On the record.

Is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho San Antonio is a fast growing, fast moving city with something new happening every day.

That's why each week we go on the record with Randy Beamer and the newsmakers who are driving this change.

Then we gather at the reporters roundtable to talk about the latest news stories with the journalist behind those stories.

Join us now as we go on the record with Randy Beamer.

Hi, everybody.

Thank you for joining us for On the Record.

I'm Randy Beamer, and this week we're going to start with the results of the mayor's race here in San Antonio.

Of course, Gina Ortiz Jones elected, beating Rolando Pablos about 54% to 46% or so.

Joining us to talk about that is former San Antonio Mayor and HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Randy.

Thank you.

What did you think of this race overall?

Well, it was more partizan, I think, than we have had in my memory.

I don't know.

You know, we're supposed to be independent as city races, but it didn't seem that way this time.

I was actually surprised that the race was not closer.

I thought it was probably going to be very close, but the surprise was how well Gina did on the North side.

She really split all the north side districts healthily and then carried more forcefully in other parts of the city.

But when I saw the early turnout was so heavy on the north side, I thought this could be trouble for her.

And it's at a minimum, it's going to be a close race.

But I think the fact that she is an Air Force veteran helped a lot.

She was undersecretary of the Air Force.

This is Military City, USA.

People on the north side understood that relate to it.

They've either served or respect people who have.

And then, her her personality and manner.

I interviewed both here at Clarin, and I thought she was very precise and had 1 to 3 sort of answers for what she wants to do.

I suspect that touched the public.

And then of course, the it did get Partizan, but it got Partizan more, I think in person's fear, people's fears about how the state leaders were going to weigh in in San Antonio.

Outside money from state PACs, Governor Abbott, outside money as well, though from Democrats from across the country.

It was interesting, I thought, that Rolando, including in the interview here, talked about how he would be a unifier, but the advertisements didn't suggest that it wasn't him.

It was the PACs that were supporting him.

But the public, you know, I've always had great faith in the public.

There's a wisdom in the collective judgment of the public.

And when somebody says, I'm going to be a unifier, and then you every time you turn on the television, you see attack ads.

Something doesn't quite.

Although it was a major.

Attack ads, though, were from the outside.

PAC.

But you can't tell when you're watching television.

You just know what the purpose is.

And you know both of the candidates, and have known them for a number of years.

How do you think Gina Ortiz Jones will govern?

She was painted by the attack ads left.

He was painted his right.

I think she's going to be a very systematic, organized, rational, reasonable mayor.

I believe she's going to succeed.

Come out of Air Force ROTC.

She served in the Air Force as an intelligence officer in Iraq.

She was undersecretary of the Air Force.

When you're undersecretary of the Air Force, you're dealing with three and four star generals.

So working with city department heads is not going to be intimidating.

She's going to make her point and achieve her objectives.

She has a clear set of objectives, related to child care, related to pre-K and expanding pre-K relating to basic city services.

I think people who are afraid of her need not be.

That's my judgment, because she's been brought up in systems, and the city of San Antonio is a system.

It's the convention center, the airport, pick up the garbage, fix the streets, police department, fire department.

It's very rational things that you do from a management standpoint.

And she's been brought up in a management environment.

I think she's going to surprise people.

How do you think it compares to when you were elected first in 81, you served for two year terms.

You had more turnout then than we had.

The turnouts are low in our city, unfortunately.

And I don't quite understand why that is, but, I think that the city has advanced a great deal.

It's more complex.

When I was mayor, it was 800,000 people.

Today it's 1.5 million people.

It's a much more complex business than it was even then.

Thankfully, we have a strong city manager system, good professionals on the job.

She's backed by a council that she can work with.

So I'm expecting to continue the good time.

San Antonio's.

We take it for granted, but we've had a magical role here.

A magical ride for the last 30 plus years or so.

We were one of the poorest cities in the country.

We're now one of the fastest growing cities in the country, with faster growing.

Not just population, but incomes.

We have all the the we have to address the modern issues of transportation congestion and airport growth and all of those things, including Project Marble, to address the needs of the of our only professional, team.

So those are all complex things, but they're manageable.

And I'd rather be in our shoes than cities that are losing population.

I think.

So, losing incomes.

Thought Project Marble might play a bigger part in this because he was, for it.

And she questioned his.

Well, what she said was, I'm going to study it.

I want the facts.

I want data.

What would you expect from.

Someone like Peter Sacchi, who has said that as well?

He doesn't have enough information yet.

But, you know, I've been all over town and people love the Spurs.

And that's not lost on our public officials.

Seattle, Las Vegas to name just two.

Austin maybe would love to take the Spurs.

That's our claim to fame five NBA championships and our national image revolves around the Spurs.

So there are a few people in town who say, well, I don't care that much after the Spurs leave, but the vast majority of this town would view that as a terrible tragedy.

Do you think that will dominate the next few months?

I mean, we're going to see an election and we think in November.

I don't think it'll dominate because they've got to get through the city budget here this summer.

And that's projected deficit.

So there's some difficult decisions to be made about cuts and so forth.

You know, there's there's strictures.

You come in thinking you want to do expensive things, and then you deal with the strictures, like, for example, the city budget.

So those are realities.

So there'll be a lot of news coming out of City Hall.

Project Marvel will be one of them.

But I would say it's time to sort of really concentrate on the numbers and and how they're going to work.

What's your best advice for her?

What were you surprised at when you came in and your frustrations and maybe your successes as well?

Or how was it different than you thought it was going to be?

She her her challenge challenges a little bit like mine was, which is proved to all the people of San Antonio that you're a mayor for all the people.

I was the first Hispanic mayor since once again in 1836.

So people didn't know what to expect.

I went on the today show, the Monday morning after the election with Tom Brokaw, and they and they were looking at me like they expected me to be wearing a sombrero and bandolier.

Mariachis and.

So Gina is enough of a pioneer in her own way that she would just have to prove to average.

I was pleased that her first words out of her mouth election night were, I will be a mayor for all the people.

And so her actions will show that and people will take comfort beyond that.

Just be really attentive to the numbers, the budgets, the money, the facts.

And she'll have to work the council because she has a somewhat divided council.

We have seven women on the council, more than ever for men, we have more people who are defined as progressive on the council for who endorsed as progressives.

They will cross beers with our conservative members.

So her job is let's find a consensus, a reasonable consensus.

And I think she can do it.

Well, thank you very much for your insight and your advice to her.

Appreciate it.

I expect she's called you.

Had she called you or will.

Come have spoken since the election?

Well, thank you very much.

Henry Cisneros, former San Antonio mayor and HUD secretary.

I always appreciate you being here.

Now, from the mayor's race, we focus on those city council races here to tell us everything there is to know about the runoffs and more as Andrea Drost, the politics and government reporter for the San Antonio Report.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

Tell us about your reactions, first of all, to how the runoffs came out.

Were there any big surprises to you?

No big surprises in the runoff.

I think the interesting piece of the runoffs was that they came down to, you know, you had this mayor's race come down from 27 candidates to a very progressive candidate and a very conservative candidate.

And then you also had four council runoffs, in which three of them also really came down to sort of the most partizan oriented of the candidates in those races.

And that sort of, shaped the narrative of how things went going forward for all of them.

You saw these conservative candidates running as sort of a slate and campaigning as conservatives together.

And then even in two of the left, two of the council districts on the north side that are currently represented by districts with council people with democratic histories, you had left leaning candidates running there.

But who rejected their party's endorsement?

But at the end of the night.

So, you know, going into this, conservatives controlled one seat on the city council.

They were very optimistic about the mayor's race and about picking up a few more seats.

They did get one in district nine.

Misty Spears, a long time GOP activist who works for Grant Moody in Precinct three right now, the only Republican commissioner on the commissioners court.

But all of the rest round up going the way of the left leaning candidates in.

District nine, though John Courage, who, was term limited, I think, and ran for mayor, he was kind of an anomaly as a more progressive candidate in that district and that Northside district.

And I guess maybe people expected, the Republican candidate there, even though, as Henry Cisneros mentioned, that the North Side didn't go as heavily as heavily for the conservative candidate, Rolando Pablos, as maybe expected.

Yeah.

It's not a monolith.

And he, Rolando Pablo said on election night, we, you know, Northside voters that just didn't materialize.

And yet Northside voters did increase their participation from the earlier round.

But Jean Ortiz Jones held her own there a little bit.

And, but when you look at the results broken out by Council district, that district nine, long held by now, John Courage, this former Democrat did turn out to be by far the reddest district that, you know, supported.

And, two district one, score one reelection.

That was a runoff where she was facing nine candidates.

And she nearly avoided a runoff, had about 49% of the vote on the first round with nine challengers, and then went on to just trounce her opponent had given 65, 35, something like that.

And that was more, I guess, more expected because that was an inner city district.

But that stretches from downtown all the way up to, just over for ten, which is where Hattie Givens happens to live.

And so it, but has produced some of the most progressive council members in recent years.

Right.

And now, district eight, Ivelisse mesa Gonzalez, who had worked for Ron Nurnberg.

How is she going to govern?

I guess maybe more moderate than some of the progressives on the, on the council.

Daughter of a longtime civil rights organizer and daughter of a former party chair, but she is one of the ones who rejected the party's endorsement this time.

So she wanted to stay focused on local issues.

She beat out a conservative attorney, Paula McGee.

Very decisive victory.

I think she was one of the few council people who outran Jean Ortiz Jones in her district.

But it arrives with some of the most political experience.

Having been Nurnberg chief of staff.

She's seen a lot already at City Hall.

Right, in district nine.

What do you think of the results there?

Mark white was at Missy Speer, his party.

Probably the most excited about this race outcome is the one conservative on the council who now has a friend.

Yes.

And so what does that mean for the makeup of the council?

Now?

Is it more conservative just because there are two now.

On in 2025, fashion is both more conservative and more liberal.

Yeah, we've forgotten to talk about the district six race, which was animalistic about having to run for mayor.

And and it came down from this crowded field to two progressive activist, two young progressive activists, who then finished 25 votes apart.

But, the winner was Democratic Socialists of America backed Rick Galvin, who's 24 years old.

So that sort of builds on the we had two Democratic socialists candidates that won in 2021.

And.

So this you think group will be a little bit more like 2021 when there were more, I don't want to say culture wars, but it was a little more progressive, maybe a council than 2023, I don't know.

These the new folks are coming.

There are you could replaced I would say there was a block of candidates in the middle who who were these left leaning social views.

But pro law enforcement, very pro-business.

This sort of model of candidate that doesn't really exist in Partizan races, doesn't like, you know, that doesn't usually make it through a primary.

But they had a big block on the city council, and they all happened to turn out to run for mayor at the same time.

And most of them were replaced with more Partizan or more progressive or more conservative.

And you didn't mention the, ages, except for the one race that's a little bit younger overall.

Yeah, replacing some people in their 50s and 40s with people in their 30s and, and 24.

And have they campaigned that they're going to do things differently, maybe the younger candidates or not?

There's a lot of people who are coming in with City Hall experience.

I think they know how to work on local issues, the.

Workings of.

It.

They're not coming with an expectation that this is the state House.

So now, how do you think they will be working with Gina Ortiz Jones?

You know, one of the strangest phenomenons in this race was the watching sort of City Hall insiders and including some City Hall City council members staying out of the mayor's race or in some cases, breaking for Pablos.

They looked at the two of them, and he has had some history, you know, serving on the chamber board.

And they they, for whatever reason, did not back her even left leaning insiders.

And so I think that is going to be a little bit of a, an adjustment of the relationships.

But some of those people have, you know, cycled off.

They were in the mayor's race.

They didn't make an endorsement amongst the to the people who have come in largely young and progressive, some of them were at her watch party.

Jalen Mickey Rodriguez in district two was there, said, you know, this is a great night for progressives all across the board.

And that this was also about stopping and Abbott stooge was how he phrased it.

Well, I think they also didn't want to offend.

Maybe they thought it was going to be a closer race and Pablos was going to win.

He spent a lot of money.

And they didn't want to offend whoever was going to be the next mayor.

Do you think that was part of it?

How have you been polling City Hall insiders only?

It would have seemed like Rolando problems had a lot of momentum.

So you'll be busy and people can read everything there is to know about all that.

Andrea Drudge in the San Antonio Report, thanks for coming in.

Local government and politics reporter I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Well, we've covered the mayor's race and the city elections.

Now we turn to what the legislature did and didn't do up in Austin.

Joining us to tell us all about that is a man that Texas Monthly calls the best source and journalist at the Capitol, editor of the Quorum Report, Scott Braddock.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Good to see you, Randy.

And you had a I guess it's a busy session, but it wasn't like the other sessions that we've had before in terms of House versus Senate and Governor, how different was this and what they got accomplished as well as what they.

Did quite different.

It was almost as if Republican leadership that would be Governor Abbott, a little Governor Dan Patrick, as I call him, and the speaker, Dustin Burrows, as the first two guys, got everything they wanted, like they walked into a restaurant and ordered and they just brought them their plates.

It was it was, a session of acquiescence and compliance with leadership.

You know, two years ago, we had multiple special sessions.

You'll remember that, the the session that year, if you count all the special sessions and the impeachment trial of Ken Paxton that year, the legislature was in session longer than Congress.

And they were fighting about so many different things.

Remember, they were fighting about school vouchers and school funding.

They were also fighting about immigration measures and a few other things that were pretty contentious.

Property taxes was very contentious two years ago.

But that just didn't happen.

This time around.

And I like to tell folks that, you know, gridlock is not necessarily a bad thing if all they're proposing are bad ideas.

Right?

And that was the known.

The legislature is known for that because if they were tied up with all these big issues and fighting over them, that a lot of things died that the people didn't want, a lot of people didn't want.

Yeah.

Constitutionally, in Texas, the legislature is supposed to meet for five months, every two years.

And that's it.

That's not what happened two years ago.

And it did seem that this time around that the speaker of the House, the newly elected speaker in his rookie session, Dustin Burrows, from Lubbock, that his main mandate from the people who elected him was don't have any special sessions.

Just get us out of here.

And it seemed like he was really trying to accomplish that by acquiescing, by doing what the governor wanted on school vouchers, by doing what the lieutenant governor wanted on, for example, of a complete ban on THC, which we can talk about.

But it did seem that the House was compliant, and that's just not been, you know, the tradition at all that we were talking before we came on the air about the fact that, it's been a tradition in the House that at some point, toward the end of session, that one of the senior members would go to the microphone and say, look, if the Senate and they would always get into these Senate House fights as you as you said that he would say, this is Harold Dutton from Houston, who's about 80 years old and has been in the house for a long time.

He would say, you know, if the Senate doesn't respect us, then they better expect us.

And they would open the doors of the house facing the Senate.

And all of the members, Republicans and Democrats would scream at the Senate.

That didn't happen this time around.

I think it was sort of telling about the overall atmosphere, which was one of cooperation and more than that, compliance and.

Submission, partly because Governor Abbott and his PAC spent so much on the primaries getting rid of people like Steve Allison, those who voted against him on school vouchers.

Speaking of which, we'll start with school vouchers and what they did and didn't do.

What is in that bill that, is going to change so much in schools?

And.

Well, I think it's a it's a huge moment for the way we do education in Texas.

This is something that, you know, rural Republicans, Democrats, and those who just support public education in general have fought this off for years.

I mean, the first, you know, school voucher proposal in Texas goes all the way back to the Brown versus Board of Education decision.

It was a reaction to that when the Supreme Court said that and mandated that schools had to be integrated in Texas.

There was a report, to the governor from a commission that he formed which said and it was the first suggestion of a school voucher.

The first proposal was this, that if a parent didn't want their kid to go to school with black children, they had to sign an affirmation that said that was the reason they were taking them out of public education, and that they would get a school voucher to send the kid to a private school.

That was the proposal.

It was actually killed in a in a filibuster, by a senator from San Antonio, Henry Gonzales, at that time, and, and ever since then, this has been a big fight in Texas.

And now you're going to have money that would otherwise flow to public education, go to private schools.

What we've seen in other states, and this is just the numbers, is that generally, those dollars tend to subsidize the education of kids who are already in private schools and doesn't accomplish the stated goal.

Which, you know, Governor Abbott and others have said that what they want to do is get poor kids out of failing schools.

It just hasn't been the result elsewhere.

This is something that's going to cost a lot of money, $1 billion to start with, and it could go up.

Maybe it doesn't sound like that much.

You know, in the grand scheme of a $300 billion budget, which we have in the state of Texas, but yet.

But you're right.

Within the decade, the cost of that program is expected to balloon to as high as about $10 billion.

For perspective, that's how much money the state this year was putting into trying to compress and, you know, buy down property taxes for folks.

So it is a huge budget hole that can be created later and is a threat to public education going forward because of the way they'll siphon money away from traditional neighborhood schools.

And bail reform.

That's one that the governor wanted.

Didn't get everything he wanted, but mostly he yeah.

He got the big thing that he wanted.

And it was a situation where you had legislators, Republicans and Democrats complaining to me and others, that the governor was really moving the goalposts on this thing.

Randi.

Because what he started out saying was that he wanted, what he did get, which was a constitutional amendment, that folks will vote on later this year.

That has to do with sort of moving judges in the direction of denying bond, for certain offenses.

We're talking about some of, you know, the worst accusations of murder, rape, etc..

But then something that the governor wanted, which by the way, this proposal was only filed, a couple of weeks before the session ended.

That tells you how much, you know, pre-work had been done on this.

There was something that was proposed to go even further to say that if someone had any kind of a prior conviction for anything, say, somebody got into a fight in college, imagine that.

And then 20 years later, if they're accused of any of these quote unquote heinous crimes, they'd be automatically denied bond over what was proposed at the legislature this year that didn't pass.

And, of course, those are constitutional amendments.

So they require, two thirds of both the House and Senate.

And it's not two thirds of those present.

It's a hard 100 votes in the in the House that almost passed it.

It got 97 votes in the House.

And the governor was pushing legislators so hard on that, even after it failed to get 100 votes, the governor's office was still pushing them to vote on it again to reconsider the vote.

But that didn't happen.

Water supply and infrastructure.

Another big bill.

Huge.

And of course, voters are going to weigh in on that as well.

It's a $2 billion proposal to start with.

Of course, in Texas we need way more than that.

What's the old saying that, you know, water is for, is for fighting over whiskey is what you drink, right?

I'm getting that backwards.

But point is that, in this state, we have huge infrastructure needs, whether that's public education, water, electricity, etc.. And this was billed at the beginning of the session back in December and January as being the water session that they would really get around to this.

I don't think it's a it's not a coincidence that the new speaker of the House is from one of the more arid parts of the state, out in West Texas and Lubbock, part of why this got done.

It was a senator from Lubbock, Charles Perry, who carried the legislation.

And it's a serious investment in our water infrastructure going forward.

We still have Randy.

We still have about a thousand people living in Texas every day.

And that was true even during the height of Covid restrictions.

And finally, even though after the session it was blowback on the hemp industry, that bill, limiting THC in Texas.

Absolutely.

And all eyes on the governor now, Governor Abbott has Senate Bill three on his desk.

This is the all out ban of THC products, those consumable products which you saw.

Little Governor Patrick, in a press conference throwing bags of snacks at reporters, these THC snacks and saying, would any of you even try these?

I think there might have been some reporters.

You might have wanted to, but, the fact is that he has made this a crusade to, quote unquote, protect children from THC.

We do know, though, that, this has been a huge fight within the liquor industry.

Usually the alcohol industry is on the same page at the Capitol, but in this case, they're not the big liquor stores.

They like the fact that those THC drinks are being sold there.

Younger demographics are buying, you know, those.

That's what they buy.

They're not even buying liquor when they go to the store.

There was a testimony to that effect.

At the Capitol.

You have the beer distributors, the guys who just move beer.

They're against this because when you walk into the liquor store and you see those cans of THC, the beer guys would say one or the other.

Well, the beer guys would say, that's where beer ought to be.

And, you know, and look for any of those folks who sell any kind of a beverage that's what they fight for, a shelf space, right?

Whether that's soda or beer or whatever.

And so this really turned into a business fight.

The beer distributors have been big financial, supporters of the lieutenant governor.

And so his motives may be, you know, a little questionable on this.

And what's most interesting to me about it is that Patrick is completely out of step with the Republican base on this, his own pollster.

And we reported this a quorum report.com, his own pollster, a guy named Mike best.

Police in Austin, found that 57% of Republican primary voters in Texas don't agree with an all out ban.

It's only about 29% of Republicans who do agree with it.

So Patrick's out of step with Republicans, which is unusual for him on this issue.

So you're going to be busy even though the legislature is over.

You know, when we started the Texas Tech podcast almost ten years ago, at this point, number one politics podcast in Texas, by the way, humblebrag, one of the folks who was asking me questions at the time as we were starting to set it up, they said, when the legislature is not in session, what will you even talk about?

But I assured them it won't be a problem.

Everything.

Yes.

Well, thank you very much again.

Texas Monthly's calls you best source journalists at the Capitol.

Scott Braddock of the Quorum Report.

Thank you very much.

And thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can watch the show again.

Any previous shows.

You can also download it as a podcast.

Just go to KLRN.org I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to.

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