Ranch lessons and courtroom experience shape Jane Davis’ DA campaign

At her weekend ranch home in Seguin, Democratic runoff candidate for Bexar County district attorney Jane Davis makes her rounds with one hand on the wheel of an ATV, occasionally stopping to feed cattle as they run toward her from across the pasture.

For Davis, the ranch is not just a backdrop for campaign ads. It is part of how she explains her leadership style: practical, patient and knowing when to push, when to step back and how to guide people in the direction she wants them to go.

As a roughly 1,000-pound bull trotted toward her, Davis scolded the animal, bringing it to a stop right in front of a pile of feed.

“I try to watch ahead so I know where the danger might be,” she said, standing next to the animal. “And that’s what you do in the DA’s office. You watch ahead where the danger might be.”

At 78, Davis said the lessons from wrangling cattle can also apply to the courtroom. 

She is now trying to convince Democratic voters that her decades of courtroom experience, and a management style shaped by ranching as much as prosecution, make her the best choice to lead the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office. 

It’s an uphill race.

Davis advanced to the runoff earlier this year with 18% of the vote, finishing in second place in the eight-candidate Democratic Primary. She now faces former Fourth Court of Appeals Justice Luz Elena Chapa, who came in first with 24% of the vote, in the May 26 runoff. Davis has since received the endorsements of four of the six eliminated candidates, who together captured 38% of the vote. 

Chapa has campaigned on being a political outsider who has not been a part of what she describes as the “dysfunction” inside the DA’s office, while critics have pointed out her lack of prosecutorial experience.  

In contrast, Davis, the chief of the juvenile division in the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office, believes what the office truly needs is someone who already knows how to run it. 

That belief motivated Davis to enter a crowded primary at a time when the office faces staffing shortages, case backlogs and growing political scrutiny from Republican state leaders over criminal justice reform.

“I didn’t want the office to go to pot, and I don’t want the county to not be served as well by the DA as it can be,” she said. “I saw who was running, and I think it’s important that somebody step up and do the best for the county that can be done.” 

The winner of the runoff will face Republican Ashley Foster in November, though in heavily Democratic Bexar County, the Democratic nominee will enter the general election as the favorite to replace outgoing Bexar County District Attorney Joe Gonzales, who is not seeking reelection after two terms.

‘Rehabilitation whenever possible’

Born in Abilene to two schoolteachers, Davis did not initially plan on becoming a lawyer. She first followed her parents footsteps and taught public school for eight years before coaching women’s track at Angelo State University. 

Davis was looking for a more stable career when her father suggested she go to law school. 

“I said, ‘Daddy, don’t you know how old I’ll be when I get through law school?’” Davis recalled on the porch of her weekend ranch house. “And he said, ‘How old will you be then if you don’t go?’”

So she applied and attended St. Mary’s University School of Law in 1982 and has lived in San Antonio since then.

After graduating in 1985, Davis joined the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office as a misdemeanor prosecutor before moving through nearly every major division in the office, including felony prosecutions, family violence, white collar crime and juvenile cases.

She has worked under seven DAs across both Republican and Democratic administrations and previously served as first assistant county attorney in Guadalupe County. Davis had retired from the office and was working as a defense attorney when current DA Joe Gonzales recruited her to be his Juvenile section chief. 

“He and I were in the courtroom together at the same time, and that’s when he suggested I might want to look at being the chief of the juvenile department,” she recalled.

Gonzales said he specifically sought out Davis because of both her courtroom experience and her approach to juvenile justice. 

“When it came to selecting a chief of the Juvenile Division, I wanted a person who was well-qualified to lead that specialized area of the law,” Gonzales said by email Friday. “The goal in handling these offenders is rehabilitation whenever possible.”

Gonzales said he had known Davis professionally through her work as a prosecutor in juvenile court and described her as “firm but reasonable and fair” while also being “a fierce advocate for the state and a very competent trial lawyer.”

Gonzales, known for his reforms like a controversial cite-and-release policy, has now endorsed his former employee in the Democratic primary, citing her experience, leadership and demeanor for the role.

Though Davis has credited the cite-and-release policy for helping reduce jail overcrowding, she’s also been critical of how Gonzales ran his office on the campaign trail, arguing the DA’s office needs stronger management, more training and clearer expectations for prosecutors. 

“Joe brought in a lot of good people as his chiefs, and I think he had some very good ideas as far as what he wanted to do progressively,” she said. “He has implemented some of those ideas, some of them have worked very well and some of them need some refinement.”

Davis says she wasn’t always in favor of restorative justice — an approach focused on rehabilitation and reducing repeat offenses rather than punishment alone — but decades in the office alongside data have shaped not only her management style, but her views on criminal justice. 

“When I first started out, I was much more of a non-reformist: ‘Hit them hard. Hit them early,’” she said. 

Over time, particularly while working in juvenile prosecution, Davis said she began studying data on rehabilitation and recidivism and shifted her perspective.

“I’ve grown up and read the data,” she said. “Hitting people hard and being unmerciful is not what works.” Then in the same breath, she jumped back into prosecutor mode: “I’m not saying to be merciful to really bad people.”

Faith and law

In that period of growth, Davis also began serving intermittently as a pastor at her church between permanent pastors. Davis said she does not believe religion and the law should be mixed, but said the role personally reinforced her belief that prosecutors should focus on fairness, accountability and rehabilitation when possible.

“When you’re a pastor, you want to do the right thing,” Davis said. “And that’s what I keep saying. We need to do the right thing.”

Now, Davis supports diversion programs and rehabilitation for some lower-level offenders, while still emphasizing aggressive prosecution for violent crimes.

“There are some people that can’t be rehabilitated, and those people need to be locked up and society needs to be protected from them,” Davis said. “But if a person has just made a stupid mistake, … we need to try to address and focus on what the root cause of this person doing bad things is.”

Davis describes herself as “data-driven,” arguing that prosecutors should rely less on political slogans and more on evidence showing what actually reduces repeat offenses and improves public safety long-term. 

“That’s why it’s important that we have statisticians that can measure some of these different things in the DA’s office,” she said about one of her campaign’s key points. “We need to know what works, and use what works.”

That approach, Davis said, also requires prosecutors to be willing to adjust rather than rigidly sticking to ideology or political messaging.

That mentality is what makes her qualified to lead the DA’s office, said Shannon Locke, one of her many former opponents in the race. He endorsed Davis following his third-place finish in the eight person Democratic primary.

Locke described Davis as someone with “a really empathetic heart” who listens closely and adapts when necessary.

“She has the ability to really connect with voters, she listens to what their concerns are and she is willing to adjust when necessary to make sure that the community’s needs are going to be met,” he said.

Back on the ranch, that same mindset surfaced repeatedly in the way Davis talked about the animals around her.

At one stop, Davis pointed toward Agnes, an orphaned calf she bottle-fed after the animal’s mother rejected her shortly after birth.

“She now has become so resilient,” Davis said as the calf ran up to her looking for attention. “She’s found other mamas to nurse off of.”

For Davis, the things she’s learned growing up on a ranch weren’t really about cattle. 

They were about understanding what someone needs, recognizing when a situation can still be corrected and trying to “do it right” no matter the circumstances — a phrase, she said, she returns to repeatedly as she weighs her campaign and the future of the district attorney’s office.