A chance to characterize a few of San Antonio’s fastest-growing territory in Metropolis Council District 6 has drawn eight candidates this 12 months, together with many with lengthy resumes of public service and political expertise.
The district encompasses the town’s inner-to-far West Facet and Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6), who has represented the district since 2019, is working for mayor this 12 months as a substitute of looking for reelection.
Early voting for the Might 3 election runs April 22 via April 29. If no candidate takes no less than 50% of the vote on Might 3, the highest two finishers will advance to a June 7 runoff.
Examine the entire candidates working in District 6 in our 2025 Voter Information, and watch the complete debate on YouTube
The sphere of candidates looking for to interchange Cabello Havrda consists of three younger candidates with backgrounds in Democratic politics, two skilled Metropolis Corridor veterans, two longtime federal staff and one candidate who’s lively within the native Libertarian Social gathering.
Council workplaces are nonpartisan, and District 6 voters have chosen council members with various political backgrounds lately — from conservative Greg Brockhouse to extra centrist Cabello Havrda, who towards the tip of her time period championed plans to fund out-of-state abortion journey from the town funds.
Each had been shut allies to the police and hearth unions, which declined to help any of the District 6 candidates this 12 months.
All eight candidates participated within the San Antonio Report’s District 6 debate on the Boeing Middle at Tech Port on Friday, shedding mild on how they’d method the position.
Ties to the councilwoman
Cabello Havrda has endorsed Kelly Ann Gonzalez, a 34-year-old labor organizer who labored carefully with the councilwoman final 12 months to amend the Metropolis Constitution to in order that metropolis staff may take part in native elections by endorsing, volunteering and in any other case electioneering — an effort that handed in November with 63% help.
Gonzalez stated Friday that she was motivated to run for workplace after shedding an older brother, who died by suicide in 2018, “[opening] my eyes to the inequities that our neighborhood faces.”
She went on to finish a management program for progressive candidates, and is now working on a platform of increasing the town’s psychological well being disaster groups and increasing entry to housing — even when it means extra reasonably priced housing tasks go in District 6 than in different elements of the town.
Like Cabello Havrda, Gonzalez stated the Metropolis Council ought to largely be centered on native points, however generally has a duty to guard residents from dangerous state and federal insurance policies.
“Now we have to be sincere about the truth that the legal guidelines that this nation has handed prior to now haven’t all the time been appropriate, and it’s as much as metropolis leaders to be sure that we’re standing up for our communities,” stated Gonzalez, who has to date raised greater than $17,000, probably the most cash within the District 6 race.
The progressive staffers
Ric Galvan, 24, is a tasks supervisor within the District 5 workplace, in addition to a progressive political organizer whose council marketing campaign has been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
He’s additionally working to broaden entry to housing, and at Friday’s debate mentioned his imaginative and prescient for constructing consensus round that purpose with the district’s highly effective neighborhood associations.
As a neighborhood affiliation president in Pipers Meadow, he stated that in his expertise most householders will not be towards multifamily developments, they only must be introduced into the dialog sooner to see the potential advantages.
“What which means to a Metropolis Council particular person is ensuring that we’re working with the neighborhood associations and the house owner associations to grasp what tasks are arising, what they seem like, how they will have an effect on our neighborhood,” he stated. “We’ve bought to do this early on. We can’t do it on the final minute, or on the Zoning Fee.”
Galvan is the second-highest fundraiser, bringing in about $11,000 and spending $7,600, in response to his most up-to-date report.
Lawson Alaniz-Picasso, 32, is a former District 1 staffer and advertising and marketing skilled who stated she was additionally motivated to run by difficult private life experiences that formed her public coverage views.
“Fourteen years in the past, after I moved right here, [this community] helped me at my darkest time, after I lived in my automobile for six months,” stated Alaniz-Picasso, who went on serve on plenty of metropolis boards and commissions and have become a nationwide meals safety advocate.
“I’m working for Metropolis Council so we will have anyone that has a mixture of lived expertise, skilled expertise, who is aware of how to make sure that we’re transferring the needle ahead for all individuals in San Antonio,” she stated.
Alaniz-Picasso ran within the Democratic major for Bexar County Precinct 1 in 2024, and this 12 months has confronted questions on the marketing campaign path about how lengthy she’s lived within the district.
“I’ve lived in District 6 since April of 2023. My voting historical past and my license and every thing else to indicate that I stay in Westover Valley,” she stated at Friday’s debate. “I need to be certain that this district specifically has the strongest management it could.”
Metropolis Corridor veterans
Two different contenders on the stage touted a few years of expertise working at Metropolis Corridor and within the training sphere.
Vanessa Chavez, 53, grew up within the district and began her profession working for Democrats on the state and federal degree. She went on to work for the town’s housing authority and its Neighborhood and Housing Providers Division.
“I’ve 30 years working as a public servant right here in San Antonio. I graduated in 1994. And I’ve been doing it ever since,” she stated. “I perceive the intricacies how of how budgets work, how the bond works, how grant programming works. … I’ve labored within the trenches.”
Having most just lately served as a district director in one other council workplace, Chavez introduced many concepts for a way she’d like to enhance public engagement with hard-to-reach residents, together with opening the brand new District 7 discipline workplace on Saturdays.
Gerald Lopez, 56, served as chief of employees to former District 6 councilman Ray Lopez, who’s now a state Home consultant, and touted his reference to different elected officers as what units him other than the sector.
“You could have to have the ability to have relationships in the case of speaking with our state, with our state officers and our congressional officers,” he stated.
Lopez owns a landscaping enterprise and was twice to the Northside ISD college board earlier than being appointed to a seat on the Alamo Schools District Board of Trustees a 12 months in the past.
On Friday he stated he would urge the town to take a much bigger position in training — one thing deep-pocketed outdoors teams have additionally been pushing this election.
“What I’m planning on doing is focusing in on that, how we will higher as a metropolis, accomplice with not solely simply our ISDs, our constitution faculties,” stated Lopez. “We’re additionally partnering with our dwelling college college students. All of them deserve a possibility for achievement.”
Former federal staff
Bobby Herrera, 69, represented District 6 within the Nineteen Nineties, misplaced the seat and ran unsuccessfully once more in 2019. He additionally spent a while working for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and for U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Corpus Christi).
On Friday he steered different candidates had been being unrealistic about plans to spend metropolis cash addressing points like housing and psychological well being.
“I hate to say this, however all these candidates haven’t sat there,” he stated. “They’re going to have a heck of a time — whoever you have chose — making an attempt to deliver monies into your individual districts. You must prioritize cops on the streets.”
He additionally for the town to take dramatic measures to crack down on doubtlessly harmful canines. “I believe we should have a metropolis ordinance to cast off the pit bulls,” he stated.
Herrera was voted out of workplace following plenty of scandals, together with a reported try and solicit a six-figure consulting payment in trade for supporting a improvement mission in his district, in addition to involvement in a late-night confrontation with police at a strip membership.
“So far as the scandals are involved, … I used to be by no means arrested,” he stated at Friday’s debate. “I used to be by no means indicted, by no means put in jail for it, by no means taken to court docket. It was all rumour.”
Carlos Antonio Raymond, 76, was born in Panama Metropolis, served within the U.S. Military and had a protracted federal authorities profession working for the U.S. Environmental Safety Company, the U.S. Division of Transportation and different companies.
As a councilman, he stated he can be well-positioned to advocate for the town on the federal degree, specifically pushing again towards cuts to the federal workforce — one thing he’s already accomplished as a funds analyst for the Division of Protection.
“I might allow them to know the impact that their choice goes to have on a federal workforce,” he stated. “It’s going to wreck havoc, and we’re going to pay the value for that.”
At Friday’s debate, Raymond additionally defined how he wound up within the uncommon place of working for the Texas Home beneath two totally different social gathering affiliations: As a Democrat in 2016 and as a Republican within the subsequent three elections.
“The chairman of the Democratic Social gathering informed me that I used to be too conservative,” stated Raymond, who sued after his title was left off the first poll. “I’d been a Democrat for 35 years.”
Afterward, he stated, “the Republican Social gathering introduced me in on religion and stated, ‘We’re going that will help you. Come and work with us.’”
Metropolis accountability activist
Chris Baecker, 53, had a company profession however now teaches economics and algebra at Foundation Center Faculty and economics at Northwest Vista School.
Most of his civic engagement work is expounded to the activist group InfuseSA, which seeks to carry the town to account by submitting public information requests. It additionally holds neighborhood workshops on subjects like protesting property value determinations.
Baecker stated that work has taught him lots about how enterprise is finished at Metropolis Corridor, and that he would hold advocating for extra transparency as a council member.
He’s additionally lively in Libertarian circles, which shined via in his response to a query about working with state and federal leaders.
He stated residents face fixed overreach by each the “Republican state and the left-leaning council,” such because the current use of eminent domaine to pave the way in which for redevelopment of the Alamo and the council’s effort to take away horse-drawn carriages from the streets.
“My position is to defend the liberty and the autonomy of all residents and all San Antonians, and that features towards all ranges of presidency,” he stated. “We’ve seen too many examples the place that was wanted lately.”
Baecker ran in District 6 in 2023 and took 11.2% in a three-way race.
Watch the complete District 6 debate right here:
