Air Drive veteran Gina Ortiz Jones wins runoff race for San Antonio mayor

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San Antonio’s subsequent mayor can be Gina Ortiz Jones, a 44-year-old West Facet native who rose from John Jay Excessive Faculty to the highest ranks of the U.S. army on an ROTC scholarship.

Jones defeated Rolando Pablos, a detailed ally of Texas GOP leaders, with 54% of the vote on Saturday night time in a high-profile, bitterly partisan runoff.

Due to new, longer phrases that voters accepted in November, this 12 months’s mayor and Metropolis Council winners would be the first to serve four-year phrases earlier than they have to search reelection.

The carefully watched runoff got here after Jones took a commanding 10-percentage-point lead in final month’s 27-candidate mayoral election, however weathered practically $1 million in assaults from Pablos and his Republican allies.

On the Dakota East Facet Ice Home, a beaming Jones mentioned she was pleased with a marketing campaign that handled individuals with dignity and respect.

She additionally mentioned she was excited that San Antonio politics may ship some positivity in an in any other case tumultuous information 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 mentioned shortly after the early outcomes got here in.

When it turned clear the outcomes would maintain, Jones returned to comment that “deep in the heart of Texas,” San Antonio voters had reminded the world that it’s a metropolis constructed on “compassion.”

Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” blared over the audio system to the roughly 250 supporters celebrating with drinks on a scorching night.

At Pablos’ watch occasion, he mentioned Jones’ overwhelming victory shocked him. The conservative Northside votes he was relying on to hold him didn’t wind up materializing.

“The fact is that San Antonio continues to be a blue city,” Pablos informed reporters on the Drury Inn & Suites’ Previous Spanish Ballroom close to La Cantera. “This [race] became highly partisan, and today it showed.”

An uncommon race

After an overwhelmingly lengthy ticket discouraged a lot voter curiosity within the first spherical, San Antonio’s mayoral race all of the sudden took on new significance when it got here all the way down to a runoff between Jones, a two-time Democratic congressional candidate, and Pablos, a detailed ally of Texas’ GOP leaders.

The 2 Metropolis Corridor outsiders boxed out a number of candidates with extra native authorities expertise, together with 4 sitting council members, and despatched native politicos scrambling into their partisan camps for an in any other case nonpartisan race.

It additionally drew main curiosity from state and nationwide political pursuits, with Republican and Democratic PACs every concentrating on a place that could possibly be a springboard for a future politician from both occasion.

Between the candidates and their supporting outdoors teams, the runoff had already drawn roughly $1.7 million in spending as of Might 28 — the final date lined by marketing campaign finance stories earlier than the election.

Each 2025 mayoral runoff campaigns and their supporting outdoors teams spent huge on mailers, textual content messages and TV advertisements.

At a latest Jones rally on the West Facet, new Texas Democratic Occasion Chair Kendall Scudder mentioned Republicans’ willingness to sink unheard-of cash into symbolic victories was sufficient to spur the Democratic state occasion to spend cash on Jones’ behalf close to the tip of the runoff — in a metropolis the place Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans.

“These races are supposed to be nonpartisan, they are the ones making them not nonpartisan,” Scudder mentioned 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.”

Third time’s a attraction

For Jones, who most lately served as Air Drive Below Secretary within the Biden administration, that is the third high-profile race Democratic pursuits have anticipated her to win.

She got here shut in 2018 in Texas’ twenty third Congressional District, dropping by roughly 1,000 votes to Republican Will Hurd, then misplaced by a bigger margin in the identical district two years later to U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-San Antonio.

Each had been multimillion-dollar, top-tier races within the battle for the U.S. Home, and the losses stung a lot that Jones selected to observe final month’s election ends in non-public — although she’d led each public ballot main as much as it.

At her watch occasion on Saturday night time, Jones was joined by the enduring native activist Rosie Castro and former Mayor Julián Castro, in addition to representatives from an array of out of doors teams that helped her within the race: Texas Organizing Venture, Vote Vets, and labor unions, to call a number of.

Underscoring the rising progressive affect at Metropolis Corridor, Councilmembers Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), Phyllis Viagran (D3), Edward Mungia (D4) and Teri Castillo (D5) additionally attended.

One other new progressive, 24-year-old Ric Galvan, was celebrating a slim victory for District 6 on the town’s West Facet.

The Democratic Nationwide Committee, Texas Democratic Occasion and Democratic Mayors Affiliation 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 Nationwide Committee Chair Ken Martin mentioned in a press release. “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.”

Bucking rightward shifts

Going into the night time, conservatives managed only one seat on San Antonio’s Metropolis Council, whereas Republican elected officers on the entire have been nearing extinction in Bexar County.

However, Republicans noticed an enormous alternative within the nonpartisan metropolis election.

Mayors of Texas’ main city facilities have steadily develop into much less progressive as longtime incumbents termed out, and within the November election, President Donald Trump flipped two traditionally blue counties in South Texas — fueling better intrigue about Hispanic voters turning into extra Republican.

Pablos and his allies sought to solid Jones as a progressive zealot, with a PAC supporting him dubbing her the “AOC of Texas” in latest days and the San Antonio Police Officers’ Affiliation threatening that she would defund the police (one thing Jones has mentioned she doesn’t plan to do).

Pablos purposefully dropped the “Ortiz” from her identify practically each time he was in entrance of a microphone, and ran advertisements accusing Jones, who’s Filipina, of pretending to be Hispanic.

It was an surprising strategy from a widely known enterprise legal professional with good relationships on either side of the aisle, and deviation from the “unity candidate” he got down to be greater than a 12 months in the past when describing plans for his first political enterprise in San Antonio.

Pabos mentioned Saturday that he was pleased with the race he ran, even when it obtained ugly. The group at his watch occasion even booed Jones when her face got here on the TV display after early outcomes had been introduced.

“I think that my team did a great job. I think we ran an excellent campaign,” mentioned Pablos, who vowed to proceed searching for methods to serve the group. “What we did is we just laid everything out for everybody to look at and consider.”

A imaginative and prescient constructed from private expertise

Jones, whose household grew up leaning on housing vouchers and different types of authorities assist, crafted a marketing campaign round defending San Antonio’s most susceptible residents — significantly in instances of political uncertainty on the state and federal ranges.

She was one of the vital vocal critics of the town’s plans for a roughly $4 billion downtown growth challenge and NBA enviornment for the San Antonio Spurs referred to as Venture Marvel early within the race, saying she as a substitute needed to focus metropolis sources on expanded Pre-Ok packages, workforce growth and reasonably priced housing.

It was a serious distinction to Pablos, a former San Antonio Hispanic Chamber chair, who vowed to give attention to bringing main firms to San Antonio, and led even some left-leaning members of the enterprise group to view her with uncertainty.

A stunning variety of progressive elected officers both stayed out of the runoff completely or publicly backed Pablos.

Jones appeared undeterred by that dynamic, saying typically on the marketing campaign path that her personal strategy was rooted in private expertise with leaders who solely hearken to the privileged few.

She joined the army below Don’t Ask Don’t Inform greater than 20 years in the past at Boston College, and can now be the town’s first mayor from the LGBTQ group.

“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 mentioned at a latest San Antonio Report debate.

Jones pointed to San Antonio’s ongoing wrestle with poverty — regardless of main investments over a few years to attempt to change that popularity.

“We’ve had, I think, too many leaders listening to too small a part of our community.”

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