Texas Democratic Party: Moving Texas Forward

As a native El Pasoan, I decided to help our governor get better acquainted with the Sun City.

Before we get into proper procedures for eating Chico’s Tacos or learning the starting lineup of the 1966 Texas Western NCAA champion team, let’s get the basics out of the way.

El Paso is in Texas and is located about 500 miles west of Austin.

While this may seem straightforward, on Tuesday Perry told the Austin American Statesman he, “…wanted a more substantial meeting and did not want to travel the 800 miles from Austin to El Paso to discuss wildfires and border security.”

Unless he was planning to kayak up the Rio Grande, our governor was pretty far off…by about 300 miles. Again, to help acquaint our governor with where we are on the map – here’s a handy graphic that demonstrates where you’d end up if you left Austin and drove West for 800 miles.

That would be Willcox, Arizona.

Hopefully this helps. And in fairness, the governor is actually making progress b/c he now seems to at least understand what country El Paso is in. Last August, he was talking about violence in Juarez spilling over into El Paso (which it wasn’t) and said “You’ve got bombs exploding in El Paso.”

The “bombs” he was referring to turned out to be a car bomb that had gone off a month earlier, in Juarez. Juarez, of course, being in Mexico. His staff put out a statement afterwards saying he obviously misspoke but a couple months ago he made a statement that generated this headline – Governor Perry calls Juarez Most Dangerous City in America.

Whether he meant to say El Paso was the most dangerous city in America, or Juarez was the most dangerous city in Mexico is unclear. But in case this concept is still fuzzy, here’s another nifty graphic.

You’re welcome governor. Gimme a shout when you’re ready to move on to the Chico’s Tacos lesson.