District 3 race heats up as Barceleau brings up rival candidates past arrests

Early voting started Tuesday for the June 10 El Paso runoff races and some candidates have ground to make up judging by the numbers in the General Election May 6.

ABC-7 spoke with both the candidates in District 3 in East El Paso. Cassandra Hernandez Brown got more votes in the general election, but fell well short of the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff with 1,926 votes or 37.8 percent.

The difference between her and Jaime Barceleau was about 400 votes.

“The strategy is to go door to door, meet constituents who voted the first time in the general election and then anybody that I didn’t have the opportunity to meet,” said Hernandez Brown.

Added Barceleau: “You continue to do the same things, knocking on doors, calling folks up, coming out here to visit the senior center like I did (Tuesday).”

Barceleau has the biggest difference to make up among City representative runoff elections, trying to close a more than eight percent gap from the general election earlier this month. In an effort to do so, he sent out a mailer last week detailing two arrests of Hernandez Brown when she was a teenager.

“The facts in the campaign remain the facts,” Barceleau explained when asked why he brought the arrests up. “We’re in a runoff, here’s a couple of facts I think the voters should know. It will be up to the voters to consider those facts or not.”

Hernandez Brown admitted being arrested as a 17 year-old in 2004 for assault and as an 18 year-old in 2006 for misdemeanor theft.

“While I have spent countless hours knocking on peoples doors, meeting them personally, unfortunately he spent his energy to knock me down,” she said. “I have been very transparent to the point I’ve posted it on my web site. I posted it and let everyone know that people make mistakes, people grow from it and its how you overcome them.”

Barceleau further explained: “There’s a couple of arrests and what we found, what I found early on, was on her web site, so it’s not like I make up anything.”

Added Hernandez Brown: “I have grown and learned from that. The judge was very flexible with me, gave me a second chance, everything was dismissed and I’m proud to have a second opportunity to show the constituents of District 3 that I’m an El Paso success story.”

Hernandez Brown said the assault has been expunged from her record and the theft case in 2006, when she was 18, was dismissed after completing a misdemeanor diversion program.

Barceleau said he didn’t receive any negative feedback for the mailer on his opponents arrests. Hernandez Brown called the mailer “petty” and said she’d rather focus on the issues in the district.