After a second-place finish in the May 6 election, first-term Councilman Mario Bravo is using the power of incumbency to shore up support for a June 10 runoff against education consultant Sukh Kaur.
Bravo took 26% of the vote in Saturday’s election, a surprisingly weak showing in a district whose downtown business community typically helps incumbents raise big money.
Now his opponent, a political newcomer who split with business leaders over her support for Proposition A, is trying to win over their support for the second round.
District 1 encompasses most of downtown and extends north. Businesses located there fought hard to keep the central business district from being divided up in last year’s redistricting process.
Kaur, 34, is a former teacher and administrator who owns an education consulting company and is developing a mixed-use building in Southtown. She already rallied support from some of the city’s political old guard, including former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff and advertising executive Lionel Sosa, to notch a first-place finish in the May 6 election.
Kaur finished with 34% of the vote, taking 1,220 more votes than the incumbent Saturday. Marketing executive Jeremy Roberts chaired the city’s Small Business Advisory Committee and raised significant money from business leaders, but finished third with 21%.
“I think it’s fair to say that this election is more of a referendum on Councilman Bravo than it is on the people that he was running against,” said Chad Carey, president of the North St. Mary’s Business Owners Association, which has been at odds with Bravo over construction delays and parking issues.
Carey gave the maximum contribution to both Roberts and Kaur, and is now backing Kaur in the runoff.
Since Saturday, Kaur has been lining up fundraisers with some of the city’s regular political influencers.
“There’s been a huge buzz in the business community about her in the last 24 hours,” Documation Co-president Preston Woolfolk said Tuesday morning. Woolfolk met Kaur though the Leadership San Antonio Program and supports her campaign.
Real estate developer Marty Wender and retired businessman Bill Kanyusik will host a meet-and-greet for Kaur next Tuesday. The following week medical professionals Daniel Kellum, John Kellum and Art Campsey will host a fundraiser for her at the Friendly Spot. Kaur also received recent campaign contributions from Jimmy Hasslocher, CEO of Frontier Enterprises Inc., and his wife.
“Before it was like very long meetings and phone calls convincing people why I deserve the $500 maximum contribution, Kaur said Tuesday. “Now it’s like every hour I get another donation.”
Running from behind
Bravo, 47, finds himself in the same position as in 2021, when he had to come from behind after the first round of voting. Back then, he was the newcomer taking on the incumbent.
To unseat Roberto Treviño, Bravo rallied support from business and neighborhood leaders who were upset about the incumbent’s approach to homelessness. He held Treviño to 45% of the vote in the first round and went on to win the runoff with 54%.
Since then, redistricting has changed District 1 more than other council districts. This year it gained parts of two neighborhoods north of Loop 410, Greater Harmony Hills and part of the area near Vance Jackson and Interstate 10. Overall, the district grew from about 123,000 residents to 137,000.
“About 30% of the vote in District 1 came from people who weren’t in District 1 two years ago,” said San Antonio political consultant Kelton Morgan, who helps run a pro-economic growth political action committee that’s considering whether to engage in the runoff. “Mario was not necessarily their incumbent.”
Bravo performed more poorly in the general election than Treviño did two years ago.
He took the lowest share of the vote of any incumbent since former Councilwoman Jada Andrews-Sullivan, who in 2021 faced a challenge from a former staffer — Jalen McKee-Rodriguez — who filed a harassment complaint while working in her office. Sullivan took 17% in the first round and lost the runoff by roughly 26 percentage points.
Bravo entered this election cycle with his own baggage.
Colleagues rebuked him with a no-confidence vote in November for berating then-Councilwoman Ana Sandoval over a disagreement during the fall budget discussions. He apologized for the incident, but temporarily lost his committee assignments.
“The path forward is bringing on more professional staff with experience, hiring more block walkers, knocking more doors myself,” Bravo said in an interview Tuesday. “I need to get in front of more people.”
Bravo remains popular among neighborhood association leaders who say he’s catered to their needs and worked closely with them on zoning issues.
He’s already picked up an endorsement from one opponent, former Dellview Area Neighborhood Association President Ernest Salinas, who took roughly 10% of the vote Saturday.
Salinas said Tuesday that Bravo promised to work with him on relocating the city’s Migrant Resource Center out of District 1. The city opened the center on San Pedro Avenue last year amid complaints from nearby neighborhoods.
“I spoke to Mario Saturday and said, ‘One of the issues we need to start tackling is the migrant center,'” Salinas said. “He agreed. … He felt he should ask the city manager [if] maybe we could relocate that.”
Headed into the runoff, Bravo is also leaning hard on neighborhood leaders to help him wage a comeback.
“I think that a lot of the neighborhood leaders maybe are going to get more active in this race, and I think that it’s going to make a real difference,” Bravo said.
He reported spending roughly $50,000 in the final month and had $23,000 on hand as of April 26. Kaur spent $21,000 in the final month and had about $21,000 on hand as of April 26. It’s unclear how much either had left after May 6.
‘A blank canvas’
Kaur was born in India and immigrated to Maryland at age 2. She moved to Texas to receive her undergraduate and master’s degrees from Rice University, then worked in Houston public schools as a teacher and administrator before moving to San Antonio for an education consulting job in 2017. She has a doctorate in educational leadership and administration from Vanderbilt University.
Despite her lack of political background, Kaur has quickly assembled support from an unusual group of local political influencers.
“I’ve had numerous people [ask] me, how did you get all these people in one room together?” Kaur told supporters at her election night party at Sanchos Cantina and Cocina. “That’s what I think is a strength of leadership, when you have diverse perspectives in a room together at a table, building solutions that will build a solid future for us.”
Kaur said Josh Baugh, a former Express-News reporter who works for VIA Metropolitan Transit, advised her to be the first candidate to jump into the race in October. She drew upon Sosa’s advertising expertise to come up with a plan to help people pronounce her name.
Her status as a newcomer could end up helping her, said Gabe Farias, a San Antonio public relations professional who met Kaur through a mutual friend.
“She is a blank canvas, and I think, as a candidate, that’s not a terrible thing,” said Farias. “[She’s] willing to listen… willing to learn and I think you’ve seen the progression from her candidacy from the early stages.”
Kaur’s political advisers have helped her hone her message over the past seven months.
For example, she started the race talking about her education background and avoided mentioning Bravo. Near the end she focused her speeches on streets and infrastructure, and attacked Bravo as “unfit to lead” in a campaign mailer.
Kaur has also sought to soften her stance on Proposition A, which she said she supported because of its abortion-rights component. The multi-faceted police reform measure failed in the May election after business leaders and the police union spent heavily opposing it.
Bravo repeatedly declined to take a position on the measure. Kaur said she enjoyed seeing “civic democracy in action,” and respected voters’ decision to overwhelmingly reject the measure.
“I fully support what the community decided, and I would love to talk about continuing to create more enforceable policies,” she said.
