Cortez Continues To Run Into Trouble

Another day, another article, another bad one for Phil Cortez.  From the Express-News:

...Talking directly to voters, he said, is “going to win this race.”

He was knocking on doors that day in Palo Alto, the neighborhood in which he was raised and his parents have lived for decades. The timing was likely not a coincidence, considering a columnist was tagging along and taking notes.

Many of the voters who answered their doors treated Cortez, 33, like family. For his part, he exuded an easy charm.

Then another dark cloud appeared: Nathan Guzman, the sort of neighbor politicians avoid because he's not a registered voter, and the sort of neighbor other neighbors avoid because he's often angry.

Cortez listened as a furious Guzman complained about crime and stray dogs in the neighborhood before denouncing the entire nation, society in general and “90 percent of you politicians.”

“You even were drug through the dirt,” Guzman said.

That's true: Cortez's credibility has taken public beatings on three occasions.

While running for the City Council, Cortez told voters he'd earned a master's degree in public administration that he hadn't earned yet.

As a councilman, he led the rezoning of a property near Toyota's South Side plant that violated a pact with the automaker and was later reversed.

And two years later, he announced he'd been called to active duty, on short notice, by the Air Force Reserve, an absence that allowed his fiancée, Leticia Cantu, to serve as his interim replacement.

He'd actually initiated the activation process. Cantu ran for the council last year but lost...

Phil Cortez runs into trouble in his own backyard, literally.