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.
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