Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai has asked to begin formulating plans for replacing Elections Administrator Jacque Callanen, who has held the role since 2005.
Callanen is expected to continue serving through the March 5 primary, but Sakai said Wednesday he couldn’t say whether she would be retained through the November presidential election.
“I want to treat her with dignity and respect, but at the same time, we’ve got to put together a succession plan,” Sakai told reporters.
Bexar County’s elections administrator is hired by an election commission consisting of the county judge, county clerk, county tax assessor-collector and the county political party chairs.
On Wednesday, that group met for the first time in at least a decade. An agenda item for the meeting listed “discussion regarding the position of elections administrator,” but little was revealed after a lengthy executive session.
Sakai asked the group to reconvene within 60 to 90 days to look at how they would replace Callanen, including whether they need to ask Commissioners Court for money to hire a search firm.
“Jacque may have some opinions as to what she wants to do, but now, from this point on, I’ve been given authority as the chair of the elections commission to have those discussions,” Sakai said.
Sakai met with Callanen in December to discuss her professional plans, and said Wednesday he is asking her to be specific with the commission about when she intends to retire.
Callanen indicated after the 2020 presidential election that it would be her last but has since told people close to her that the comments were made in frustration due to COVID that year, and that she still loves her job.
Sakai has also been meeting with Bexar County commissioners for their feedback about what should happen with the role.
Callanen has frustrated some commissioners who want her to do more to expand voting access, and repeatedly offered additional funding for more voting machines and staff.
Additionally, county officials were sued twice in the last four years over Callanen’s plans to reduce the number of voting locations in Bexar County to prioritize resources at the busiest locations. Both times a judge ordered the county to operate more locations than Callanen had planned, causing a last-minute scramble to determine which polling places to keep open.
Despite those concerns, it remains unclear whether the five-member Election Commission would ask Callanen to resign. Amid increasingly intense scrutiny of elections officials, she enjoys rare support from leaders of both political parties.
After Wednesday’s meeting Republican Party of Bexar County Chair Jeff McManus, Bexar County Democratic Party Chair Monica Alcántara, Tax Assessor-Collector Albert Uresti and County Clerk Lucy Adame-Clark all greeted Callanen, who was in attendance.
Uresti specifically told Callanen that he was not involved in the efforts to replace her.
In an interview with reporters, Callanen pointed to those relationships as evidence she may be able to stay on through 2024.
“I heard some committee members say ‘through November,'” Callanen said after Wednesday’s meeting. “We’ll see how that plays out. I would like to do that.”
An unusual meeting
Bexar County’s election commission likely hasn’t met since hiring Callanen in 2005, according to Sakai, but county records are unclear.
On Wednesday, 17 speakers signed up to tell the commission about their experience working with Callanen, including both Republicans and Democrats who want her to continue working through at least the 2024 election.
“I’ve served with seven [elections] administrators and two county clerks, and Jacque stands out as superior as far as clarity, fair elections and transparency,” said Marian Stanko, former executive director for the Republican Party of Bexar County.
Rose Marie De Hoyos, primary manager for the Bexar County Democratic Party, concurred.
“This is a very, very important election,” she said. “We don’t have time to be messing around and taking a chance with somebody that will be inexperienced.”
Callanen’s critics — primarily young voting rights advocates — were outnumbered at the 11:30 a.m meeting. But groups like MOVE Texas, the Texas Civil Rights Project and others have found a sympathetic ear among commissioners.
“Things are not as perfect as the demographic of people in here are saying,” said Valerie Reiffert, executive director of Radical Registrars, a nonprofit aimed at voter registration and education.
“I have been harassed by her election judges. There’s actually a couple of them here today who have yelled at me, unjustly and wrongly, for giving out voter guides and doing things that I am perfectly allowed to do while standing in line,” she said.
Sakai said after the meeting that the public comments had “given direction to me as chair” and to the election commission as a whole about how they should proceed.
Keeping on
Since the 2020 election, several other Texas elections administrators have quit or been fired over political disagreements with elected officials.
Gillespie County’s entire elections staff resigned months before the November election last year, while Tarrant County’s elections director resigned under political pressure. Harris County’s elections administrator position was eliminated by the state’s Republican-led Legislature over his efforts to expand voting access.
Asked why she declared the 2020 presidential election would be her last, Callanen said Wednesday she was exhausted at the time she made those comments.
“That was obviously the toughest election that I’d ever run in all my years because it was in the middle of COVID,” Callanen said. “… We were changing in midstream and the governor said, ‘OK, anybody can bring in mail ballots.’ I mean, it was that kind of stuff. That’s what you were hearing.”
Since then her office is among that that have inundated with threats and open records requests from people who question the results of the 2020 election. But Callanen said she wants to keep going, in part because she feels it’s so important to keep politics away from her role.
Callanen said the law allows elections departments to take on voter outreach efforts that other counties have done in recent years, but asking elections officials to do so is a dangerous proposition because they shouldn’t be choosing which voters to target. That type of work is best left to political parties and campaigns, Callanen said.
As for complaints that she’s been too hard on deputy registrars, Callanen said registering voters is important work, but registrars who regularly submit incomplete voter registration applications does “a disservice to the voters.”
Callanen said she has suspended registrars with too many mistakes, because those mistakes unfairly lead people to believe they have registered to vote when they haven’t actually followed all the steps.
“I’ve been following the law,” she said.
