Early voting starts tomorrow, and I am spending this gloomy Sunday writing this long-winded post about why you should vote for literally anyone else but Alyssa Cigarroa for mayor.
the tldr is: Early voting starts tomorrow!! Please vote for anyone but Alyssa Cigarroa for mayor!! She's raised almost $400k from patron system Laredo families (the Killams, Deutsches, Sameses, Brunis, Martins), and those people do not have the same priorities as the average laredoan at heart. Her debate performances show she isn't putting in the work to prepare, and if she's not doing it now, she won't do it as mayor. If she wins, we're stuck with eight years of a mayor paid for by the same patron system families who will do whatever it takes to stop real change. Laredo deserves better!! Vote for anybody but Alyssa!!
Did I have better things to do today? Perhaps. But the future of Laredo is really important to me, so I’m sitting here writing this out instead. Maybe I’m also procrastinating on doing laundry, but even so.
Laredo deserves better than Alyssa Cigarroa!!! Do the other three bozos running for mayor suck? Yes, they absolutely, unequivocally do. Yet somehow, I still genuinely believe in my heart that those three dummies will all do a better job at being mayor than Alyssa Cigarroa. (Yes, even poncho casso, because the bar is in hell.) And Alyssa's various debate performances and campaign contributions are evidence of that.
Candidates who are dedicated to doing their job well make time to prepare for scheduled debates. I would expect a candidate like Alyssa, who has raised nearly $400k for her campaign, to work with her team in advance of these planned debates and prepare for them by anticipating debate questions and practicing her answers. It is standard practice when running for office. And I don’t believe she’s been doing that.
And to be clear, my critique here is not that she had notes or talking points in front of her at these debates, those are also standard practice for debates. What did not sit well with me is that she could not even utter the words “I love Laredo” without having to read them from a piece of paper. (Or really any statement at all.) But struggling through especially that shows how poorly prepared she was, despite knowing she would have to answer some version of most of those questions for as long as she’s known she’s wanted to run for mayor.
She’s been telling people she was going to run for mayor since at least April!! That's half a year!! She's raised nearly $400,000 to date!! She comes from an incredibly well-connected and well-resourced family!! She has everything she needs to do well. These debate performances are unacceptable.
And I’ve seen people on here attributing her poor debate performances to dyslexia or a speech impediment, but I haven’t seen her say either of those things herself and I’m not here to speculate about her medical history, and other people shouldn’t either! What I’m asking is why someone who has had this much time to prepare for these debates is showing up with answers that don't give me a singular idea for what she actually plans to do as mayor.
And if this is how she's preparing for debates, what makes us believe we should trust her to show up prepared when she has to advocate for us and make decisions that affect our lives as mayor?
Our expectation of her should be much higher!!!
At the very least, she should be able to explain her OWN vision for Laredo. Instead, I'm left wondering who wrote those talking points she's reading from and who will actually be calling the shots if she wins.
And who would be calling the shots if she wins? Let's look at some of her donors:
- $73,250 from the Cigarroa family
- $30,000 from the Killam family
- $18,000 from the Deutsch family
- $10,000 from the Sames family
- $10,000 from the Bruni family
- $10,000 from the Martin family
- $5,000 from the Arguindegui family
And those are just some of donors who contributed to the $374,500 she reported during the last reporting period. You can see it all for yourself here. She's also spent 3x as much as the other three candidates COMBINED. That's all on the same website but you have to do some math.
These old money, patron system families here in Laredo have their businesses, their multiple properties, and their inherited wealth to protect and they're paying a lot of money to make sure they have Alyssa Cigarroa to do help them continue to do that, because she is one of them.
Do you have $25,000, $10,000, $5,000, $1,000, even $500, to lose? Alyssa's family and friends do. And if they have thousands of dollars that they can throw away on an election, they simply do not have the same priorities as the average Laredoan at heart. (Speaking of hearts, let's not forget the anti-trust lawsuit against her dad for trying to stop other cardiologists from coming to Laredo.)
But all that to say, do you genuinely believe she’ll challenge the same wealthy, patron system families paying her way into the mayor’s office if the time comes?
Another of my concerns is these wealthy families backing Alyssa now would also pay to keep her in office for a second term, leaving us with eight years of an administration backed by a renewed patron system doing whatever they want in Laredo, with the resources to fight off any challenger or movement for real, actual change.
But we should not be bought or bullied out of fighting for a better Laredo! And we should not be placated by platitudes about change while the same wealthy families keep paying to protect their power. We deserve more than a younger face representing the interests of the same old patron system. We deserve better than Alyssa Cigarroa!
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Laredo has so many people who are more than qualified and would do an amazing job as mayor. They just don’t have a rich dad with rich family friends to buy their way into office. And if Alyssa was really about building a better Laredo, why didn’t she use her power and influence to uplift another candidate instead of running for mayor herself? A person who can emphatically say “I LOVE LAREDO!!” without reading it off a sheet of paper?
We deserve someone who will put in the work and is willing to stand up to the patron system here. Alyssa is not that person, and her winning will prevent that person from leading Laredo for the next eight years. (Instead of four if one of the bozos win.)
So starting tomorrow, please vote for anyone but Alyssa Cigarroa for mayor!!
(also, my handle was inspired by the suspiciously enthusiastic pro-Alyssa, likely bot, comments swarming various LMT fb posts)
tldr again: Early voting starts tomorrow!! Please vote for anyone but Alyssa Cigarroa for mayor!! She's raised almost $400k from patron system Laredo families (the Killams, Deutsches, Sameses, Brunis, Martins), and those people do not have the same priorities as the average laredoan at heart. Her debate performances show she isn't putting in the work to prepare, and if she's not doing it now, she won't do it as mayor. If she wins, we're stuck with eight years of a mayor paid for by the same patron system families who will do whatever it takes to stop real change. Laredo deserves better!! Vote for anybody but Alyssa!!
