After early results were released Tuesday night, Luz Elena Chapa and Jane Davis appeared to be leading Democrats’ eight-way Bexar County district attorney primary.
Many votes still need to be counted, so the results could shift throughout the night.
If no candidate takes at least 50% of the vote in the first round, the top two vote-takers will advance to a May 26 primary runoff.
- Former Fourth Court of Appeals Justice Luz Elena Chapa was taking 23.89%
- Jane Davis, chief of the Juvenile Section of the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office was taking 18.97%
- Shannon Locke, a defense attorney and social media personality, was taking 13.65%
- Veronica Legarreta, a defense attorney, was taking 11.41%
- Oscar Salinas, a prosecutor in the DA’s office, was taking 11.18%
- Meredith Chacon, a defense attorney and former prosecutor who ran for the position as a Republican in 2022, was taking 8.74%
- Angelica “Meli” Carrión Powers, who oversees the Family Violence Division at the District Attorney’s Office, was taking 6.55%
- James Bethke, executive director of Bexar County’s Managed Assigned Counsel Office, was taking 5.61%
Retiring District Attorney Joe Gonzales was elected with a wave of progressive DAs in 2018, running on a platform of restorative justice and benefitting from roughly $1 million from liberal billionaire George Soros’ Texas Justice and Public Safety political action committee.
When Gonzales announced that he planned to retire at the end of his term, several bigger-name candidates looked at the race, but ultimately passed on a position that’s been under increasing scrutiny from both the left and right in years.
National progressive groups have spent big money turning Texas’ large counties into laboratories for justice reform, while the state’s Republican leaders have made it easier to remove DAs they feel aren’t being tough enough on crime.
As a result, the race came down to a crowded field of candidates who’ve scrambled to stand out from the crowd. No candidate raised much money for the race, but Chapa and Davis put significant personal resources into their campaigns.
Chapa got help from a PAC aligned with the San Antonio Police Officers’ Association, while Bethke benefitted from advertising and door-knocking from the progressive bail reform group Texas Organizing Project.
The winner of an eight-way Democratic primary will be the odds-on favorite to carry the blue county in November. They’ll be up against Ashley Foster, the lone Republican running, plus a potential independent candidate, who must collect signatures to qualify for the general election ballot.
