San Antonio voters selected their mayor and city council representatives on Saturday. They also cast votes on Proposition A and a variety of education issues.
Below are the latest results, based on early voting totals tallied, along with 251 of 251 voting centers reporting.
BALLOT INITIATIVE
San Antonio voters rejected Proposition A in a landslide decision on Saturday.
The criminal justice reform initiative was criticized for being too broad and codifying a cite-and-release policy that opponents said would hurt small businesses and lead to increased crime.
It contained big criminal justice reforms like the decriminalization of abortion and low-level marijuana possession. But despite containing some popular policies, nearly three quarters of voters came out against the city charter amendment.
Dave Peterson, the interim president and CEO of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, was one of the proposition’s prominent opponents.
“I think the voters really voiced very clearly that they don’t want this community to not take care of criminals and criminal activity when it occurs.”
The business community, police union, and majority of city council were vocally against Prop A in the months leading up to the election.
Voters can read the Prop A language in full here.
SAN ANTONIO
San Antonio voters granted Mayor Ron Nirenberg a fourth and final term on Saturday.
It affords him the chance to continue the progress and complete the projects he started since he became mayor in 2017.
That includes an affordable housing initiative, job training, and a major push to increase transportation options.
Nirenberg said his goal was to see these projects through.
“I’m very happy to be mayor of San Antonio at a time when San Antonians together have rallied to finally break the cycles of generational poverty that have gripped this city for a very long time," he said. "That’s done through education. That’s done through good jobs -- good paying jobs -- [and by] creating those jobs. That’s done through housing opportunity."
Nirenberg said he believes the work done over the last six years has been significant.
"I do believe when history is finally written," he added, "it will be an inflection point for this city when we became a city that put more equitable opportunity, where families can thrive no matter what part of town they live on."
If Nirenberg completes his final two years in office, he will be among the longest serving mayors in San Antonio’s history.
City council
District 1 Councilman Mario Bravo was forced into a runoff with challenger Sukh Kaur following Saturday's election.
Kaur, an education consultant, finished first in the race against the incumbent councilman Bravo.
She says her campaign knocked on more than 10,000 doors. She explained that streets, sidewalks, drainage, public safety, and property tax relief were key issues to District 1, which includes downtown and near North Side neighborhoods.
Kaur looks forward to the runoff.
"So I want to make sure in going into the runoff that people that did not vote for me feel confident in my ability to lead and the ability to lead well," she said.
Kaur is a board member of Texas Public Radio. She told TPR she will not leave her board position to run for the City Council.
Bravo has won a previous runoff to win his seat. He said he was ready to face Kaur again.
"It's a different race. It's a completely different race," he said. "The mayor's not on the ballot. There's not any propositions on the ballot, and so it's just head-to-head, and one candidate against the other. So it's a very different race."
The runoff election is scheduled for Saturday, June 10.
City Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez held onto his seat, averting a runoff in District 2 on the East Side.
The district, which runs from Dignowity Hill to near Windcrest, is prone to turnover. Up until Saturday night, no councilmember had been re-elected to a second term in District 2 since Alan Warrick in 2015.
McKee-Rodriguez faced nine challengers. He said outreach was a key reason for his victory. "We have the monthly newsletter that hits 10,000 households," he said. "We have the blockwalk. We text message. We do all the things that a campaign does but we do them year-round. And so folks feel connected to our office in ways that they haven't previously."
McKee-Rodriguez said some of his top priorities for next term are improving the condition of roads in District 2 and the construction of a new senior center. He added that he's focused on coming up with creative solutions for other issues in his district.
"I think the stray and roaming animal population is very high in my district," he said. "And then houselessness is one that, I think, has risen to the top of priority in the past several years now but remains one of those difficult, difficult challenges."
McKee-Rodriguez said he’s also looking forward to budget season, when he expects to see greater consideration of racial and economic equity in the budget development process.
The councilman is an educator and the first openly gay Black man to hold elected office in Texas. He first won his seat in 2021 after a crowded May election with 12 candidates and wide victory in a June runoff against his former boss, Jada Andrews Sullivan.
Phyllis Viagran finished with 50.91% of the vote. Erin Gallegos Reid finished with 22.28% of the vote.
Viagran represents San Antonio's largest city council district.
After a campaign clouded by the closure of one of the South Side’s only hospitals, incumbent Adriana Rocha Garcia won the contest with around three-fourths of the vote.
She said she’s focused on improving health care access for her constituents, most of whom will now have to get to the North Side for doctors appointments as well as emergency care.
“How are we going to tell our families, 'by the way, you're going to have to travel further. It's going to take, maybe -- if you don't have transportation -- an hour and a half via bus trip.' If they do have a car, pay for that gas, and then pay for that parking.”
University Health System is building a new hospital on the South Side that will open in three or four years. But Rocha Garcia said they need to figure out how to close the South Side's health care gap now.
Councilwoman Teri Castillo was re-elected to a second term representing the West Side district.
Castillo is known for championing progressive policies on the council. She has a background in local organizing and teaching.
She easily won a second term with 62.89% of the vote.
Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda won a second term to represent the Far West Side district. She received 53.75% of the vote to avoid a runoff.
The attorney owns her own practice and has worked for the city in a number of capacities over the past 20 years.
Marina Alderete Gavito and Dan Rossiter are heading into the runoffs for the District 7 city council seat, and both candidates are fired up.
“We walked dozens of miles, knocked on thousands of doors and made thousands of texts and phone calls," Alderete Gavito said. "It's because of this hard work that we earned a place in the runoff.”
Rossiter said his team was prepared to keep campaigning.
“Since we knew the number of candidates, this has always been on the back of my mind," he said. "We've been taking actions to make sure that we're ready to go and get to work and finish this strong.”
Ana Sandoval resigned the city council seat in January, leading to the open-seat faceoff.
The contest resumes on Saturday, June 10.
Councilman Manny Peláez easily won a fourth term representing the city’s Northwest side. He secured 70.45% of the vote.
Peláez is an attorney who has represented a wide range of clients in San Antonio, from homeowners associations to Toyota Manufacturing.
District 9 Councilman John Courage won a fourth term in the conservative North Side district. He won decisively with 62.46% of the vote.
The 71-year-old is a former teacher and military veteran and one of the more moderate voices on the council.
Marc Whyte cruised to an easy victory Saturday night in the sole conservative district.
The attorney beamed with pride as the numbers told him it was unlikely he would be in a runoff race against any of his six opponents.
Outgoing District 10 Councilman Clayton Perry was expected to run and win the seat again. But all that changed last November when he imbibed 14 drinks in a few hours and smashed his Jeep Rubicon head-on into another vehicle. He later pleaded no contest to two misdemeanor criminal charges, serving no jail time.
Whyte, 43, was bolstered by the endorsement of eight previous District 10 council representatives. Several of them, including John Clamp, James Hasslocher, Carlton Soules, Lyle Larson and Mike Gallagher, took the additional step of donating to his campaign.
“He is going into the job already with the experience that a councilman needs,” said Gallagher, who was at Whyte’s watch party at the Barn Door.
Whyte has served on multiple council committees, including Zoning and the Ethics Review board.
He said that the business community support played a role in his victory. He described himself as a common-sense conservative, and he plans to target small business and lower taxes and crime prevention as his interest areas.
EDUCATION
Bexar County school board races had multiple upsets in Saturday’s election. The incumbents in Judson, Southwest, and Medina Valley lost their seats.
Two of the three incumbents in Harlandale were re-elected. But the third lost her seat by just 14 votes.
Northside and SAISD held on to all of their current trustees, but newcomers elected to open seats could shake things up.
One of the candidates backed by Northside’s teacher union beat the son of an outgoing trustee, and the SAISD candidate backed by the establishment lost to a parent from a neighborhood school that was converted into a choice school in 2020 due to low test scores.
Southwest ISD
In Southwest ISD, trustees calling for a change in the way the district conducts elections lost their seats on the school board. They were defeated by challengers backed by the board majority.
The district conducts elections in an unusual way that puts it on a separate ballot from other Bexar County elections.
Incumbents Yolanda Garza-Lopez and Pete “Pedro” Bernal wanted to change that because they believed it suppresses the vote. That belief put them at odds with Southwest’s board majority, who said their elections are fine the way they are.
The board’s leadership campaigned on behalf of newcomers Joe Diaz and James Gonzalez, and it worked — Diaz and Gonzalez won election with about 700 votes each.
Southwest has at-large elections — which means residents are eligible to vote for every trustee, no matter where in the district they live.
School bonds
Five San Antonio-area school districts had bonds on the ballot Saturday. All five got approval from voters — with one exception.
Comal ISD’s propositions for construction and technology passed, but voters said no to stadium renovations.
Some Texas school districts have found it harder to pass bonds in recent years. But these districts — Alamo Heights, Comal, Medina Valley, Southwest and La Vernia — are either relatively affluent, experiencing rapid growth, or both.
