Local Candidate Loses Race, Tells Off His Political Party In Email
After losing the U.S. Representative District 16 race to Silvestre Reyes on Tuesday, Republican challenger Tim Besco fired off an email filled with anger and frustration to members of the El Paso Republican party.
In the email, Besco accused El Paso Republican party members of actively working against him during his campaign, an accusation denied by the local Republican party chairman. The email was first reported on by Jaime Abeytia at The LionStar Blog, a blog on local politics.
Two sources confirmed the authenticity of the email to ABC-7.
“We believe he might have written the letter in haste,” said Tom Holmsley, El Paso Republican party chairman. “We repeatedly attempted to help him and we are sorry he reacted that way.”
Besco told ABC-7 that he did write the email but did not write the profanity that is at the end of the email. He said that was added by someone else when it was forwarded by someone.
Read the email in its entirety below. WARNING: The email contains profane language that some might find offensive.
“THANKS FOR NOTHING
All of you who are getting this email should know why.
From the very start of my campaign – I have had nothing but criticism from many of you. All I’d hear was, “You don’t speak well.” or “You can’t do this or that.” I’d even ask for your help at different events, but I’d get very little or no help. Then when I hired someone who is a professional consultant – I would get nothing but even more hatred. Just for the simple fact that he was a Democrat (which has nothing to do with my views), my manager had been ridiculed and ignored by all of you.
I quickly realized that in order to win – not just make a good showing – I needed to do something different from what the GOP in El Paso had done in the past. The number of Republican voters here will NEVER be enough to win a county wide seat.
I’ve reached out to you and many organizations in the party – and all of you either criticized me for my choice or worked against me. I wasn’t doing what you wanted me to do. I wasn’t saying what you wanted me to say. Well, I beg to differ. I was the candidate and I wasn’t going to let you control me and my campaign.
Some of you said I was “turning my back” on the party. On the contrary, I turned around to open my arms to the rest of the city. If you think about it, the results showed that for the first time Silvestre Reyes got less than 60% of the vote. Part of that was related to the anti-Reyes feeling in town. But part of that also was because of my efforts to reach out to traditional Democrat voters.
I was the first Republican to actively campaign in the Lower Valley , Soccoro, Segundo Barrio, and the Senior Centers . I knew it would be unlikely that I’d get much support – but I also knew that any vote I could get there was one less vote for Reyes.
I also focused on the East Side – another area that has long been forgotten by traditional GOP candidates. Think about Chris Antcliff. He put up thousands of signs all over the county including the East Side . He barely lost his race, but it still was not enough to overturn the Democrats’ “machine”.
I’ve learned a lot about the political process in El Paso while working with Oscar. The most important thing I learned is to temper your message. People are sick and tired of partisanship. How many times did you think “Oh God, not another Denish (or Pearce, etc.) attack ad.”? I was asked several times while I campaigned, “You’re not one of them ‘Tea Partiers’ are you?”. The point I’m trying to make is that we can stick to our values but not be blind to our surroundings. Case and point, look at Commissioner Dan Haggerty. He is very conservative, and yet he still gets many Democrats to vote for him.
You’d say “Well he won because his district is Republican.” BUT you forget that this is roughly the same area is where Dee Margo had to spend nearly $1 MILLION just to barely defeat Joe Moody.
Which brings me to my final points. I know for a fact – not through “paranoid delusions” – that most of you worked against me.
FACT: The hesitation by party leadership to stifle support for a write-in led to confusion and dissent within the active party.
FACT: Auxilliary groups supported this write-in by letting him speak at functions, sign his nominating petitions (I have the copies), and falsely endorse him. Just because an endorsement questionnaire was sent, does not allow you to choose to endorse a candidate running against the Republican candidate. Your own bylaws – yes, I looked them up – state that it is the mission of your organizations to “support, and help elect ALL Republican candidates on the ballot.” You can’t justify “endorsing” the opponent of the legally nominated Republican candidate by sending a questionnaire. You shouldn’t have even bothered to send one – there was only one Republican candidate. You should only the Republican candidate. If you don’t like him either get out of your group or don’t do anything – but you don’t work against him publicly. That is worse than voting for someone who is “Pro-Choice” when you are a practicing Catholic.
FACT: At the East Side Civic Association Forum (which was a joke), I was publicly attacked by a member of the College Republicans. Despite their feeble attempt to hide it, I saw through the lie that “he was acting alone”. Again, your organization is nothing but petty for holding a grudge over your fundraiser at the county convention and hateful because I didn’t choose one of you to be my campaign manager. (Lot of success there with Dan Chavez, eh Nickole?)
FACT: Dee Margo and others, openly ridiculed and humiliated me in public forums. It is an “unwritten” rule that you don’t ask another candidate in an entirely other race how are their “finances” doing especially when you know full well that he/she isn’t doing well.
One other thing about Dee Margo is that I know that he is on the board of the Business and Industry PAC for the state of Texas (BIPAC) – a very large GOP donor. I had contacted the national BIPAC offices, and was told that they wouldn’t help me because of Dee Margo’s efforts against me here in Texas . This was in spite of my answers on their questionnaire and originally had a good response from them.
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FACT: When he was contacted by potentially large contributors for my campaign – specifically the party chairman – he told these donors to ignore my people and that I “didn’t have a chance of winning”. How would you know that, unless you were working against me?
I had been gaining momentum, and through the month of August my team and I were working tirelessly placing signs all over the entire county. With the infusion of their donations, we could have purchased the billboards, TV ads and mailers that would have continued to get my name out there.
Everyday well-meaning but ignorant GOP activists would tell me “You need to get yourself out there more.” I would always tell them to donate so we could, but nothing would come in.
I put more of my own money into this campaign – based on percentages – than any candidate. Sure, you could say “Well, too bad for you.” But I know that if it hadn’t been for all the “knives in my back” – I wouldn’t have had to put that money in.
FACT: The Republican Party of El Paso, the LNRC, the West El Paso Republican Women, Grassroots El Paso (Tea Party), and so many others will never see the forest for the trees. You refuse to believe that just because someone is attending your functions they aren’t friendly to you.
Dan Chavez, and Jaime Perez were using you. They were considered to be the “jokes” of the Democratic Party – failing in all their attempts to get elected. They came over because they had no support within that party. They both failed again despite your weak efforts to get them elected.
Jaime Abetiya is not a reporter, or any kind of serious media person even if he does have a radio show. He is a Democratic activist who is close to several key elected officials including Reyes, Jose Rodriguez, and others. He may be friends with Sammy Carrejo – but he really isn’t friendly toward the Republican party despite what he says.
That older lady that was hanging around with Dan Chavez who STILL IS a Democratic Party Precinct Chair – has no intentions of “crossing over” despite what some people have said. She is a very strong Democrat activist.
FACT: Your support is misguided, unorganized and weak. Rene Diaz is a prime example of this. He should have won his race for the EPCC Board easily. He played along with you, and ran as a “real Republican”. Well, Jaime Abetiya and others painted him as a closet Democrat and permanently hurt his chances. If your support was so great – he should have won. A mailer from you denying this false charge, phone calls by the party leadership to voters, signs and even a neighborhood billboard would have helped. You dropped the ball. And the excuse, “We made the other guy work hard.” is lame. Face it, he lost in a strongly Republican district because your support wasn’t really there.
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If you really think that you are going to make any headway in El Paso – you better open your eyes, get organized, get focused, and come out of your shell. You’ve said it yourselves, “El Pasoans are really Republicans – they just don’t know it.” You can’t get them to believe that by telling them that they are “stupid Mexicans that only vote straight ticket”. You can’t say things like “we should electrify the border fence and put alligators in the Rio Grande “.
It’s like that cell phone commercial that has Philadelphia Eagles fans cheering in a restaurant that is obviously in Texas . The waitress says “They got sense of their surroundings, do they?”. When the one fan asks for a refill, she says “Comin’ right up ‘shug’.” and wrings out the dish rag into his cup. The GOP here has no sense of their surroundings and the city is “wringing out their dish rags” in your drinks.
As far as I’m concerned – I’m done with politics. And all of you – from the top to the bottom – are to blame. I’ve been classy enough to never “air our dirty laundry” in public. It’s too bad that some of you did.
And if you’ve gotten this far….
FUCK YOU! I HOPE YOU’LL ROT IN HELL!”
