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, and thank you for joining us for On the Record this week.

I'm Randy Beamer, and tonight we're going to start with, of course, the election, the results, what it means and what it means here in San Antonio in Texas especially joining us to tell us everything there is to know about that guy who has seen his share of politics over the years, from Austin to the county judgeship to the mayor's office and everything.

County Judge Nelson Wolff I guess we still call you officially, right?

Okay.

Thanks very much for coming in.

First of all, your take on on all of this, just watching it develop over the last four years, eight years, and then, you know, the last, the last night of the election.

Well, first of all, the two powerful forces in politics is fear and anger.

And it was a great campaign that Trump ran.

Fear of immigrants, anger over inflation and rising outrage.

So that was two powerful messages.

It was an underlining, one kind of dealing with greed, because Kamala Harris came out for tax on unrealized capital gains.

And a lot of my friends went from that to that.

So you put those three things together.

They're extremely powerful, I don't think.

I don't know of any other emotional issues that are more powerful, but I think there's a more of an underlying thing that, is driving politics today or how we may vote or what we might do.

I'm a Democrat, as you well know, but the party has moved, you know, farther to the left.

And, and overall, their message is about abortion, about minority rights, about women's rights, about gays, lesbian, all social issues, and, the general public.

You know, didn't relate to that.

That's not what they were voting on.

They were voting on who they thought would be the best to improve their own lives.

So we moved down and.

Yeah.

And then the Anglo Hispanic working guy, maybe a lot of African-American guys, they figured, where in the hell do I fit into this?

And guys, especially the men.

Guys much better.

I'll bet when you see the final bill a vast majority of men did not support, Harris.

So there was underlying issues there where the party's going.

The Democratic Party is pretty screwed up right now.

They probably ought to check into a psychiatric hospital somewhere and see what's the matter with themselves.

Of course, Republican.

You know, they're moving further to the right.

And, we'll have to wait and see how, Trump governs in this next term, whether it be like he did before.

Or will he try to reach greater accommodate Asians, reach across the aisle?

Some because in two short years there will be the midterm elections.

And the last time in his term, Democrats picked up 40 House seats in the midterm.

So we'll have to wait and see how he goes.

One issue that bothers me, and I'm really worried about is the you know, we were the leaders here back going back to 1992 with the NAFTA agreement between, Canada, the United States and Mexico helped our prosperity are great here in South Texas and San Antonio.

And that's up for review in 2005.

So it'll be interesting to see how that plays, because I know his trade policies are going to be substantially different.

How that affects that.

And then that will directly impact what happens here in San Antonio.

What about, in terms of how he's going to govern and how it's going to affect Texas?

John Cornyn running for leader of the Senate.

Is he much too moderate now with a Senate, you know, back in Trump.

And that's a I mean, I think he'd be terrific as a head of the Senate.

I've always liked Cornyn.

I've always thought he had his head on straight and was trying to do the right thing and didn't demagogue and jump around from one to the other.

So he'd be here, I think, a great Senate Senate majority leader.

But again, it depends on how when you see the Trump team sort of get assembled and how they play, you'll get a better idea of whether he's going to try to be a little bit more toward the middle ground.

Let's say, maybe he will if he's smart, he would.

And, but we won't know that till we kind of see it put together.

The underlying thing that I really want to watch.

I think most thinks he's president.

He's going to be interesting.

He would be.

He was at shout out there.

Campaigning and put a ton of money into it.

And so you got two individuals who are extraordinary individuals in their different ways.

It would be interesting to see how they work together and how this cost cutting issue that Musk is supposed to be in charge of.

What what is that impact the American public?

And will they really cut anything?

So that's going to be a dynamic.

What about, down ballot races now?

School vouchers.

You know, Steve Allison was ousted here when the governor primaried him.

Was Marc LaHood.

He won.

Do you think school vouchers will definitely go?

Yeah.

I mean, you know.

Right here, they thought there were two seats that might could be one, with that.

But and the two Democrats campaigned on that, but voters didn't go along with that.

And and so we have so many people today that have their children in charter schools.

If they took the trouble to put their kids in charter school, you can bet they took the trouble to go to vote.

So, it'll pass.

What kind of form it will be in?

What will they do for public education?

If anything, we don't know the particulars of it, but I think it definitely got passed.

Pass.

You've been in the legislature and you seen it from the city's viewpoint, the county's viewpoint, how it's changed, dealing with Austin there much tougher relationship than it used to be.

Yeah.

What's it going to be like now with, say, an empowered, Dan Patrick, Governor Abbott, Ken Paxton and say a new mayor?

Well, it could get worse.

You know, one of the principles, that the Republican Party used to believe in is in local control.

You know, you're the closest to it.

But that went away.

And they more and more try to take away issues from local control that they didn't like.

So I would assume you'd see more of that.

The, conflicts with the major, major metropolitan areas, some of the mayors, you probably continue to see some of that.

But we'll have to wait and see what sort of their agenda is going to be in this next legislative term.

How about the immigration issue?

And, calls for mass deportation by Trump?

Some have said, well, no, that's just mass deportation of criminals.

But they're saying now that, you know, it was maybe hyperbole as he's bluster or that kind of thing, do you think that could affect the economy in a big way?

First of all, migrants are important to us.

Let's not forget every one of us.

Our families came here from somewhere else.

They weren't born here in the United States of America.

They came from somewhere else.

And migrants with our low birth rate, we're not replicating ourselves.

Migrants are important to the workforce.

There's many, many jobs that Americans now don't even want to do or even think about doing.

So they're important to it.

But there's got to get some rationality.

Biden really messed up when he first got in and gave signals that our borders are going to be welcome, everybody.

Well, that maybe you saw what it did.

So they got to get to a rational basis on that.

And, but if you cut off migrants and that's not not just talking about who may be coming from, Mexico or El Salvador or Guatemala or on theirs, it's immigrants from everywhere, whether it's Asia or wherever.

So much of that is important to our workforce.

And, hopefully they all come to some reasonable politics.

They try to start deporting everybody.

That's going to be really, really.

Hard for someone in the media this morning to talk about, well, there's going to be some self deportations.

When he had mentioned eight years ago, in a San Antonio where there is a, large group of undocumented immigrants, as we all can know and accept, what will that look like in terms of how people, deal with, say, police deal with each other?

What do you see?

Well, I think I think it's going to get really tougher.

You know, I think the state legislature will probably do more things to to get law enforcement locally to get people out of here.

There's a real conservative Republican Trump person that I thought made a good statement.

He said, if they're here and they are good citizens and they're producing taxes and they're taking care of their families, why would you want to kick them out?

Why?

But but so but what's going to happen?

Well, it could happen, right?

Could happen.

Now if they're bad guys, they need to get out of here and throw them into prison.

Or do whatever you want with those guys.

You know, I took care at 20, 120, 200 boys from, Central America that came across the border and and came here.

And somebody I take care of, we did at the Bexar County grounds.

I spent a lot of time out there, and they were all here legally.

They followed the procedures.

They all had family and relatives somewhere.

So they were sent to their families and relatives.

These were good boys.

I mean, they were 12 to 17 years old, even Dan Patrick, who came out there and I went with him through it, was very complimentary of what we were doing and how we were taking care of them.

We didn't open that border, but somebody had to handle them when they're here.

So they and you saw a lot of good people that are being dehumanized.

And that's not good for this country.

In the last question.

And it's county that is blue in a red state, what are you most concerned about or want to tell people to keep in mind as we kind of figure out what what a Trump presidency will be?

Yeah.

What do you tell people?

Well, first of all, I want it to be positive.

I'm going to be positive because I, I want him to be successful and I want him to adopt the right kind of policies, and I hope he will as he goes along.

But, you know, it's just so hard to know.

And it's hard to say to the citizens, you know, expect this or that's going to happen.

I, I just, I want to believe, hope hope it's true.

I'm hoping that he'll, govern more from the middle rather than far right is scary.

On the far right is it is on the far left.

Not good for our country either way.

And if it becomes more of a punishing everybody and creating criminals out of people who are good people are taking away things from people because they want to give the rich more things.

Our, our and I'm sure a tax bill that will even give the rich even more than they got today will be passed.

More and more wealth is getting accumulated with the super rich and, and, I don't think that's good for the country either.

So we got a number of things to watch here and see what happens.

I wish him well.

I hope he's successful.

And I hope he, you know, does the right thing and doesn't try to, push his way over the edge.

All right, well, thanks very much, Nelson Wolf, you have to come back.

Talk about your books and your latest baseball book.

Sometimes.

Totally.

It's a lot more fun.

All right.

Thanks very much.

Former county judge, former state rep and former mayor Nelson Wolf.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Randy.

With all the news focused on the election, you might not have realized that San Antonio has a brand new fire chief.

And she joins us tonight.

Valerie Frausto is the new fire chief, born and raised in San Antonio.

I thank you very much for coming in.

Born and raised here, but not growing up, even thinking about being a firefighter.

How did that happen?

Well, actually kind of, sort of because I was interested in the medical field and I grew up in a family with, you know, uncles and cousins and the police and fire department.

At the time, I'd go visit the station and, just thought it was cool, you know, looked at the trucks.

I love the environment, and I loved it when they got a call and and drove out of the fire station with lights and sirens and just was always interested in it.

At the time, I never saw, a woman in uniform, and I just felt like it was, you know, one of those dreams that would never come true.

And maybe, you know, whether it was because it's just a physically demanding job really wasn't an option at the time.

And now they're still only 5% of the force that are women or thereabouts.

And it wasn't something that your uncle or any of the firefighters, when you were younger, encourage you to do, or you ask about them and they said, sure, you could do this.

No, I never even brought it up.

I one time I told my mom that I wanted to be a firefighter, and she looked at me like I was crazy.

And when you decided you wanted to be and you went to the academy?

Yes.

Fire department.

Academy?

What was that like?

How tough was it?

Because there's not a lot of women at the academy.

Still no, not at all.

I was, I got in the department in.

My first day was August 7th of 2000.

So when I walked in, I didn't know what to expect.

I did not know how many people were going to be in the class.

I didn't know if there were going to be any other women in the class.

When I, you know, day one, of course, I realized there were 47, and out of those 47, only three were women.

So I didn't feel alone.

Right away, you know, made a connection with the other women.

We, you know, shared a bathroom on, on one side of the building, and all the guys were on the other side, so I quickly realized that this job is all about teamwork and realize that we had to lean on each other.

And one of the, Well, what has it been like since then with still only a few single digit percentage?

Women on the force.

Every day is a challenge.

Every day I learn something new.

But I realized over the years that, you know, whether it's.

I don't know if it's the same for everybody, but I always felt like I had to go above and beyond, and not because of, you know, it being just a challenging job in general.

But really, I, I was always having to do more or felt like I was doing more to try to prove myself, to prove that I was physically capable of doing the job.

So that has stuck with me ever since day one.

And I know that that's the case for other women in the fire department, because, you know, we we talk all the time and, and we understand, you know, the challenges that we face.

And that's been one of the teams that have come out, since the former fire chief, Chief Hood is no longer there.

Is that it was, an atmosphere supposedly of kind of a boys club, maybe.

Sexist.

Did you feel that way?

Was it?

No.

I mean, you always, you know, experience from time to time certain challenges, and there's always going to be individuals that that look or treat you differently than their male counterparts.

And I did come across that from time to time.

But, you know, like everything else, I, I just did the best I could at the job that I was in.

And really, that has, you know, I think that's a lot of the reason why I, have been able to rise through the ranks and just, you know, be good at what I do.

And that's really just my motto.

As you look ahead, what are your goals for the fire department?

And you also have to keep in mind I'm a kind of a politician now.

You have to be an advocate for the department, with the city council, with your, you know, city manager as as well as within the department.

Well, I definitely would like to be an approachable leader, and I want to be visible.

So that means that I'm not only going to be very visible, for my community and, but also for, you know, the people for the people in the department.

I want to be, to make those connections with, with, you know, everybody in this community and with the with the firefighters, because that is really my job is to make sure that we are providing the service and, protecting and serving and just, you know, ensuring that we have that compassion and that we're not there just to respond to emergencies, but we're there to to keep people safe and to make sure that they know that we're a resource.

Well, thank you very much for coming in.

And and good luck with all that as well.

Valerie Frausto, the new San Antonio Fire Department chief.

Thanks.

Sure.

Thank you.

On reporters roundtable.

Now, back to more on the election results and what it means right here in San Antonio.

Joining us now to talk about that is San Antonio Report local government and politics reporter Andrea Rush.

Thank you very much for coming in.

Thanks for having me.

Tell us about the charter amendments.

First of all, some people might have been surprised that, amendment C, proposition C, passed because that was the one that, at least was pointed out to more people that it might have been more controversial.

Right.

Because this is something that voters put in place just, in 2018, these caps on the city manager's pay and tenure.

This was promoted by the firefighters at the time who were mad at the then city manager.

And but put this on the ballot.

Yes.

And put this on the ballot at the time and voters approved of it with 60% of the vote, and it capped the city manager's pay at ten times the lowest, paying employee at the city's salary, and so that they could only serve for a maximum number of years, which current City Manager Eric Walsh would be approaching soon.

So this was high on the list, for city leaders to undo this.

And the firefighters did get involved to try and stop them, but this one ended up, being approved 54%.

This is where all the money was spent.

It's unclear whether voters knew whether they were undoing the 2018 changes or not.

It's said it was written as though we're going to put the power back in the hands of the city council to make those determinations.

But overall overwhelming support for most of these, Six in all those six, charter amendments include, term limits, changing for council members, a mayor instead of for two year terms as two, four year terms.

Now.

Yes.

So this was probably one that people felt like they understood the most when they looked at it.

But it's kind of one of the most confusing.

It was the least supported.

It was, received 53% support, but it changes the council terms to four year terms instead of two year terms, intended to give them more of a runway to figure out the job before they're running for reelection.

So they're not spending all their time campaigning and raising money.

But it also will put some of them in a strange position where if they want to keep running, they're still limited to eight years in the job.

They're going from two for two year terms to two, four year terms.

Some of these folks would then hit that eight year limit in the middle of their term.

So if they're running for that last term, they'd be running for a partial term so it doesn't hit all of the council members equally.

The implementation is a little funky on that one.

And it's going to be interesting with the election coming up next spring for city council, the mayor term limited out.

What's going to happen.

How many people are running?

At least three.

Right.

The most interesting part of that, our next mayor, a new mayor, will be a four year mayor.

Let's move on to some of the other races that you've been covering us.

A lot of stuff.

What it means, say, in the state House races here in Texas and in the San Antonio area, specifically, how that'll affect, things like school vouchers.

Yeah.

Wow.

This was, San Antonio was predicted by Democrats to be the epicenter of the state House battles.

They thought that if they could pick up a net gain of three state House seats, they could stop school vouchers in the next legislative session.

They could take a majority that's not even on the map for on the table for Democrats, but they ended up not taking either of these two targeted state House races, which they thought were their best.

Two of their best targets in the entire state, lost them both and ended up losing a few Democrat held seats elsewhere in the state.

In just a really bad night for Texas Democrats in the state House.

So we caught up with Trey Martinez Fisher, a San Antonio Democrat who, oversees policy for the Democratic caucus in the House.

Last night, he was having an election watch party, and he was already pivoting toward a message.

Speaker bigger fight in the next session.

What's going to happen there?

So House Speaker Dade, feeling, has some challengers, faces some opposition, but they're elected in the Texas House with Democrat and Republican votes.

So the Democrats are thinking that they can leverage their support for a speaker who will provide them certain concessions on things like maybe school vouchers.

There's a conservative effort to do the exact opposite, withhold support from any Republican Speaker candidate who doesn't agree to their demands.

And in kind of an interesting moment for the San Antonio House delegation, you now have two people mark the ratio and our newest, Mark LaHood and Steve Allison's all House district 121, who are part of that conservative wing pushing the House to the right and kind of, ironically, making sure that none of their Democratic colleagues from Bexar County will have any power in the next session, but maybe bigger divisions within the delegation than you've seen before.

Anybody talking about what else that Abbott and Paxton and Patrick might be pushing for now, that they might feel emboldened with more Republicans of their stripe especially.

Well, gosh, anything's on the table in this next session.

I don't know if there is any anything specific.

You're all going to have to survive that speaker's fight first.

And that would have a big determination on what the what the outlook is for the rest of the session.

Texas unlike some other states that didn't have abortion on the ballot, although some people, that was an issue for a lot of people, people going out of state because they were concerned about care.

Could that be brought up to I don't want to say clean up language, but to make more specific, the abortion position, women's rights, a reproductive rights position in Texas.

Given the direction that the House went in this election, that doesn't sound like something that would be a high priority for them.

But one of the most fascinating things to cover during this election was Republican John Lujan, who is in House district 118, which is one of the only competitive state House races in the entire state.

And he was out on the trail knocking doors, talking to folks.

This is a district, actually, that Joe Biden would have carried, and he was a Republican representing it.

And he, at our debate said, I have heard from women in this district who are fearful and I don't think that they should have to flee the state and not, this is after he made some comments about how he wouldn't allow a daughter who wanted an abortion to do that, but he was saying, but that's my personal, personal opinion.

That's not what I want policy wise.

And I want to go back and work with the committee members to make this state safer for women who are pregnant and didn't specify exactly what he's looking for there.

But, so something.

Expressing some interest in that, in, in expressing what he'd heard from voters.

And we talked to him, he was like, you know, I think it'd be great if everybody heard from voters.

But that's just, you know, these House districts are set up in a way that not very many people face a competitive race and have to hear from feedback from voters, no matter what it is that they're doing up there.

It's just going to be fun for you to watch for the next.

For a 12.

We're going to have some competing narratives of our municipal election in this session happening at the same time.

It's going to be wild.

Definitely.

Well, thanks very much.

Read about it in the San Antonio Report.

Andrea Rush, local government politics Reporter.

Thanks very much for coming in, and thank you for joining us for this edition of On the Record.

You can see this show again.

You can watch any previous shows.

You can also download the podcast @klrn.org I'm Randy Beamer and we'll see you next time.

On the record is brought to you by Steve and Adele Dufilho