Tech executive Marina Alderete Gavito took only about an hour after the polls closed to declare victory Saturday night over Dan Rossiter in the District 7 City Council race.
She grabbed a big lead after the early and absentee voting results were released and finished the night with just over 62% of the vote.
In winning the open seat, she follows in the footsteps of her father, Joe Alderete, who represented District 7 for four terms starting in 1977.
“It’s a cool full-circle moment,” she said of taking the seat her father once held. Alderete left the spotlight to his daughter, saying only: “Tonight is all about her.”
It’s the second recent generational tie between District 7 council members. Gavito will replace interim Councilwoman Rosie Castro, whose son Julián Castro held the seat from 2001 to 2005 before becoming mayor and, in the Obama administration, housing secretary.
With the runoff elections of Gavito and Sukh Kaur in District 1, six of the 10 San Antonio City Council members will be women.
Running her first political race, Gavito raised and spent about five times more than Rossiter, a computer scientist, during the most recent campaign finance period.
Rossiter said he texted Gavito a congratulatory note Saturday night.
“Obviously, we’re not thrilled,” Rossiter told the San Antonio Report in a phone interview. “It’s not what we wanted to see, but … at the end of the day, the team did amazing work, and we’re really proud of what we were able to accomplish with a fraction of the dollars that the opponent had.”
Of the five candidates on the May 6 election ballot, Gavito took roughly 43% of the vote, finishing far ahead of Rossiter, who received 21% of the vote.
The candidates were vying to replace Ana Sandoval, an environmental engineer who represented District 7 for five years until resigning in January.
Rossiter, former president of the Thunderbird Hills Neighborhood Association, quit his job developing transportation technology at the Southwest Research Institute to run for office. He served on the City of San Antonio’s Streets, Bridges and Sidewalks Community Bond Committee for the 2022 municipal bond and continues to own and manage rental properties.
Gavito has held leadership positions at USAA and Rackspace, which funded her position at the tech advocacy nonprofit Tech Bloc as founding executive director and chief operating officer.
She pledged to resign from SA Digital Connects, a public-private partnership where she was hired as executive director in 2021, if elected to the council. Gavito took an advisory role with the organization while she campaigned.
Public safety at the forefront
After block-walking across the district, which stretches north east from the Woodlawn area to just beyond Loop 1604, Gavito said public safety emerged as a key issue for voters.
“Safety and security is a big one for a lot of residents,” Gavito told reporters before officially declaring victory Saturday. “They [also] want a councilwoman who’s going to be available and accessible to them to listen to their concerns. And that’s what we spend a lot of time doing is listening.”
Though Gavito was opposed to a police reform measure that Councilman McKee-Rodriguez (D2) supported in the May 6 election, he said he looks forward to his professional and personal relationship with his new colleague.
“What I think has been missing from City Council are a lot of those personal relationships,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “I look forward to this next class of council members — recognizing that even through our differences, we should all have a certain level of understanding of one another.”
State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4), Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5) and Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8) also endorsed Gavito.
Councilman’s daughter
Growing up in a political household wasn’t always fun for Gavito and her three siblings, so she didn’t think she would one day run for office. Students in the second grade would approach her and her twin sister, Carina, and say: “My dad’s not voting for your dad,” Gavito told the San Antonio Report in April.
“We were like … we don’t want that,” she said. “That’s why I just poured myself into serving on boards and nonprofits.“
The long list of boards she has served on includes VIA Metropolitan Transit’s board of trustees, the Bexar County Child Welfare Board and the UTSA College of Engineering Advisory Board.
Gavito holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from St. Mary’s University related to management, information systems and finance. She also earned a masters of business administration in Operations Management from DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business in Chicago.
While SA Digital Connects focused on addressing the digital divide in San Antonio, Gavito said seeing the broader inequity in San Antonio while serving on the board of Ella Austin Community Center in the East Side eventually led her seek office.
She would leave USAA headquarters where colleagues talked about “skiing and yachts” and go to the economically disadvantaged East Side to talk about “carbo loading meals“ to help hungry residents through the week.
“At that time [around 2018] I thought: I gotta do more … but I didn’t know what that was,” she said.
After talking with family, friends and elected officials, she found a path forward to make an impact in local politics — albeit a bit earlier than she anticipated.
Replacing Sandoval
Gavito said she told Sandoval that she was interested in representing District 7, but that she would wait for an open seat.
“I probably agree with 80% to 90% of the decisions she made,” Gavito said. “I just wasn’t expecting [an open seat] until closer to 2025.”
She would not have abstained, as Sandoval did, on the now-infamous vote City Council took on what to do with a $42 million CPS Energy surplus, Gavito said.
“I would have voted for long-term investment [in] weatherization,” she said. Instead, a majority of council voted in September to give the surplus back to CPS Energy customers.
Generally, she wants to focus on being accessible to residents and get “back to the basics” on funding street maintenance, libraries and other infrastructure needs.
She believes her experience in business will be an asset to the council, most members of which don’t have corporate experience.
“I always tell everyone, you cannot run a city like you run a business,” she said in April. “But you can absolutely take business skill sets and apply them to city government.”
She raised significant funds from the business community and reported receiving help from the San Antonio Equity Alliance PAC, which boosts candidates who support the concerns of small businesses.
She hopes to strike a balance between business interests and those of the broader community.
“How do we think that families get economic mobility in this community? They work at businesses,” she said. “There are ways for [the] city and activists and businesses to coexist. We cannot push out our business community because that would be extremely [detrimental] to all of us.”
Gavito lives with her husband, George, who is a real estate agent, and two daughters, Marielle and Giselle, in Woodlawn Lake.
After declaring victory Saturday night, she addressed dozens of supporters on the patio of Deco Pizzeria off Fredericksburg Road.
“As the next councilwoman, we have budget session coming up, and I’m excited to dig in and use my business experience and my community leadership experience to serve the residents of District 7,” Gavito said. “First and foremost, thank you and let’s celebrate.”
A live band kicked off the celebration with a cover of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac
Reporter Andrea Drusch contributed to this article.
Disclosure: Marina Alderete Gavito previously served on the San Antonio Report’s board of directors.
