Whatever label they carry, El Paso’s community activists have wielded political power throughout El Paso’s history. From making noise to being criminally investigated, the activists come and go but the controversies continue. Call them ankle-biters or “crazies,” label them watch dogs or simply activists, El Paso’s community activists have influenced El Paso’s political scene for generations. Some stand before their government to see their names in the news and others leave a mark on the city’s elected officials. One notable way to tell if the latest ankle-biter is making an impact is when the police get involved or the El Paso Times publicly attacks them. Like how the El Paso Times editorial columnist Joe Muench did it 2008 when he labeled activist Ray Gilbert as the “political ankle-biter Green-Striped Piranha,” while acknowledging he had won his case.
Outwardly, “politicians snicker” at the activists and the press “tends to belittle them,” wrote El Paso Times columnist Diana Washington Valdez in 1990. She added that ankle bitters are mostly “well-meaning people [who] aren’t politicians at heart,” but “are straight shooters who are unwilling to dress the waste, fraud or malfeasance they may uncover in any glittering terms.” As the Times columnist wrote, “nobody pays them for what they do,” adding that for many of them, “it’s enough to be on the side of right and against wrong.”
About a month later, John Laird, another El Paso Times columnist added that he uses the term “ankle-biters” in explaining how county government works. According to Laird:
“One of several middle-aged men stands up and says nothing, but it takes a long time. Nobody listens to what he says. When he sits down, everyone disagrees with what he said. At the height of the confusion, a vote is taken, a tie is broken by the county judge and a resolution is tabled. Finally, journalists scratch their heads and go report the proceedings to the public.”
Laird was extremely meanspirited to the activists in his newspaper column spending most of the early 1990’s deriding them each week for wasting people’s time by asking questions. In 1993, he created the acronym LWABs which stood for “Long-Winded Ankle-Biters.” He would sometimes add “ankle-biter” to the front of the name of a particular politician he disagreed with. Except for Diana Washington Valdez, the shameful history of the El Paso Times’ columnists when it came to community activists was that they were stopping the city from moving forward. This is the story of some of the El Pasoans who have left their mark on the politicians they held to account.
For El Paso’s activists it isn’t only the disdain the news media offers them or the snickering by the politicians they address that they must contend with. Some have faced the wrath of the elected officials who order the police to investigate them or forcefully take them away, sometimes in handcuffs.
In the 1980’s, then mayor Jonathan Rogers ordered Anita Blair removed from the city council chambers. Luther Jones ordered sheriff’s deputies to arrest Chuy de la O at the county commissioners meeting. In 1994, community activist Stuart Schwartz was forcefully removed from the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD) meeting after the school board president, Richard Telles ordered the school’s police chief to remove him. When Schwartz took out a puppet to symbolize that the school board was looking for a superintendent that was a puppet, Telles ordered Schwartz removed from the podium as he uttered, “I didn’t come here to be insulted by your kind.” Schwartz is Jewish.
Because of El Paso’s rich history of community activism, it is impossible to name every activist that challenged the status quo, but there have been a few who have stood the test of time because of the information they exposed or simply because they made people laugh. These are their stories.
Mostly politicians call the activists “ankle biters.” Steven Pearlstein, in a 2010 Washington Post article, described ankle biters “as individuals who offer persistent and irritating criticism…but lack the influence to enact meaningful change.” Pearlstein was wrong when it comes to El Paso’s ankle-biters in that many forced political change in the city’s public policy overtime. El Paso is known for its “large quota of ankle-biters” across the state going back to the 1990’s.
In the early 1990’s, Luther Jones referred to The Citizens For Responsible Government as ankle-biters. The group was composed of El Paso businessmen who opposed Oscar White’s plan to place a city Charter Amendment on the 1981 ballot to limit the city’s tax rate to 40 cents per $100 of assessed value. Businessmen and elected officials across town opposed limiting the city’s ability to tax people’s homes.
Jones was a well-known politician in Texas and in El Paso in the 1990’s who became controversial in the 2000’s by creating slates of candidates to run for office who generally worked together around a political policy championed by Jones.
In the 1990’s, Jones was accused by his opponents of creating “a gang of three” to run the county commissioners court while he was the county judge. The three, according to one of his opponents, Tom Diamond, were Martie Georges, who would later marry Stanley Jobe, Orlando Fonseca and Jones. He would later be accused of extracting loyalty from the politicians he helped to elect for his political agenda. In 2011, Luther Jones was found guilty of public corruption charges for trying to manipulate a lucrative county digitizing contract in his favor.
El Paso was not immune to the 1960’s counterculture revolutions challenging established norms across the country. Among the Chicano movements and the Civil Rights Movement there were El Pasoans focused on El Paso’s needs.
The 1960’s & 1970’s
In the late 1960’s and through the 1970’s one of the better-known community activists was Carmen Felix who led efforts to protect Segundo Barrio from the city’s attempt to demolish the neighborhood through building codes. She led marches, protested city hall and walked picket lines against Coors beer for abusive work practices and against then-Texas Gov. Bill Clements for his support of the twin-plant industry of locating manufacturing in Cd. Juárez with El Paso businesses.
Felix organized La Campaña to address systematic lack of housing for the poor in Segundo Barrio and challenged the public housing projects funded by federal dollars. She successfully helped her neighborhood, and many recognize her for it today.
After Felix and the counterrevolutions of the 60’s and 70’s followed local fights for equal rights and the birth of fighting heavy taxation in El Paso was born.
1980’s Through 2010
During the 1980’s and early 1990’s two political activists stood tall above the rest. They weren’t political power brokers, but their words ran shudders down the spines of the elected officials they stood before. Ricardo “Ric” Rios and Oscar White passionately sought to empower their communities. Not only were they watchdogs over government but also volunteered in numerous boards. Rios championed for equal rights while White created the Fed-Up Taxpayers Committee to address misuse of tax dollars. Both men passed away in August 1995. But likely the best-known activist in El Paso followed – Chuy de la O.
Chuy de la O
When talking about political activists in El Paso, most people think about Chuy de la O. Jesus “Chuy” de la O, who was born in El Paso on June 1, 1972. He had 22 siblings. Blind on one eye because of a medical procedure that went wrong, de la O became active in El Paso’s political scene by handing out election leaflets for candidates starting at the age of seven. He never stopped and soon added chastising elected officials to his repertoire.
He was best known for frequently appearing before city council and county commissioners arguing his slogan “less taxation and more presentation.” In 1991, de la O was arrested for picketing during a county commissioners meeting. Four sheriff’s deputies arrested him, and he was charged with disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. He later settled with the county for an undisclosed amount. He also sued the El Paso Housing Authority in 1999 when they refused to allow him to campaign on their properties. In addition to his political activism, he was also known for being a great dancer, a “lady’s man,” he would tell people.
Chuy de la O appeared in the 1983 Lone Wolf McQuade movie with Chuck Norris that was filmed around El Paso.
He passed away in April of 2002 at the age of 74.
Chuy de la O was followed by Ray Gilbert.
Ray Gilbert attended a county commissioners meeting as a 59-year-old “by accident,” and what he saw “was sickening” to him, so he decided to become a tenacious “trouble shooter” of political waste in El Paso for almost two decades. He was very active, often challenging county commissioners and later city council members with voluminous often handwritten or typed detailed carefully crafted calculations showing that what the government officials were about to embark upon was foolish and often wrong. Gilbert’s Volvo was his research office with office boxes stuffed full of detailed and meticulously manually compiled analysis of taxes and government expenditures. El Paso Times columnist Joe Muench infamously labeled Gilbert as a “political ankle-biter Green-Striped Piranha Ray Gilbert.” Muench was addressing the numerous guilty pleas by former elected officials for public corruption that Gilbert had been challenging over the years.
Gilbert sued the hospital district that oversees the University Medical Center (UMC) in the late 1990’s, alleging that the hospital district was not properly reporting all its assets when declaring a tax rate. He won his suit forcing UMC to be more transparent with the taxpayers.
He started challenging errant politicians in 1976 and lasted well into the early 2000’s. He died on November 12, 2010. Theresa Caballero followed Gilbert.
Theresa Caballero was “a force to be reckoned,” challenging her father’s authoritarian public policies and his 11.8% tax hike. At one point, Ray Caballero tried to make himself the water czar of El Paso but was stopped by Theresa Caballero.
When Ray Caballero first announced he was not running for reelection, the apologetic El Paso Times chimed in through its editorial pages in the form of Robert Seltzer blaming the ankle-biters led by Theresa Caballero. Seltzer wrote in 2002 that if the U.S. Census Bureau were to do “a head count of ankle-biters” in El Paso, it “would prove exhausting.” Ray Caballero changed his mind and ran for a second term only to lose. As what became a common practice by then, the Times used its editorial pages to silence anyone opposed to public policy that led to higher taxes. Seltzer bemoaned that the ankle-biters would “not go away” and that they were costing the city “Downtown revitalization,” among the other “dreams” Ray Caballero had promised.
Theresa Caballero is a defense attorney today. After TC, as Theresa Caballero was often referred to by her supporters, followed the “crazies,” as the city’s first city manager, Joyce Wilson infamously dubbed them.
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The “Crazies”
After several years of controversy, in 2013, the El Paso city hall was demolished and construction started in what is now the baseball stadium for the Chihuahuas. Several El Pasoans opposed the use of taxpayer monies to build a baseball stadium, including former television and newspaper reporter, Stephanie Townsend Allala. Before the city demolished its building, Allala filed a lawsuit forcing the city to release hundreds of emails from elected officials under the Freedom of Information Act. The city was eventually forced to release the emails they were withholding from Allala.
It is during the controversy over demolishing city hall to make way for the Chihuahuas ballpark that another derogatory term started to be used against the government watchdogs criticizing the taxpayer expenditures and the destruction of city hall for the ballpark – the “crazies.”
Opponents of the ballpark were now referred to as “the crazies,” by most of the El Paso Times columnists, some of the city representatives, some community members, and then-City Manager Joyce Wilson. Many wore the term as a badge of honor with some even referring to themselves as members of “the crazies” in public and in their letters to the editor of the newspaper that called them crazy for opposing the ballpark.
Another government watchdog was Salvador Gomez. He often made people laugh with his antics.
Salvador Gomez, better known as Sal Gomez, was a regular before the city council dais always imploring the city’s elected officials to cut spending that he told them was making him poorer as he sported his famous t-shirt, “poor man walking.” A boxing announcer known as “Salvador Valentino,” in the local boxing circuit, Gomez once wore a military flak jacket to a city hall meeting after a stray bullet from Juárez broke a window at city hall in 2010. Gomez led several recall attempts and petition drives against sitting city representatives over taxation and spending. He was most outspoken about the demolition of city hall to make way for the ballpark stadium where the Chihuahuas play today.
Gomez died on July 15, 2020.
Several other activists followed but the one that eclipsed the new crop of community activists is Max Grossman.
Max Grossman
Max Grossman, a University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) professor and a historian had been active in preservation efforts in El Paso until a controversy over the sports arena erupted. The City of El Paso announced in 2016 that it was going to start building the multi-purpose arts and entertainment district it had promised the voters when they approved the 2012 Quality of Life bonds that included it. Grossman joined several other groups opposed to destroying the Duranguito neighborhood to build what was described as a “sports arena.” Soon after, Grossman filed a lawsuit against the city to stop the project from moving forward.
In 2017, the city was forced to seek a court ruling that the proposed arena was a valid use of the bond monies from the 2012 bond measure approved by the voters. Later that year, Jaime Esparza, the District Attorney for El Paso and the Texas Rangers began investigating Grossman and Bernie Sargent, members of the El Paso County Historical Commission when it was alleged that they had violated the Texas Open Meetings Act when they voted by email to oppose the arena in Duranguito. No charges were filed against either.
After years of litigation, in January 2023, the city abandoned the Duranguito site for the multi-purpose arts and entertainment center, effectively ending the project.
Grossman’s constant challenges of Joyce Wilson, El Paso’s first city manager led her to pen a letter to the El Paso Times on August 25, 2024, writing that voters should “send Max Grossman and his minions a clear message, they’re not good for El Paso.” It was clear that Wilson blamed Grossman for stopping the demolition of the Duranguito neighborhood to make way for a proposed sport arena.
Towards the end of the sports arena controversy, Grossman began to become more assertive about tax policy in El Paso and began to encourage people to run for office as well as publicly issuing endorsements to voters through his El Paso Taxpayers Revolt website and social media channels.
Let’s Not Forget
No story about El Paso’s activists can be had without mentioning Anita Blair, who conceded when she turned 80 that “people either love her or hate her.” She was a regular at city council and county commissioners, and school board meetings before she stopped going to the city council meetings in protest of then-mayor Larry Francis’ muzzling of public debate. After she lost her eyesight in her 20’s, Blair went on to be elected in 1952 to the Texas House of Representatives serving for one-term.
Other well-known activists defending the misuse of tax dollars include Mike Rooney who regularly challenged school officials to explain why they were spending the money on a favorite project. Rooney wanted them to explain how it benefited homeowners like himself. Ric Schecter and Lisa Turner were also frequent government watchdogs at city council.
The decline of the outspoken community activist started slowly until very few remained in the late 1990’s. A few, like Jaime O. Perez rose to the challenge during the time that the others were walking away.
Jaime O. Perez lived a rich life. He was a graduate of Brandeis University where he led a student occupation of a school building in protest of funding cuts at the school. He ran political campaigns including Bill Francis’ campaign for mayor. Perez worked on El Paso’s first digital newspaper, the El Paso Metro, as well as for the English version of the Diario de Juárez. Writing for the Border Observer he took aim at several politicians. Perez ran for mayor five times and for state representative as a Republican candidate, after years of running as a Democrat.
As a political activist, Perez challenged the tax-spending policies of the Ray Caballero administration and often criticized the city representatives aligned with Caballero. In 2001, Larry Medina sued Perez after Perez launched a recall effort against him.
Perez died on December 5, 2017.
To the detriment of El Paso’s historical record, the voluminous data created and organized by Ray Gilbert and Jaime O. Perez were lost when they died. Perez’s computers disappeared and it is unknown where Gilbert’s boxes are today.
Lawsuits, Criminal Investigations and Muzzling
When the old timers began to die, others just gave up but for the few that remained, threats of public humiliation through whisper campaigns, charges of criminal conduct, arrests for violating rules capriciously imposed by the people that were supposed to be working for the taxpayers and even investigations by a special police unit called the Public Integrity Unit started to weigh on the unpaid volunteers working to help their neighbors.
Anita Blair was sued by Carlos Aguilar, then a county commissioner, in February 1997 after she alleged that he had taken a bribe. Government watchdogs, including Blair who was 81 years old, slowly stopped going to the meetings. Aguilar was implicated, but not charged, in the far-reaching public corruption cases that saw almost 40 officials jailed on corruption charges. Aguilar was on the 2001 plane with Larry Medina that crashed in the Chihuahua desert leaving questions about what business dealings they were discussing before they crashed. Larry Medina sued Jaime O. Perez for launching a recall petition against him. Medina was among those jailed for public corruption.
Most recently, the last of El Paso’s frequent government watchdog/ankle-biter, Max Grossman was arrested on a misdemeanor family violence charge. Immediately after his arrest, character assassination pieces appeared on social media and on El Paso Matters, who is led by Bob Moore who formerly ran the El Paso Times when the newspaper regularly denigrated the ankle-biters that they described as standing in the way of progress for El Paso. Moore was instrumental in having Jaime O. Perez investigated by the El Paso Police Department’s Public Integrity Unit.
Moore allowed an editorial that can best be described as a character assassination piece to be published on his online publication hours after Grossman’s arrest was made public without even the semblance of any journalistic ethics required explaining the motivations behind the author of the editorial. Like with Perez, Moore’s actions betray the sense that his motives are about helping silence dissent about public policy by whatever means necessary, including throwing away any semblance of journalism in his publication.
Except for the character assassination editorial, as of this morning, Bob Moore has yet to publish any article about Grossman’s arrest that the editorial bases its entire premise on. There can only be one reason for this, the context behind the arrest is inconvenient to the narrative being developed in the attempt to silence El Paso’s latest government watchdog.
Grossman appears to have not been intimidated as he continues to opine on public policy on social media today. His court case is pending in court.
The term ankle-biters started out as a derogatory term for the community activists holding the elected officials accountable to the taxpayers. But by the late-1990’s the term started to become a badge of honor among the taxpayers that they would be speaking for as unpaid lobbyists. Carmen Moody told the El Paso Times in 1995 that she was “three kids and I have to work so I can’t really” go to the government meetings, adding that “most people are like me” who cannot attend the meetings. Moody said that the government watchdogs “serve as the voice of the people.” Often derided as “boring,” “annoying” or “irrelevant” the city’s taxpayers had started to appreciate them. When Jose Rodríguez announced that he would not be seeking reelection for his state senate seat in 2019, he told the El Paso Times that he does “not have the patience for fishing” but that he might “become an ankle biter at City Hall.”
Disclosure: Martín Paredes worked with Theresa Caballero, Ray Gilbert and Jaime O. Perez and frequently covered city council meetings in the early 2000’s for various online publications. Paredes launched the El Paso Metro, El Paso’s first digital newspaper.