing. Doing it is something completely different.”

Too, we are advised that Marquez tried to further circumvent the agreed upon format of the event by lying to moderators and claiming Moreno wasn’t present and wouldn’t be present at the debate. Moreno was there, he just showed up at the agreed-upon time.

Written by Vince Leibowitz

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Vince Leibowitz posted this article under 2008 Texas Elections on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed. View Technorati Linkbacks.