In an unusually hard-fought race for a seat on the Alamo Colleges board, political newcomer Robert Garcia has been racking up endorsements and running circles around his opponents’ fundraising.
With that success has also come added scrutiny, as an old arrest record from when he was a teenager was circulated this week by an unidentified email user.
Garcia, now 44, said he grew up in a tough environment, dropped out of John Jay High School at age 17, and was caught making illegal returns worth more than $2,000 while working at Garden Ridge — the home decor store now known as At Home — in 2000.
“I come from a very broken home, single mom, my dad died when I was 11 … so I stole, and I had a second-degree felony theft charge,” Garcia told the San Antonio Report. “I paid full restitution, I did all of my court hours and paid the court fees, and I had three years of probation.”
He hasn’t had the records expunged — a common practice many political candidates use to seal unflattering old records before running for office. He said Monday that the arrest isn’t a secret to those who know him well.
“This was a huge mistake, one that I’ve always leaned into and shared openly within my community, because it’s shaped who I am,” Garcia said.
Still, he said he was surprised to see the issue come up on the campaign trail, just as early voting was starting for the May 2 election.
The anonymous email user who shared the records with the Report said they’re an Alamo Colleges employee who’s concerned about someone with Garcia’s record taking on a role “defined by the stewardship of public funds.”
The author took steps to conceal their identity because they feared retribution, they said.
“I didn’t expect any of this to come out like this, I didn’t think it was that kind of race,” Garcia said in an interview. “But I guess if you can’t beat ’em, smear ’em.”
An unusual race
This year Garcia is one of three candidates challenging District 9 Trustee Leslie Sachanowicz for a seat on the Alamo Colleges board.
The board oversees five independently accredited community colleges — San Antonio College, St. Philip’s College, Palo Alto College, Northwest Vista College and Northeast Lakeview College — known as the Alamo Colleges District.
At a time when higher education has been rocked by partisan politics, the district’s faculty union has rallied around longtime Palo Alto College professor Carolyn DeLecour, 77, to replace an incumbent with a more business-centric background.
The other challenger, Joe Jesse Sanchez, 78, is also a longtime educator who served on the board for six years before Sachanowicz, a 68-year-old attorney, unseated him in 2020.
Garcia, by contrast, is running on his experience as a product of a community college system he said is designed to lift up students just like him.
“This isn’t about being an educator in the classroom,” Garcia said in a recent interview. “This is a very complex organization that’s multi-layered, where your relationships and understanding of San Antonio and the county impact everything.”
After his brush with the law in the summer of 2000, Garcia went back to school that fall and completed his degree a year behind schedule at John Jay — the Westside high school that also produced San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones.
He started taking courses at Northwest Vista College while also working full time and completing his court-ordered community service hours, and eventually completed both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in accounting at UTSA.
So far, he has raised nearly $22,000 for his Alamo Colleges campaign — far more than Sanchez, who raised about $3,500, DeLecour, who raised about $2,000, and Sachanowicz, who is self-funding his reelection race.
Garcia had help from some influential political leaders who hosted a fundraiser for him, and he’s been hustling for endorsements from City Council members and even former Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who is also Democrats’ nominee for Bexar County Judge.
“I know people, but it isn’t from a place of a Central Catholic mafia,” Garcia said. “I don’t have a legacy last name. I came from John Jay. I had to build everything that we have.”
‘Firsthand experience’ with criminal justice
Since his arrest more the than two decades ago, Garcia said his record has been spotless.
“I’ve never done anything since, like, not even as much as litter,” he said.
But getting past the stigma of a criminal record still hasn’t been easy.
“I had firsthand experience with what the criminal justice system looks like, and how it really wasn’t set up for folks like myself,” Garcia said.
Records indicate that Garcia’s theft occurred in February of 2000, and he was arrested in July of that year, with bond set at $7,500.
He went through drug testing and was given 320 hours of required community service, he said. At one point, Garcia’s probation was nearly revoked because he wasn’t able to keep pace with his school and work schedules and 20 hours per week of community service.
Eventually he hired then-defense attorney Ron Rangel, now a district court judge, who helped work out a deal that would allow Garcia more flexibility to to knock out his service hours.
“He was really hard worker, very intelligent,” Rangel recalled of the young Garcia, who would later invite him to his first college graduation ceremony at Northwest Vista College. “He had a little bit of tragedy in his life, [but] he seemed to me to be somebody who was hard-working enough that even though he’s trapped in the system, he’s going to be successful.”
After finishing his master’s degree in accounting, Garcia said he still had to explain his criminal record to the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy, which issues Certified Public Accountant licenses, and again when interviewing for his first accounting job at KPMG — one of the biggest accounting firms in the country.
Though they were nerve-racking conversations, he said employers have been understanding, and it’s never kept him from getting a job.
“People have asked me, ‘Hey, are you going to get it expunged? And I’m like, ‘No, it’s part of my story. It’s part of my history,'” Garcia said. “I want folks to know that I look like them. My journey is like them. My experiences are like them.”
