Former Biden administration official Gina Ortiz Jones has received a runoff election in San Antonio’s mayoral race, warding off a Republican opponent that the GOP hoped might pull off an upset, Resolution Desk HQ initiatives.
Jones defeated former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos in an formally nonpartisan election that also in observe performed out as a partisan election as Jones is a registered Democrat and Pablos is a registered Republican.
The 2 candidates had superior from the primary spherical of the election through which many competed on the identical poll. Since no candidate obtained a majority of the vote in that spherical final month, the highest two performing candidates superior to face one another within the runoff.
The town of San Antonio hasn’t elected a Republican mayor in additional than 20 years, and the previous two elections for outgoing Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who has served since 2017, haven’t been shut. Nirenberg is term-limited from operating once more after serving 4 two-year phrases.
However Republicans had hope that they might notch a win with Pablos, who served as secretary of state for about two years underneath Gov. Greg Abbott (R). The GOP made some positive aspects within the metropolis in November after three presidential races in a row through which town swung towards Democrats, although former Vice President Harris nonetheless comfortably received the realm.
Pablos additionally had a big fundraising benefit, outraising Jones by a margin of 1.5 to 1, whereas exterior spending from PACs contributed greater than triple the quantity in favor of Pablos in comparison with Jones, in line with DDHQ. That features a PAC with ties to Abbott and San Antonio’s police union, The Texas Tribune reported.
Pablos additionally picked up an endorsement from the editorial board of the San Antonio Categorical-Information, unusual for a Republican.
However Jones was nonetheless the favourite within the Democratic-leaning metropolis, even regardless of the positive aspects that President Trump and the GOP has made with Hispanic voters lately. She completed first within the first spherical of voting in Could, receiving 27.2 p.c of the vote in a crowded subject to Pablos’s 16.6 p.c.
Jones beforehand served as undersecretary of the Air Pressure throughout the Biden administration from 2021 to 2023. Earlier than that, she was the Democratic nominee for the Home seat in Texas’s twenty third Congressional District in 2018 and 2020, shedding narrowly each instances.
She shall be San Antonio’s third feminine mayor and the primary particular person to serve a four-year time period after voters within the metropolis accepted a measure in November extending the mayor’s time period from two years to 4. She may also be town’s first brazenly lesbian mayor.