Click photo to enlarge
Beto O'Rourke

Today is primary day in Texas, which means a last chance for El Paso voters to choose their representative in Congress and other elected positions.

The race for the 16th Congressional District seat -- the most powerful elected position in the region -- has been hotly contested on the Democratic side with the two leading candidates spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to sway voters. There are two candidates in the Republican primary for Congress. However, whoever wins the Democratic primary likely will win the general election because a majority of El Pasoans tend to vote Democrat.

Last week, as primary day drew near, the tone of the Democratic race turned increasingly negative.

U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, attacked the character of his strongest opponent, former El Paso city Rep. Beto O'Rourke. A new television ad delved into the challenger's past, displaying a mug shot of a much younger O'Rourke after a drunken driving arrest.

O'Rourke issued mea culpas in 2005 when the charge was publicized during his successful City Council campaign. In this campaign, O'Rourke said he made a mistake in 1998 when he drove a friend home from a party. He completed a diversion program, and the charge was dismissed.

The ad also featured what it identified as a 2011 cell phone video. The blurry video showed a man rolling on the floor of a local bar, and the ad accused O'Rourke of public intoxication.

O'Rourke admitted that it was him, but said that he slipped while dancing and was not drunk. Reyes' ad also listed a burglary arrest. O'Rourke said he tripped an alarm while jumping a fence at the University of Texas at El Paso in 1995. Prosecutors declined the case.

Other charges in the ad were found to be false or misleading in an El Paso Times fact check.

O'Rourke's campaign countered with a TV ad charging that the congressman has a habit of using the influence of his office and taxpayer money to improve the lives of family members and further his career.

The ad recounted the circumstances of a $200 million federal contract awarded without a competitive bidding process to a company that hired Reyes' children and donated to his campaign.

In 2005, the circumstances of the project went public when a federal audit found the program was a disaster because of defective equipment and lax federal oversight. Officials terminated most of the program, and auditors estimated there were losses in the "tens of millions of dollars."

Reyes said he had nothing to do with awarding the contract or the hiring of his children.

A Times fact check found the content of O'Rourke's ad to be true.

"These things are like Molotov cocktails," Gregory Rocha, a University of Texas at El Paso political science professor, said of negative advertisements. "They can blow up the target, but it can also blow up in your hand. The jury is still out about the effectiveness of these ads.

"There's a bit of civility (in the El Paso electorate) that you might not find in larger population areas," Rocha said.

That means the negativity could create a backlash, he said.

People who participated in exit polling during two days of early voting, before last week's attack ads, preferred O'Rourke by a narrow margin. But an O'Rourke victory would buck national trends, Rocha said.

"The incumbent is pretty well integrated (into the local party machine) and pretty well able to control things," Rocha said.

As of last week, Rocha said, only two incumbents who are not running against other incumbents because of redistricting had lost their seats in primaries nationwide.

When this race began, Reyes said his connections and experience would continue to get things done for El Paso. He pointed to his role in preventing Fort Bliss -- a major economic engine for the region -- from being mothballed and the more than $5 billion in federal money spent expanding the post.

O'Rourke, in debates, quickly challenged Reyes, noting that many others participated in the effort to save Fort Bliss and that only a fraction of the expansion money went to local businesses.

O'Rourke campaigned on a reformer reputation he built while on City Council. As a city representative, he pushed for Downtown revitalization and a new development strategy that redirected growth from costly urban sprawl to infill areas already served by city utilities.

Early in the campaign, O'Rourke hammered Reyes on what he said were links, personal and professional, to people indicted or who have pleaded guilty in the ongoing public corruption cases.

Reyes, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, said he always reported illegal activity when it came to his attention. However, he has been slow to return campaign donations from some of those people, stating that the money will be set aside until their legal cases are concluded.

O'Rourke's attacks on Reyes focused on two main issues, the current and long-term economic damage caused by bottlenecks on the international bridges and the lack of a full-service veterans hospital in El Paso.

O'Rourke, who said he personally knocked on more than 15,000 doors, charged that Reyes was ignoring those issues because he was out of touch with constituents. Reyes said O'Rourke was na ve about how much he would be able to accomplish in a House of Representatives dominated by newly elected conservatives.

Both candidates support building a new veterans hospital in El Paso. O'Rourke said Reyes should have been working on that issue earlier in his term.

Growing wait times at the international bridges threaten tens of thousands of local jobs and cut into commerce that generates revenue for the city, O'Rourke said.

Reyes said a $5 billion measure he authored would solve those problems, but the congressman has not been able to find support in the last two sessions.

As debate on the international bridges evolved another persistent issue arose. Reyes accused O'Rourke of planning to uproot neighborhoods along Yarbrough Drive for the construction of a new international bridge.

O'Rourke has said a new bridge is necessary, but said he would leave it to local planning officials to determine the most effective location.

Nonetheless, at an Ysleta Independent School District public meeting called by Superintendent Michael Zolkoski, Reyes told a crowd that "as many as 5,000 families would be displaced" for the Yarbrough bridge and not to trust state and local officials who said nothing was planned for the area.

Because O'Rourke was not invited to the meeting and Reyes' sister-in-law, Marty Reyes, is a district trustee, some said the meeting was inappropriately political in nature.

And Ted Houghton, Texas Transportation Commission chairman, said that though there were no state plans for a bridge in that location, the claim that so many families would be displaced was "ludicrous."

Chris Roberts may be reached at; 546-6136.