San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who is term-limited from seeking reelection next year, said Saturday that he’s interested in trying his hand at a bigger role.
This summer Nirenberg launched a political group to help Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and became an official campaign surrogate.
In an exit interview with Texas Tribune co-founder Evan Smith at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Nirenberg said that if asked, “it would be an honor to serve in a Harris administration.”
“I’m thinking about what life can be like after mayor in some type of public service,” he responded to a question about his political future. “I can’t commit to anything specifically, but if the opportunity arose to serve, I’m going to take it.”
Mayors are elected on a nonpartisan basis in San Antonio, and Nirenberg spent much of his early career seeking middle ground politically.
But without another mayoral race to worry about, he’s increasingly leaned into partisan politics as a Democrat.
Nirenberg spent the roughly hourlong conversation with Smith railing against Texas’ GOP leaders, who he said are making the jobs of city leaders more difficult.
“When I look at all of my colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, that are running cities, we are all killing it,” Nirenberg said Saturday.
“We’re investing in infrastructure, we’re investing in workforce, we’re putting housing on the map,” he continued. “But the things that are holding us back, the headwinds that we’re facing, are up in the capital.”
Though Texas’ conservative rural areas have long outweighed its more liberal urban centers, Nirenberg said Republican policies that squeeze the state’s major cities are putting them on track to eventually flip that dynamic and lose their three-decade grip on statewide offices.
He pointed to Gov. Greg Abbott’s push to create a school voucher program and the so-called Death Star bill, aimed at reining in local governments’ ability to protect workers, regulate natural resources and crack down on unfair business practices, as examples.
“If you fail to invest in education, if you ignore the challenges of urban communities … if you ignore the vast majority of this population, which is now in an urban state, you’re going to continue to alienate yourself from Texas,” he said. “That’s why I think Texas is or soon will be in play.
“They continue to be derelict on their duty, and at some point this s— is going to hit the fan for Republicans in Texas,” he added.
Nirenberg was first elected in 2017 and could soon become the city’s longest continuously serving mayor since Henry Cisneros.
In his final year, however, he’s dedicating significant time to helping the Democratic presidential ticket.
