Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1), whose first reelection rapidly grew to become one of many ugliest races of this election cycle, is headed to a runoff with former Higher Concord Hills Neighborhood Affiliation president Patty Gibbons.
After all of the votes have been counted on Saturday, Kaur took 48.91% of the vote in a 10-way race, falling simply wanting the 50% she wanted to keep away from a June 7 runoff.
Her closest challenger, Gibbons, is a former District 9 resident who went to large lengths to maintain the town from drawing her Northside-Higher Concord Hills neighborhood into D1 — referred to as one of many metropolis’s extra progressive, downtown council districts — through the 2022 redistricting course of.
She ended the night time with 17.8% of the vote.
“I believe that they put me in D1 hoping I’d by no means run once more,” Gibbons stated when she entered the race. “However after realizing how comparable Higher Concord Hills is to those different neighborhoods — very vocal, very knowledgeable, very educated — I believe it was a very good match in spite of everything.”
The necessary District 1 council seat encompasses most of downtown, the town’s financial engine, and stretches as much as embody many of the neighborhoods between I-10 and U.S. 281 in addition to some north of Loop 410.
Kaur, an training guide who got here up by way of the Higher Chamber’s Management San Antonio program, gained the seat in 2023 by unseating an incumbent who was popular with the district’s neighborhood leaders.
Headed into her first reelection race, tensions between the pro-growth enterprise group and the district’s neighborhood leaders had solely heightened amid quite a lot of new metropolis initiatives that every one occur to be throughout the district’s boundaries.
Kaur supported the brand new Missions’ Minor League Baseball stadium and a proposed NBA area district referred to as Undertaking Marvel. She additionally took management roles facilitating the baseball stadium — which includes razing an present condominium complicated — and plans for denser improvement alongside the speedy transit line on San Pedro Avenue.
“We’ve received to verify we’re shifting ahead as a metropolis, and we’ve performed that,” Kaur stated in a February interview about her first time period. “We’ve supported insurance policies which are going to make sure that we’ve got a San Antonio that our youngsters can thrive in, by creating transit alternatives, by creating extra housing alternatives.”
These positions helped Kaur elevate massive cash for her marketing campaign, permitting her to spend greater than most mayoral candidates within the closing month, whereas the pro-business group San Antonio Fairness Alliance put $25,000 into the race on her behalf.
Additionally they drew quite a lot of challengers who stated they have been personally affected by the initiatives, and didn’t really feel like their voices have been being heard at Metropolis Corridor.
Gibbons is a retired land surveyor who rallied a whole bunch of householders towards the town’s plans for transit-oriented improvement — zoning that permits for denser, car-free housing — alongside San Pedro Avenue’s forthcoming speedy transit line.
She beforehand served on the town’s Zoning Fee and is energetic in conservative circles.
District 1 has most popular progressive candidates lately. Gibbons stated in a telephone interview Saturday night time that regardless of all the work that had gone into the race, even she was considerably bewildered by the truth that the district selected somebody along with her conservative background for the runoff.
“That’s been the large dialogue over right here,” she stated. “It’s going to return all the way down to that query: Do they need a conservative? And I believe that they’re unsure. … As a result of they’ve by no means had one.”
Former River Highway Neighborhood Affiliation board member Susan Strawn took 13.24% in Saturday’s race.
Bar proprietor Julisa Medrano-Guerra — who put a number of cash into her personal race plus introduced on political operatives recognized for his or her scorched-earth ways and employed a personal investigator to comply with Kaur — took 6.09%.
