Councilwoman Sukh Kaur (D1), whose first reelection quickly became one of the ugliest races of this election cycle, is headed to a runoff with former Greater Harmony Hills Neighborhood Association president Patty Gibbons.
After all the votes were counted on Saturday, Kaur took 48.91% of the vote in a 10-way race, falling just short of the 50% she needed to avoid a June 7 runoff.
Her closest challenger, Gibbons, is a former District 9 resident who went to tremendous lengths to keep the city from drawing her Northside-Greater Harmony Hills neighborhood into D1 — known as one of the city’s more progressive, downtown council districts — during the 2022 redistricting process.
She ended the night with 17.8% of the vote.
“I think that they put me in D1 hoping I’d never run again,” Gibbons said when she entered the race. “But after realizing how similar Greater Harmony Hills is to these other neighborhoods — very vocal, very informed, very knowledgeable — I think it was a good fit after all.”
The important District 1 council seat encompasses most of downtown, the city’s economic engine, and stretches up to include most of the neighborhoods between I-10 and U.S. 281 as well as some north of Loop 410.
Kaur, an education consultant who came up through the Greater Chamber’s Leadership San Antonio program, won the seat in 2023 by unseating an incumbent who was well-liked by the district’s neighborhood leaders.
Headed into her first reelection race, tensions between the pro-growth business community and the district’s neighborhood leaders had only heightened amid a number of new city projects that all happen to be within the district’s boundaries.
Kaur supported the new Missions’ Minor League Baseball stadium and a proposed NBA arena district known as Project Marvel. She also took leadership roles facilitating the baseball stadium — which involves razing an existing apartment complex — and plans for denser development along the rapid transit line on San Pedro Avenue.
“We’ve got to make sure we’re moving forward as a city, and we’ve done that,” Kaur said in a February interview about her first term. “We’ve supported policies that are going to ensure that we have a San Antonio that our kids can thrive in, by creating transit opportunities, by creating more housing opportunities.”
Those positions helped Kaur raise big money for her campaign, allowing her to spend more than most mayoral candidates in the final month, while the pro-business group San Antonio Equity Alliance put $25,000 into the race on her behalf.
They also drew a number of challengers who said they were personally affected by the projects, and didn’t feel like their voices were being heard at City Hall.
Gibbons is a retired land surveyor who rallied hundreds of homeowners against the city’s plans for transit-oriented development — zoning that allows for denser, car-free housing — along San Pedro Avenue’s forthcoming rapid transit line.
She previously served on the city’s Zoning Commission and is active in conservative circles.
District 1 has preferred progressive candidates in recent years. Gibbons said in a phone interview Saturday night that despite all of the work that had gone into the race, even she was somewhat bewildered by the fact that the district chose someone with her conservative background for the runoff.
“That’s been the big discussion over here,” she said. “It’s going to come down to that question: Do they want a conservative? And I think that they’re not sure. … Because they’ve never had one.”
Former River Road Neighborhood Association board member Susan Strawn took 13.24% in Saturday’s race.
Bar owner Julisa Medrano-Guerra — who put lots of money into her own race plus brought on political operatives known for their scorched-earth tactics and hired a private investigator to follow Kaur — took 6.09%.
