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Two-time Democratic congressional candidate and former Under Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Gina Ortiz Jones narrowly led the pack of 27 San Antonio mayoral candidates, according to a February poll from UTSA’s Center for Public Opinion Research (CPOR), but more than half of voters are still undecided.
The poll of 683 likely voters in San Antonio also found a lack of enthusiasm for the proposed downtown San Antonio Missions ballpark and Project Marvel — the major proposed downtown sports and entertainment district that would include a new Spurs arena — with neither earning majority support.
The poll had a 3.8% margin of error.
The San Antonio mayor’s race
CPOR Director Bryan Gervais said a group of mayoral candidates have started to pull away. “We do see evidence of a group of seven emerging from the field, breaking away from the rest of the pack, and that was led by Gina Ortiz Jones, [District 9 Councilmember] John Courage and [District 8 Councilmember] Manny Peláez,” he said.
Jones had 9.3% support in the poll, followed closely by Courage at 7.9% and Peláez at 5.5%.
Gervais said the gaps between Jones and Courage and Courage and Peláez are both within the margin of error, making for an extremely tight competition among the top three candidates.
The next four candidates in the top seven are District 6 Councilmember Melissa Cabello Havrda with 3.9% support, tech entrepreneur Beto Altamirano with 3.6% support, District 4 Councilmember Adriana Rocha Garcia with 3.3% support, and former District 10 Councilmember Clayton Perry with 3.2% support — what amounts to a four-way tie for fourth place.
Former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, who has raised more money than every other candidate besides Altamirano’s with more than $150,000, according to the latest campaign finance reports, had less than 1% support from voters in CPOR’s poll.
Despite the current state of the race, Gervais said it could all change between now and the election in May. “The San Antonio mayor's race is still wide open,” Gervais said.
Thirty-five percent of voters don’t know which mayoral candidate they’re going to vote for, and an additional 20% are not familiar with any of the candidates for mayor.
Downtown sports development
Gervais said the poll found that nearly as many voters oppose both Project Marvel and the Missions ballpark as support them.
Forty-one percent support Project Marvel, which includes an estimated $1.5 billion Spurs arena in the Hemisfair area and a slew of other downtown development projects, and 36% are against it.
Forty-one percent support the Missions ballpark, and 35% are against it.
Voter support for a potential increase to the Bexar County venue tax to support the new Spurs arena was even slimmer — 42% for and 41% against. Increasing the venue tax for hotel stays within the county has been proposed as a major funding mechanism for paying for the Spurs arena, and the county is likely to call a November election for voters to decide whether to increase that tax.
CPOR’s poll was only directed at registered San Antonio voters and did not include other voters within the county who would be eligible to vote in a future venue tax election.
The poll was also conducted before the city released its cost estimate for the arena, which could influence voters’ decisions.
Gervais said new information about Project Marvel, which still lacks concrete mechanisms to fund its different aspects, would likely influence voters and get these numbers to budge in the next poll CPOR is planning to conduct before the May election.
“I mean, it really depends a lot on what voters learn and come to understand about Project Marvel and … other funding mechanisms for various aspects of the project that are being considered,” he said.
City and county leaders have sworn off increases in property taxes or the use of general fund dollars to pay for the Spurs arena and other parts of Project Marvel. But the city has contemplated using certain tax schemes that redirect property taxes in certain geographic areas to support private development within those areas that would have otherwise gone into the general fund.
CPOR plans to conduct a second poll in April before early voting begins on April 22 and is planning to conduct a third election poll between the May 3 election and the June 7 runoff, assuming no one mayoral candidate receives a majority of support and the race goes into the runoff.
That scenario is likely given the large field of candidates.
