As expected, Veronica Escobar has won outright today and will likely be the next Congresswoman of El Paso. I write “likely” because I am two hours ahead of El Paso and I am not staying up late to see the final results. Historically, early voting is a good indicator of the outcome. At 61%, it is unlikely that a runoff will occur after all the votes have been counted.

What does this mean for El Paso?

Not much.

Veronica Escobar is for Veronica Escobar and for her benefactors – those attached at the hip to Woody Hunt et al. Escobar has made a living off the public monies and uses them for her family’s future. Except for her stint at the Community Scholars – largely funded by taxpayer funds – Veronica Escobar and her family have used taxpayer-funded salaries to pay their bills. Escobar’s husband works at taxpayer expense to deport immigrants and Veronica Escobar is now off to her next taxpayer-funded gig.

Escobar will now focus on posturing her public persona to ensure she is elected again. As a freshman in Congress, there is not much Escobar can accomplish, except for token media appearances to ensure her next election.

But, but Escobar promised to do this, and do that. All politicos make promises to get elected. Escobar is no different. For El Paso, it just means that El Pasoans can claim the first Latina in Congress from Texas. It is just show with nothing much for El Paso.

However, in Congress, Veronica Escobar can do little damage to El Paso’s taxpayers. That is the silver lining.

For Escobar, it just another tax-funded paycheck for her, and her family.

It is so El Paso.

In the next few days there will be analysis and debates about what it all means. I’ll add my two cents as well. Sometime in the near future I’ll use the big data in the El Paso Votes APP and correlate it with city employees and county employees to see if they had any impact at all in the election.