And then there were two for San Antonio Mayor.
Gina Ortiz Jones
The race to become San Antonio’s next mayor is headed toward a partisan showdown between one candidate loved by national Democratic Party leaders and another who has close ties to the Republicans who control every lever of power in Texas state government.
With all vote centers counted, former Air Force Under Secretary Gina Ortiz Jones and former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos were leading a field of 27 candidates, taking 27.2% and 16.6% respectively.
Since no candidate took at least 50% of the vote, Jones and Pablos will advance to a June 7 runoff.
Jones has ties to major Democratic donors and lawmakers from two high-profile congressional races she narrowly lost. Many of those allies returned to help her in the mayoral race.
“It feels really good,” Jones said in an interview along the Flambeau Parade route Saturday night, where supporters high-fived her and stopped to take photos with the potential next mayor. “This whole team has worked very hard and it was important for me to just kind of cherish this moment with them, because we know the work is not done,” she said before heading into Knockout Sports Bar with her campaign team.
“We’ve got 30 ahead of us to continue to show voters what I look forward to doing, in concert with the rest of the City Council, to make sure we move our city forward.”
Pablos, who was appointed to his secretary of state role by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, had help in the race from a PAC run by the governor’s former political director.
From a watch party at Drury La Cantera’s old Spanish ballroom, Pablos acknowledged that electing a candidate with conservative background would be a major switch for blue San Antonio.
“I want to thank the people of San Antonio who spoke that they want change,” he said. “Our campaign has been based on change. We want to make sure that we take San Antonio in a completely different direction.”
Historically, San Antonio has shown preference for candidates with council experience. The city has elected just one mayor without it in 70 years — Phil Hardberger — making the dominance of City Hall outsiders in this race highly unusual.
See here for more on Ortiz Jones, who twice ran for CD23 but came up short each time. Most of the top finishers in this ridiculous 27-candidate field were Democrats, which should advantage her in the runoff. Just knowing that Pablos is a Greg Abbott minion should be enough motivation for most San Antonio voters, I would hope. We’ll know in a month. The Current has more.
Most of the rest of the action of interest was in the school board races. There was actually quite a bit of good news coming out of them. Let’s start with Katy ISD, one of the many suburban areas that have seen an excess of The Crazy lately.
In an upset victory, early numbers indicate that school board candidate James Cross won the majority of votes over Katy ISD board president and incumbent Victor Perez.
Cross, a longtime Katy ISD educator and principal for whom Cross Elementary is named, carried 58% of votes.
Perez was elected to the Katy ISD school board in 2022. He was named board president in 2023.
Cross has served as a public school teacher and campus administrator for 30 years, and he worked in Katy ISD for the past 22 years as a teacher, assistant principal and principal.
Perez, an outspoken conservative, has led the charge for banning books since taking office. He was also instrumental in instituting a policy that critics say requires students who identify as transgender to be “outed” to their parents.
Cross Elementary, which will open in the fall of 2025, is named for Cross and his wife, Mitzi. Katy ISD has a longstanding tradition of naming schools after influential educators who have shaped the district through their service.
Perez’s campaign platform is largely based on his promises to push conservative agendas through the district. Cross has not publicly identified his personal political affiliations and has vowed to vote without political bias if elected.
This was one of many races covered by Franklin Strong in his Book-Loving Texan’s Guide to the May 2025 elections. There was a second race in Katy that didn’t go as well for the good guys, but if there was only one race to be won there, it was by for the Cross-Perez race.
More good news in Fort Bend, where newcomers Afshi Charania and Angie Wierzbicki won their races for Fort Bend ISD. I’ll quote here from the Guide:
Fort Bend ISD recently adopted one of the most restrictive library book policies in the state of Texas. It forbids books not only for sexual content, but also for “promoting” illegal activity. As you would expect, the district has also been culling books from its library shelves.
The district’s library book policy was engineered by a five-person, ultra-rightwing majority of board trustees–most of whom were elected without majority support in the district. Beyond its book bans, the board has been a chaotic, embarrassing disaster. In the past two years, Fort Bend teachers and parents have cringed through a messy dismissal of a superintendent, a looming budget shortfall, and multiple trustees attacking parents online and librarians in board meetings.
That 5-2 majority started coalescing in 2022, when internet troll David Hamilton was re-elected to the board alongside newcomer Rick Garcia. Hamilton is thankfully not running for re-election this year (he’s decided to go collect lawsuits in some other field, I guess) but Garcia is, and he’ll face two challengers. Hamilton is hoping to be replaced by former candidate Cheryl Buford, another book-ban enthusiast.
If voters reject Garcia and Buford, they’ll have a chance to flip the board and restore both competence and sanity to district leadership. Fortunately, both the Place 3 and Place 4 races have strong candidates who can do exactly that. That said, Fort Bend’s problem has never been a lack of good candidates–instead, it has been good candidates running against each other, splitting votes and allowing awful candidates to skate onto the board with less than 50% of the vote. Unfortunately, that could happen again this year in Place 7. I’m putting this in bold because everyone in FBISD needs to see it: Reasonable voters need to unite behind either Allison Drew or Angie Wierzbicki, or Buford will win the seat.
No worries this time. Hopefully the new FBISD Board will now work to undo some of that madness.
Here’s Clear Creek ISD:
With all voting centers reporting in Galveston County, Jessica Cejka is leading in the race for District 1 of Clear Creek ISD’s board of trustees, and challenger Rebecca Lilley remains in the lead against incumbent Scott Bowen for At-Large Position B.
As of 10:45 p.m., over 34% of polling places have been reported for Harris County, according to unofficial results.
While she has acknowledged that results are still unofficial, Cejka said she is appreciative of the voters that supported her, and is looking forward to serving another three years on the school board.
“I’m definitely optimistic, and really appreciate all of the community support that came out to help during the election and the voters that came out,” she said.
Per the Guide, Bowen was an enthusiastic book censor, while Cejka was a good incumbent. Well done here.
Here’s Humble ISD:
In the race for Position 1, newcomer Oscar Silva has maintained the lead with 5,345 votes, while opponent Gracie de Leon has received 4,095 votes.
In the race for Position 3, incumbent Chris Parker has narrowly maintained the lead with 4,773 votes, while challenger Natalie Carter has received 4,678 votes.
In the race for Position 4, challenger Brittnai Brown has maintained the lead with 3,629 votes, while incumbent Ken Kirchhofer and challenger Tracy Shannon have received 2,918 and 2,920 votes, respectively.
In the race for Position 5, newcomer Elizabeth Shaw has maintained the lead with 5,049 votes, while opponents Scott Ford and Judy Castillo have received 3,163 and 1,215 votes, respectively.
Brittnai Brown is the big win here, as challenger Tracy Shannon is a Moms for Liberty wacko. Natalie Carter was a tough loss – she fell short by 43 votes in the end – while Oscar Silva was the better candidate against Gracie de Leon. Not too shabby.
The one place where there’s no good news is Spring Branch ISD, which sadly is the norm there. Perhaps the recent court ruling will help make things a bit better there.
Those are the Houston-area races. There are numerous other’s on Strong’s list, and I will look to see if he provides a recap that I can share. I did get some news from elsewhere via this Threads, um, thread:
View on Threads
In short, multiple loonies thrown out in Grapevine-Colleyville and Mansfield. Thread author Daniel Nichanian had previewed these races at Bolts Magazine beforehand. The Fort Worth Report had more on the Mansfield situation, updated to show the results that were decisively against the wingnuts.
There were two more solid wins in Keller ISD, driven in part by the recent effort to split it into two separate districts, which did not go well with the voters. Lone Star Left rounded up a bunch more good results from the D-FW area and elsewhere in the state, both at the school board and municipal level. A lot of this was below the radar, but Saturday night was a good one for Democrats and sane people, and bad for Republicans and those disconnected from reality. I’ll have more as I can. Congrats to all the winners.
The report from Montgomery County is as good as it can get. Our too small road bond passed with room to spare. From what I can tell, the only race with real consequence was in Montgomery ISD where the incumbent Nate Robb easily fended off a far-right challenger and both he and the other winner are pro-public ed Republicans. All of the other endorsed or recommended candidates of the MoCo Young Dems all won (the MCDP traditionally stays out of the races publicly for obvious reasons).
If the district judge elections are any indication, you have to be Spanish-surname female:
Judge Nicole Garza
Judge Mary Lou Alvarez
Judge Antonia Arteaga
Judge Elizabeth R. Martinez
Judge Norma Gonzales
Judge Monique Diaz
Judge Laura Salinas
Judge Marisa Flores
Judge Christine Vasquez-Hortick
Judge Nadine Melissa Nieto
Judge Cynthia Marie Chapa
Judge Tina Torres
Judge Angelica Jimenez
Judge Rosie Alvarado
Okay, so these are all at-large races that are partisan, not just inside city limits.
[Any presumptive Voting Rights Act or Equal Protection violations, given the sex & ethnicity uniformity? … perhaps to be pondered some other time.]
Second qualification: City elections (San Antonio) don’t comprise the same territory and thus electorate (Bexar County, which conincides with the juridical districts), and – most importantly – are nonpartisan. That’s huge: It means that a minority candidate (numerically speaking) has a chance in the first round with only moderate popular support, with the benefit of most of the competitors being eliminated from the second round. Then, the question is how many of the supporters of the eliminated candidates will show up and cast their vote for one or the other of the top scorers, and that can be a lot of voters up for grabs.
Arguably, it’s a weird way to pick a mayor. A better system would be if voters could register a second (alternative) choice in the first round. Then they might not be a need for a run-off.
On the other hand, the extreme form of STV (single transferrable vote aka Ranked Choice Voting in the USA) would have each voter rank all candidates in order of preference, which is not realistic with such a large number (27 here). It’s feasible when you have only a handful of candidates such as in Malta (pop. ca 1/2 million), where this system has been in use for decades.
MINORITY (THIRD-PARTY) CANDIDATES CAN WIN
Some countries use at-large (countrywide) nominally nonpartisan presidential elections. Same dynamics apply. That’s how Austria got a President from the Green Party, rather than one from the larger ones. Thanks to a run-off with another “third-party” candidate, after the candidates supported by the historically dominant parties (Social-Democrats and People’s Party) got eliminated in the first round.
Another juicy detail: The second (run-off) election was annulled by Austria’s constitutional court because of ballot counting irregularities, and it was then repeated. The outcome didn’t change, but the legitimacy question was taken care of through the do-over.
If interested in a comparative perspective, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Austrian_presidential_election
For STV in Malta, google How Malta Votes
Marc, that’s great to hear. Thanks!
wolfie, the VRA generally only covers legislative bodies (e.g. city council, school board, commissioner’s court, State Senate and House, US House, SBOE), which is why we don’t generally redistrict Constables/JPs every 10 years, even though those are precincts (and often widely disparate in population) as well. If we’re opening up that particular bag of worms of complaining about too much representation by a particular group, I recommend starting with the Electoral College and doing like Maine and Nebraska (even though our Congressional districts are gerrymandered to hell, it’d still be better than winner takes all). Then we can worry about the feelings of white people about judges in Bexar County.
And I’m sure you leaving out Judges Ron Rangel, Frank J. Castro, Michael Mery, Stephanie Boyd, and Joel Perez from your list was just an oversight.
I’d love to see IRV of some sort happen, but I don’t see it as likely any time soon in Texas. In STV/RCV, you don’t have to rank everyone; you can rank between 1 and 26 in a 27 candidate election (the 27th is a bit redundant), but I could see an option to rank up to, say, 5 to make it a bit less complex and hopefully avoid a runoff. I don’t see much of a reason to need to go to the polls twice to have a winner and especially in many candidate elections, have the potential for a runoff between two people who would not otherwise have majority support. But it’s all theoretical and the pols have to actually care or be made to care.