El Paso Politics learned today that Art Fierro filed suit on December 30 with the Texas Court of Appeals of the Eighth District of Texas asking that the court intervene and remove Claudia Ordaz Perez from the March primaries. In the petition Fierro alleges that on December 15, 2021, Dora Oaxaca, the chairperson of the El Paso Democratic Party refused to remove Ordaz-Perez from the ballot. Fierro told the court that he had told Oaxaca that Ordaz-Perez was not eligible to run for office in District 79 because she does not meet the one-year residency requirement.
In addition to the one-year requirement, Art Fierro also alleges in the court documents that Claudia Ordaz Perez did not meet the “six months immediately preceding the date of the regular filing deadline” for her application. Fierro alleges that Dora Oaxaca responded to him on December 16, 2021, denying his request to remove Claudia Ordaz-Perez from the ballot.
Because Oaxaca refused the request to remove Claudia Ordaz Perez from the ballot, Fierro filed suit with the court of appeals to have them force Dora Oaxaca to remove Ordaz-Perez from the ballot.
As previously reported by El Paso Politics, Claudia Ordaz Perez filed a change of address with the county for her voter registration on October 11, 2021.
On December 14, 2021, El Paso Politics received a request from Art Fierro asking for a copy of the open records request we received from the County Elections Department when we inquired as to Claudia Ordaz Perez’ change of address. On December 15, we provided our copies of the open records responses to Art Fierro. From the court documents, it appears that Art Fierro filed his complaint later that date.
On December 31, 2021, the Texas Court of Appeals accepted Fierro’s petition and gave Dora Oaxaca until midnight yesterday to respond to it. The court expects to rule on the matter by January 12. 2022.
On January 4, 2022, Oaxaca responded to the suit. In her response, Oaxaca argues that Ordaz-Perez meets the requirements to run for office. Claudia Ordaz Perez also responded yesterday. In her response, Ordaz-Perez writes that she “joins and adopts” Dora Oaxaca’s response. Ordaz-Perez argues that she is eligible to run for office as argued by Dora Oaxaca.
The court has set Friday as the next day for further action on the case.
Readers should note that Claudia Ordaz Perez is not being represented by legal counsel according to the court documents.
Because this is a developing story, El Paso Politics will continue to monitor it and report as more information becomes available.
Footnotes:
- Petition for Writ of Mandamus, Peter Arthur Fierro a/k/a Art Fierro (08-21-00229-CV), 8th Court of Appeals, El Paso Texas, December 30, 2021.
filed Dec 15? Why are we only hearing about this now?
So you’re colluding with candidates now? Why didn’t Fierro just do his own open records request?
You’re conflating residency requirements from the county with residency rules relating to state rep candidates. You were completely silent on residency requirements for state rep candidates when Tamayo ran. And if you notice, she wasn’t kicked off the ballot either – because the rules for state rep candidates are different. You either know that and aren’t disclosing it – or you don’t know that because you haven’t checked.
Either way, if you’re sharing information with a candidate, then that collusion should be reflected as an in-kind contribution to Art Fierro.
Isn’t his wife a judge? Why would he need to get an open records request from you – he should know how to do it.
At any rate, you should stop pretending you’re unbiased.
In response to the allegation of colluding with the Art Fierro campaign, I would like to point out that we reported on our open records requests to the County Election Department on October 19, 2021. We followed up with several articles including pointing out the 2015 lawsuit filed by her husband that set the precedent for residency. In each article we detailed the steps we took to get our facts including the open records requests responses we received. We get several requests for copies of the open records requests we reference in our articles and other research material. We routinely provide them to the requestors because we believe in transparency. Sometimes we choose to publish the documents like we have in our series on the El Paso Children’s Hospital so that readers can view the original source documents. It should also be noted that the reason readers know we provided a copy of our open records requests to Fierro is because we disclosed it in the article. Finally, if we were colluding then why did we wait until yesterday to report on the lawsuit filed on December 31, 2021? We received a lead from a reader pointing us to the Court of Appeals website court documents where we could see the court filings. That is how we became aware of the lawsuit and reported it hours later. It is readers that provide the leads to us and it is the readers that provide us information that make our work possible.
Finally, I am open to speaking to any candidate that wishes to speak to me. Our articles are more complete when we can include comments from candidates. Anyone willing to share information with us or to contact us about stories can email us directly at news [@] elpasopolitics.com.
Thank you for your support!
Martin
“Peter” aka Vince