Latest news with #RolandoPablos
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Air Force veteran Gina Ortiz Jones wins runoff race for San Antonio mayor
San Antonio's next mayor will be Gina Ortiz Jones, a 44-year-old West Side native who rose from John Jay High School to the top ranks of the U.S. military on an ROTC scholarship. Jones defeated Rolando Pablos, a close ally of Texas GOP leaders, with 54% of the vote on Saturday night in a high-profile, bitterly partisan runoff. Thanks to new, longer terms that voters approved in November, this year's mayor and City Council winners will be the first to serve four-year terms before they must seek reelection. The closely watched runoff came after Jones took a commanding 10-percentage-point lead in last month's 27-candidate mayoral election, but weathered nearly $1 million in attacks from Pablos and his Republican allies. At the Dakota East Side Ice House, a beaming Jones said she was proud of a campaign that treated people with dignity and respect. She also said she was excited that San Antonio politics could deliver some positivity in an otherwise tumultuous news cycle. 'With everything happening around us at the federal level and at the state level, some of the most un-American things we have seen in a very, very long time, it's very heartening to see where we are right now,' she said shortly after the early results came in. When it became clear the results would hold, Jones returned to remark that 'deep in the heart of Texas,' San Antonio voters had reminded the world that it's a city built on 'compassion.' Chappell Roan's 'Pink Pony Club' blared over the speakers to the roughly 250 supporters celebrating with drinks on a hot evening. At Pablos' watch party, he said Jones' overwhelming victory surprised him. The conservative Northside votes he was counting on to carry him didn't wind up materializing. 'The fact is that San Antonio continues to be a blue city,' Pablos told reporters at the Drury Inn & Suites' Old Spanish Ballroom near La Cantera. 'This [race] became highly partisan, and today it showed.' After an overwhelmingly long ticket discouraged much voter interest in the first round, San Antonio's mayoral race suddenly took on new significance when it came down to a runoff between Jones, a two-time Democratic congressional candidate, and Pablos, a close ally of Texas' GOP leaders. The two City Hall outsiders boxed out a host of candidates with more local government experience, including four sitting council members, and sent local politicos scrambling into their partisan camps for an otherwise nonpartisan race. It also drew major interest from state and national political interests, with Republican and Democratic PACs each targeting a position that could be a springboard for a future politician from either party. Between the candidates and their supporting outside groups, the runoff had already drawn roughly $1.7 million in spending as of May 28 — the last date covered by campaign finance reports before the election. Both 2025 mayoral runoff campaigns and their supporting outside groups spent big on mailers, text messages and TV ads. At a recent Jones rally on the West Side, new Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder said Republicans' willingness to sink unheard-of money into symbolic victories was enough to spur the Democratic state party to spend money on Jones' behalf near the end of the runoff — in a city where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans. 'These races are supposed to be nonpartisan, they are the ones making them not nonpartisan,' Scudder said of Texas Republicans. 'They are the ones that are coming in and flooding money into these races … and we have to stand on the front lines of that.' For Jones, who most recently served as Air Force Under Secretary in the Biden administration, this is the third high-profile race Democratic interests have expected her to win. She came close in 2018 in Texas' 23rd Congressional District, losing by roughly 1,000 votes to Republican Will Hurd, then lost by a larger margin in the same district two years later to U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio. Both were multimillion-dollar, top-tier races in the battle for the U.S. House, and the losses stung so much that Jones chose to watch last month's election results in private — even though she'd led every public poll leading up to it. At her watch party on Saturday night, Jones was joined by the iconic local activist Rosie Castro and former Mayor Julián Castro, as well as representatives from an array of outside groups that helped her in the race: Texas Organizing Project, Vote Vets, and labor unions, to name a few. Underscoring the growing progressive influence at City Hall, Councilmembers Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), Phyllis Viagran (D3), Edward Mungia (D4) and Teri Castillo (D5) also attended. Another new progressive, 24-year-old Ric Galvan, was celebrating a narrow victory for District 6 on the city's West Side. The Democratic National Committee, Texas Democratic Party and Democratic Mayors Association all put out statements congratulating Jones. 'With her win in a heavily-Latino city, Mayor-elect Jones will continue the legacy of Mayor Nirenberg and move San Antonio forward,' Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. 'From school boards to city councils to mayoral offices across the state, Texas voters are making their voice heard loud and clear: They want strong Democratic leaders who will fight for them.' Going into the night, conservatives controlled just one seat on San Antonio's City Council, while Republican elected officials on the whole have been nearing extinction in Bexar County. Nevertheless, Republicans saw a big opportunity in the nonpartisan city election. Mayors of Texas' major urban centers have steadily become less progressive as longtime incumbents termed out, and in the November election, President Donald Trump flipped two historically blue counties in South Texas — fueling greater intrigue about Hispanic voters becoming more Republican. Pablos and his allies sought to cast Jones as a progressive zealot, with a PAC supporting him dubbing her the 'AOC of Texas' in recent days and the San Antonio Police Officers' Association threatening that she would defund the police (something Jones has said she doesn't plan to do). Pablos purposefully dropped the 'Ortiz' from her name nearly every time he was in front of a microphone, and ran ads accusing Jones, who is Filipina, of pretending to be Hispanic. It was an unexpected approach from a well-known business attorney with good relationships on both sides of the aisle, and deviation from the 'unity candidate' he set out to be more than a year ago when describing plans for his first political venture in San Antonio. Pabos said Saturday that he was proud of the race he ran, even when it got ugly. The crowd at his watch party even booed Jones when her face came on the TV screen after early results were announced. 'I think that my team did a great job. I think we ran an excellent campaign,' said Pablos, who vowed to continue looking for ways to serve the community. 'What we did is we just laid everything out for everybody to look at and consider.' Jones, whose family grew up leaning on housing vouchers and other forms of government support, crafted a campaign around protecting San Antonio's most vulnerable residents — particularly in times of political uncertainty at the state and federal levels. She was one of the most vocal critics of the city's plans for a roughly $4 billion downtown development project and NBA arena for the San Antonio Spurs known as Project Marvel early in the race, saying she instead wanted to focus city resources on expanded Pre-K programs, workforce development and affordable housing. It was a major contrast to Pablos, a former San Antonio Hispanic Chamber chair, who vowed to focus on bringing major corporations to San Antonio, and led even some left-leaning members of the business community to view her with uncertainty. A surprising number of progressive elected officials either stayed out of the runoff entirely or publicly backed Pablos. Jones seemed undeterred by that dynamic, saying often on the campaign trail that her own approach was rooted in personal experience with leaders who only listen to the privileged few. She joined the military under Don't Ask Don't Tell more than two decades ago at Boston University, and will now be the city's first mayor from the LGBTQ community. 'That experience [of Don't Ask Don't Tell] showed me the importance of when you are in leadership, always having the humility to ask, 'Who am I not hearing from? And why am I not hearing from them?' Jones said at a recent San Antonio Report debate. Jones pointed to San Antonio's ongoing struggle with poverty — despite major investments over many years to try to change that reputation. 'We've had, I think, too many leaders listening to too small a part of our community.' Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O'Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer. Get tickets. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Democrats fend off GOP in San Antonio mayor runoff election
Former Biden administration official Gina Ortiz Jones has won a runoff election in San Antonio's mayoral race, fending off a Republican opponent that the GOP hoped could pull off an upset, Decision Desk HQ projects. Jones defeated former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos in an officially nonpartisan election that still in practice played out as a partisan election as Jones is a registered Democrat and Pablos is a registered Republican. The two candidates had advanced from the first round of the election in which many competed on the same ballot. Since no candidate received a majority of the vote in that round last month, the top two performing candidates advanced to face each other in the runoff. The city of San Antonio hasn't elected a Republican mayor in more than 20 years, and the past two elections for outgoing Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who has served since 2017, haven't been close. Nirenberg is term-limited from running again after serving four two-year terms. But Republicans had hope that they could notch a win with Pablos, who served as secretary of state for about two years under Gov. Greg Abbott (R). The GOP made some gains in the city in November after three presidential races in a row in which the city swung toward Democrats, though former Vice President Harris still comfortably won the area. Pablos also had a significant fundraising advantage, outraising Jones by a margin of 1.5 to 1, while outside spending from PACs contributed more than triple the amount in favor of Pablos compared to Jones, according to DDHQ. That includes a PAC with ties to Abbott and San Antonio's police union, The Texas Tribune reported. Pablos also picked up an endorsement from the editorial board of the San Antonio Express-News, uncommon for a Republican. But Jones was still the favorite in the Democratic-leaning city, even despite the gains that President Trump and the GOP has made with Hispanic voters recently. She finished first in the first round of voting in May, receiving 27.2 percent of the vote in a crowded field to Pablos's 16.6 percent. Jones previously served as undersecretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration from 2021 to 2023. Before that, she was the Democratic nominee for the House seat in Texas's 23rd Congressional District in 2018 and 2020, losing narrowly both times. She will be San Antonio's third female mayor and the first person to serve a four-year term after voters in the city approved a measure in November extending the mayor's term from two years to four. She will also be the city's first openly lesbian mayor. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
New York Times
08-06-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Gina Ortiz Jones, a Progressive, Is Elected San Antonio's Mayor
Gina Ortiz Jones, a Filipino American who served as under secretary of the Air Force during the Biden administration, won a runoff election on Saturday to become the mayor of San Antonio, making her the first openly gay leader of the seventh-largest city in the country. Ms. Jones, 44, defeated Rolando Pablos, 57, a Mexican immigrant and former Texas secretary of state known for his close ties to Gov. Greg Abbott, a conservative Republican. 'San Antonio showed up and showed out,' Ms. Jones told a group of supporters Saturday night, and then referring to voters she added. 'We reminded them that our city is about compassion and it's about leading with everybody in mind.' 'So I look forward to being a mayor for all.' The election was a test of Latino sentiment after the dramatic shift of Hispanic voters toward Donald J. Trump in 2024. Kamala Harris handily won San Antonio, a Latino-majority city and Democratic stronghold, but Mr. Trump made significant gains in the city on his way to a 14-percentage-point victory in Texas. On Saturday night, Mr. Pablos conceded. 'We tried. It was a very tough race.' Though technically nonpartisan, Mr. Pablos did not downplay his ties to Republican leaders in Texas, nor did Ms. Jones shy from her longstanding Democratic connections. Heading into Saturday, she was seen as the front-runner, having earned the largest portion of the voting bloc in a crowded, 27-candidate election in May. Then, she won 27 percent of the vote to Mr. Pablos's 17 percent. She was also closely aligned with the politics of the outgoing mayor, Ron Nirenberg, who was first elected in 2017 and is term limited after four consecutive wins. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Axios
29-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Get to know San Antonio mayoral runoff candidates
There's only about a month between the May 3 election and June 7 runoff for San Antonio voters to get to know mayoral candidates Gina Ortiz Jones and Rolando Pablos, the two who emerged on top from a field of 27 people. We asked each a series of fun questions to learn more about them as a person. Catch up quick: Ortiz Jones, a former Air Force undersecretary under the Biden administration, won about 27% of the vote in the May 3 election. Pablos, a former Texas secretary of state appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, won nearly 17%. Early voting is underway now through June 3. Find polling times and locations online. Election day is June 7. Here are the questions: How do you start your morning? What's your favorite restaurant in the city? Tell us a fun fact about you. What are your hobbies when you're not working? What's your favorite TV show? What's your favorite movie? What's your favorite book? What's your favorite band or musician? What's your proudest personal achievement? What do you consider your top career accomplishment? Here's what they told us. Gina Ortiz Jones Thinking about how many people in our city would suffer if our next mayor was a green light for Trump/Abbott. Dinner: Leche de Tigre, Breakfast: the (El Rodeo De) Jalisco on Potranco and Dugas. I've been shark cage diving off the coast of South Africa. Reading, running and grabbing a spicy margarita with friends. "The Sopranos." "(The) Godfather (Part II)." Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil." George Strait. Being a good big sister and daughter. From Air Force intelligence officer deployed to Iraq, to 27th Under Secretary of the Air Force, my service has always been to our country. Rolando Pablos I spend time praying and meditating. It helps me compose myself and reflect on the blessings in my life. Mi Tierra. I love it and Market Square because our city's culture is so alive there, and it's filled with visitors from other cultures. My family immigrated from Mexico in 1976, when I was 8 years old. I appreciate the sacrifices my parents made, and we have lived the American dream. I love hunting. I'm a "foodie" and enjoy trying different restaurants. And I'm a big fan of all genres of music and enjoy concerts. "Entourage." "Lost in Translation." The Bible and "The Road Less Traveled." Rush. My 30-year marriage to my wonderful wife and our four remarkable children. I'm also blessed to have a very tight-knit extended family.
Axios
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
San Antonio mayor election results: Gina Ortiz Jones and Rolando Pablos lead
Candidates Gina Ortiz Jones and Rolando Pablos are leading San Antonio's mayoral race, according to unofficial early vote results posted Saturday. Why it matters: San Antonio voters had 27 candidates to choose from on the ballot, all vying in the city's first open mayoral race in 16 years. Early results show voters opted for City Hall outsiders with strong fundraising and spending over longtime councilmembers. The intrigue: The city has not elected a mayor who didn't serve on the council since 2005, when voters chose Phil Hardberger over then-District 7 Councilmember Julián Castro. (Castro wouldn't become mayor until 2009.) Catch up quick: Mayor Ron Nirenberg reached his term limits after eight years in office, making him the city's longest-serving mayor since Henry Cisneros in the 1980s. San Antonio's next mayor will serve for four years after voters approved increasing term length from two years. They will work alongside at least four new city councilmembers. There won't be another City Council election until 2029. The latest: As of 7:40pm, results showed top candidates earning: Gina Ortiz Jones: 26.54% Rolando Pablos: 15.27% Beto Altamirano: 12.42% Adriana Rocha Garcia: 10.36% Manny Pelaez: 7.86% Melissa Cabello Havrda: 6.44% John Courage: 6.36% Clayton Perry: 5.85% Zoom in: Ortiz Jones is a former Air Force undersecretary who was twice the Democratic nominee for the 23rd Congressional District. Pablos is a former Texas secretary of state who has also served as a senior adviser to Gov. Greg Abbott. The big picture: The new mayor will lead San Antonio at a pivotal time, as officials are looking to gain public support for a new downtown Spurs arena that could be surrounded by a sports and entertainment district.
