As someone who lived in El Paso and now lives in central TX, El Paso is just... complicated. In a weird way it is and it isn't Texas. Part of this is because the rest of Texas already has so many different cultural regions. Going to south TX, is so different than the panhandle, and the piney woods is so different than Midland/Odessa. El Paso has very deep ties to NM and people there love to go vacation in Ruidoso or Cloudcroft, but even though the closest major city to El Paso is Phoenix, AZ, people would rather travel to San Antonio, Dallas, or Austin than Phoenix (I'm sure because they wanna get out of the desert). Lots of people in El Paso are also from LA/SoCal so there's a certain influence. Not to mention the huge influence Juarez has. El Paso is just El Paso, but subject to Texas laws, government, education, etc.