Now down to just two candidates in the mayor’s race, local politicos and organizing groups are finally starting to come off of the sidelines in the race between former Air Force Under Secretary Gina Ortiz Jones and former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos.

Initially faced with a 27-candidate race that included four sitting council members, Jones and Pablos were two of the only candidates with moneyed outside groups willing to wade into a crowded contest.

Jones ran for Congress twice as a Democrat and had national Democratic groups behind her in the first round, while Pablos, who has close ties to state GOP leaders, received help from a PAC aligned with Gov. Greg Abbott.

More than a week after Jones and Pablos emerged victorious from the first round of voting, past and present council members, labor unions, law enforcement groups and local Republican and Democratic clubs are just now starting to get organized behind their respective candidates in the June 7 runoff.

On Friday, Jones was already rallying party faithful at La Tuna Icehouse, where San Antonio artist Cruz Ortiz was printing T-shirts for her campaign. 

“If we don’t do everything possible, we will have an Abbott puppet running our city. That’s unacceptable,” Jones framed the race to the roughly 100 local Democrats gathered at the event. 

At the same time, conservatives had several mayoral candidates to choose from in the first round, from former Councilman Clayton Perry to Tim Westley, and are now rallying behind Pablos.

“We could not be at more polar ends,” Pablos said of the race against Jones in a recent interview. “We represent completely different viewpoints.”

Even with a race that’s down to two diametrically opposed candidates, however, many voices that opted to sit out of the first round still haven’t weighed in.

“I think everybody’s just being very cautious because the state of local politics is so fickle,” said Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), who backed Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6) in the first round and Jones in the runoff.

“Everybody wants to be right, they want to bet on people who are values-aligned, but they also don’t want to make the wrong person mad,” he said.

Team Gina

In heavily Democratic San Antonio, it’s no surprise that many elected officials have come out in support of Jones in the runoff after staying quiet in a May 3 election that included many mayoral candidates with left-leaning backgrounds.

On Monday, Jones’ campaign rolled out some of the first endorsements in the race from council members with whom the next mayor will serve with — from a council with currently just one conservative voice.

McKee-Rodriguez, Teri Castillo (D5) and Phyllis Viagran (D3) — some of the council’s most progressive voices — were on the list, along with District 4 Councilman-elect Edward Mungia. Former mayors Phil Hardberger and Julián Castro and Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar also endorsed her campaign.

Mungia and several of Beto Altamirano’s campaign hands turned out to show their support for Jones at La Tuna on Thursday night.

On Saturday, Northside Councilman John Courage (D9), who ran unsuccessfully for mayor, urged some of his closest political allies at the North East Bexar County Democrats to help Jones as well.

Among the local Democrats who’ve stayed quiet about the race are Altamirano, who got his start working in Democratic politics and finished third in the first round of the mayor’s race, as well as current Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who is viewed as a potential future Democratic candidate for another office.

The other former mayoral hopefuls on the council, Manny Pelaez (D8) said he won’t endorse, and sources say Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6) and Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4) are also expected to stay out of the race.

Team Rolando

Local Republicans are excited not just about the prospect of a runoff with Pablos, but a slate of other conservative council candidates in District 1, District 8 and District 9.

The Republican Club of Bexar County plans to host all four of those candidates at Chester’s Hamburgers on Wednesday night.

That’s after the Republican Party of Bexar County stayed neutral in the May 3 race, though Vice Chair Kyle Sinclair put out a video supporting Pablos as the party’s best option to capitalize on political shifts after the November election.

When Pablos joined the race in November, he already rolled out a long list of local supporters that included some with Democratic histories.

Though the race has grown more partisan since then, he’s still rumored to be assembling a list of local Democrats backing his campaign as well, according to one City Hall insider.

Unions still divided

On Tuesday, the San Antonio Police Officers Association, which stayed out of the first round, endorsed Pablos. Pro-law enforcement groups have played a major role in shifting Texas’ big-city mayors to the right in recent years.

The San Antonio Professional Firefighters’ Union, on the other hand, decided Tuesday that it won’t endorse in the mayor’s race runoff.

“Both [Pablos and Jones are] capable, competent humans, both are insanely intelligent,” said fire union president Joe Jones. “That probably contributed to our members’ decision to stay out of the race.”

The progressive Texas Organizing Project, which elected to stay out of the first round, said Monday that it hasn’t decided whether to spend in the runoff.

AFSCME, the union representing city employees, backed Jones this week, as did the local AFL-CIO.