The race to signify San Antonio’s Northwest facet is now a selection between an skilled metropolis political hand and an legal professional calling for a conservative reboot in metropolis authorities.
From a subject of six candidates, Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s former chief of workers, Ivalis Meza Gonzalez, completed first with 40% of the vote.
Paula McGee, the legal professional, took 22% — edging out progressive realtor and landlord Sakib Shaikh, who had been a high fundraiser and benefitted from huge spending by an education-focused PAC.
Now headed right into a June 7 runoff, District 8 is one in all three nonpartisan council seats, plus a mayor’s race, which have all come all the way down to progressive-vs.-conservative matchups, including recent pressure to a race that’s already been fairly ugly.
Meza Gonzalez and Shaikh hurled accusations at each other within the first spherical that wound up even requiring an out of doors legal professional to overview — and in the end dismiss — a metropolis ethics criticism. However Meza Gonzalez now enters the second spherical a prohibitive favourite, with a extra assured method.
“I got here into this runoff with a two-to-one lead, and meaning so much to me,” Meza Gonzalez stated at a San Antonio Report debate Thursday night time. “It signifies that I linked with residents, and it signifies that the residents linked with what I would like and what I envision for District 8.”
In the meantime McGee, who beforehand served on the town’s Ethics Overview Board and positioned herself as a voice of calm and motive earlier within the race, is now sharpening her pitch for an uphill end.
Inside minutes of taking the rostrum at Texas Public Radio’s Malú & Carlos Alvarez Theater on Thursday night time, McGee picked up on a few of Shaikh’s assaults from the primary spherical, knocking Meza Gonzalez’s position as authorities affairs advisor for Andrade-Van de Putte & Associates.
“I’m not a lobbyist. I’m not a politician. This isn’t a stepping stone in a future political profession,” McGee stated in her opening assertion. “ … I’m doing this to be an agent for change that should come to Metropolis Corridor.”
Whereas she harassed that each candidates have a transparent grasp of the problems, McGee framed Meza Gonzalez as a continuation of a council with a left-leaning agenda that has gone past the scope of metropolis authorities: “insurance policies which are, I don’t consider, reflective of the mainstream in our neighborhood.”
Early voting begins Tuesday and runs by June 3 for the June 7 runoff election.
A district not like a lot of San Antonio
District 8 encompasses the town’s far Northwest facet — a few of San Antonio’s wealthiest enclaves, fanciest purchasing areas and gated communities.
Present Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8), a enterprise legal professional who’s biking off after an unsuccessful mayoral bid, typically embraced many left-leaning social values, but in addition leaned in to residents’ impatiences with homeless encampments, panhandling and an increase in property crime.
Whereas the Northside districts sometimes see much less crime and housing insecurity lower than the remainder of the town, their residents discover these issues very acutely, and each Meza Gonzalez and McGee stated Thursday that making them really feel protected might be their high precedence.
Meza Gonzalez stated District 8’s good facilities are a part of what makes it a goal for crime within the first place, and why it ought to keep a precedence within the metropolis’s total policing technique.
“We now have giant purchasing facilities in District 8, with The Rim, La Cantera, Huebner Oaks, so all of these are actually prime spots for property crimes to happen,” she stated. “After which, in fact, our houses, proper? So yeah, I do suppose that we have to ensure that residents really feel protected.”
McGee, who typically desires to undo the town’s method of placing extra assets within the areas with the best want, stated District 8 is susceptible to larger issues sooner or later if it doesn’t get its lower-level crime underneath management.
“I consider that we’d like our share of assets,” McGee stated when requested whether or not District 8’s crime ranges needs to be a high precedence for the town at-large. “The problems associated to crime … change every now and then, and space to space, so what we could have is property crime, [but it] can turn out to be violent crime in one other time.”
McGee stated she wouldn’t essentially help spending extra money on assuaging homelessness after the town’s 2025 finances included an enormous enhance on such points from the earlier yr.
“I don’t suppose that anyone in our metropolis thinks that we’ve gotten our cash’s price associated to the homeless inhabitants,” she stated. “We haven’t seen any discount within the numbers. We see encampments seem right here and there, and so they get cleaned up, however then the individuals reappear.”
Meza Gonzalez disagreed with the sentiment, saying District 8 residents perceive that “no one wakes up and is simply homeless.”
“Within the final finances cycle we invested [$44 million] in homeless methods, from inexpensive housing to everlasting, supportive housing to fast rehousing for residents which are in an emergency,” she stated. “That’s what we’d like, a coordinated effort on this area. … There’s loads of layered points.”
A brand new period of conservatism?
Each candidates are paying attention to potential headwinds from an costly mayoral runoff between Former Air Pressure Underneath Secretary Gina Ortiz Jones and former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos.
Pablos’ allies are spending huge attempting to rally conservatives on the Northside, and McGee is a part of a slate of different candidates native Republicans are selling.
At a gathering of the Republican Membership of Bexar County at Chester’s Hamburgers final week, McGee drew applause for calling Jones her “worst nightmare” and for criticizing her opponent.
“She has a level from a legislation college however has by no means practiced legislation,” McGee stated of Meza Gonzalez.
Pointing to the D8 race and the others prefer it on the June 7 poll, McGee stated San Antonio has a possibility ship metropolis its management in a unique route — and hold it there, because of new longer council phrases.
“We have to take our metropolis again. We now have individuals in each runoff that may make this occur,” McGee stated. “With [Councilman] Marc Whyte (D10) already on the council, if we will add widespread sense conservatives and a mayor, we will put this metropolis on the course that it must be on for years to come back.”
Seated together with her husband, the sharply-dressed couple caught out from the group of seasoned activists slinging yard indicators and marketing campaign T-shirts, which included a number of the metropolis’s most outspoken social conservatives.
However McGee’s speech was obtained warmly, and as she spoke, a number of girls within the viewers likened her to one in all their occasion’s most revered conservative standard-bearers — state Sen. Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels).
A gentle hand at Metropolis Corridor?
Lengthy lively in Democratic circles, Meza Gonzalez has taken the alternative method.
She ran for Bexar County Choose as a Democrat in 2022, however when the Bexar County Democrats made its council runoff endorsements, she requested them to not embrace her on that listing.
And after a rough-and-tumble first spherical of the race, Meza Gonzalez let McGee’s criticisms go largely unchecked at Thursday’s debate, stressing her personal {qualifications} and her marketing campaign staff made up of family and friends members.
Her pitch to the viewers mirrored years of expertise navigating metropolis budgets and departments, noting that the position was “too essential” for the following council member to “study on the job.”
“I really feel like I’m the best individual for this for a variety of causes, however particularly, as a result of I’ve sat by three finances cycles throughout my time at Metropolis Corridor … and noticed firsthand what our finances encompassed and the wants that our neighborhood has,” she stated.
This yr finances cuts are anticipated, and council members must make selections rapidly.
However Meza Gonzalez stated she’d already lived by quite a lot of completely different budgeting circumstances, from banner CPS Vitality years to the drop-off in federal pandemic aid.
“I believe it wants any individual that may get in and get to work on day one, and that finances is that first job we have now.”
