An opportunity to represent some of San Antonio’s fastest-growing territory in City Council District 6 has drawn eight candidates this year, including many with long resumes of public service and political experience.

The district encompasses the city’s inner-to-far West Side and Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6), who has represented the district since 2019, is running for mayor this year instead of seeking reelection.

Early voting for the May 3 election runs April 22 through April 29. If no candidate takes at least 50% of the vote on May 3, the top two finishers will advance to a June 7 runoff.

Read about all of the candidates running in District 6 in our 2025 Voter Guide, and watch the full debate on YouTube

The field of candidates seeking to replace Cabello Havrda includes three young candidates with backgrounds in Democratic politics, two experienced City Hall veterans, two longtime federal employees and one candidate who is active in the local Libertarian Party.

Council offices are nonpartisan, and District 6 voters have chosen council members with varying political backgrounds in recent years — from conservative Greg Brockhouse to more centrist Cabello Havrda, who toward the end of her term championed plans to fund out-of-state abortion travel from the city budget.

Both were close allies to the police and fire unions, which declined to support any of the District 6 candidates this year.

All eight candidates participated in the San Antonio Report’s District 6 debate at the Boeing Center at Tech Port on Friday, shedding light on how they’d approach the role. 

Ties to the councilwoman

Cabello Havrda has endorsed Kelly Ann Gonzalez, a 34-year-old labor organizer who worked closely with the councilwoman last year to amend the City Charter so that city employees could participate in local elections by endorsing, volunteering and otherwise electioneering — an effort that passed in November with 63% support.

Gonzalez said Friday that she was motivated to run for office after losing an older brother, who died by suicide in 2018, “[opening] my eyes to the inequities that our community faces.”

She went on to complete a leadership program for progressive candidates, and is now running on a platform of expanding the city’s mental health crisis teams and expanding access to housing — even if it means more affordable housing projects go in District 6 than in other parts of the city.

Like Cabello Havrda, Gonzalez said the City Council should largely be focused on local issues, but sometimes has a responsibility to protect residents from harmful state and federal policies.

“We have to be honest about the fact that the laws that this country has passed in the past have not always been correct, and it is up to city leaders to make sure that we are standing up for our communities,” said Gonzalez, who has so far raised more than $17,000, the most money in the District 6 race.

The progressive staffers

Ric Galvan, 24, is a projects manager in the District 5 office, as well as a progressive political organizer whose council campaign has been endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.

He’s also running to expand access to housing, and at Friday’s debate discussed his vision for building consensus around that goal with the district’s powerful neighborhood associations.

As a neighborhood association president in Pipers Meadow, he said that in his experience most homeowners are not against multifamily developments, they just need to be brought into the conversation sooner to see the potential benefits.

“What that means to a City Council person is making sure that we are working with the neighborhood associations and the homeowner associations to understand what projects are coming up, what they look like, how they can affect our community,” he said. “We’ve got to do that early on. We cannot do it at the last minute, or at the Zoning Commission.”

Galvan is the second-highest fundraiser, bringing in about $11,000 and spending $7,600, according to his most recent report.

Lawson Alaniz-Picasso, 32, is a former District 1 staffer and marketing professional who said she was also motivated to run by challenging personal life experiences that shaped her public policy views.

“Fourteen years ago, when I moved here, [this community] helped me at my darkest time, when I lived in my car for six months,” said Alaniz-Picasso, who went on serve on a number of city boards and commissions and became a national food security advocate.

“I’m running for City Council so we can have somebody that has a combination of lived experience, professional experience, who knows how to ensure that we are moving the needle forward for all people in San Antonio,” she said.

Alaniz-Picasso ran in the Democratic primary for Bexar County Precinct 1 in 2024, and this year has faced questions on the campaign trail about how long she’s lived in the district.

“I have lived in District 6 since April of 2023. My voting history and my license and everything else to show that I live in Westover Valley,” she said at Friday’s debate. “I want to ensure that this district in particular has the strongest leadership it can.”

City Hall veterans

Two other contenders on the stage touted many years of experience working at City Hall and in the education sphere.

Vanessa Chavez, 53, grew up in the district and started her career working for Democrats at the state and federal level. She went on to work for the city’s housing authority and its Neighborhood and Housing Services Department.

“I have 30 years working as a public servant here in San Antonio. I graduated in 1994. And I’ve been doing it ever since,” she said. “I understand the intricacies how of how budgets work, how the bond works, how grant programming works. … I have worked in the trenches.”

Having most recently served as a district director in another council office, Chavez brought many ideas for how she’d like to improve public engagement with hard-to-reach residents, including opening the new District 6 field office on Saturdays.

Gerald Lopez, 56, served as chief of staff to former District 6 councilman Ray Lopez, who is now a state House representative, and touted his connection with other elected officials as what sets him apart from the field.

“You have to be able to have relationships when it comes to talking with our state, with our state officials and our congressional officials,” he said.

Lopez owns a landscaping business and was twice elected to the Northside ISD school board before being appointed to a seat on the Alamo Colleges District Board of Trustees a year ago.

On Friday he said he would urge the city to take a bigger role in education — something deep-pocketed outside groups have also been pushing this election.

“What I’m planning on doing is focusing in on that, looking at how we can better as a city, partner with not only just our ISDs, our charter schools,” said Lopez. “We’re also looking at partnering with our home school students. They all deserve an opportunity for success.”

Former federal employees

Bobby Herrera, 69, represented District 6 in the 1990s, lost the seat and ran unsuccessfully again in 2019. He also spent some time working for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and for U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Corpus Christi).

On Friday he suggested other candidates were being unrealistic about plans to spend city money addressing issues like housing and mental health.

“I hate to say this, but all these candidates haven’t sat there,” he said. “They’re going to have a heck of a time — whoever you elect — trying to bring monies into your own districts. You have to prioritize police officers on the streets.”

He also called for the city to take dramatic measures to crack down on potentially dangerous dogs. “I think we ought to have a city ordinance to do away with the pit bulls,” he said.

Herrera was voted out of office following a number of scandals, including a reported attempt to solicit a six-figure consulting fee in exchange for supporting a development project in his district, as well as involvement in a late-night confrontation with police at a strip club.

“As far as the scandals are concerned, … I was never arrested,” he said at Friday’s debate. “I was never indicted, never put in jail for it, never taken to court. It was all hearsay.”

Carlos Antonio Raymond, 76, was born in Panama City, served in the U.S. Army and had a long federal government career working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Transportation and other agencies.

As a councilman, he said he would be well-positioned to advocate for the city at the federal level, in particular pushing back against cuts to the federal workforce — something he’s already done as a budget analyst for the Department of Defense.

“I would let them know the effect that their decision is going to have on a federal workforce,” he said. “It’s going to wreck havoc, and we’re going to pay the price for that.”

At Friday’s debate, Raymond also explained how he wound up in the unusual position of running for the Texas House under two different party affiliations: As a Democrat in 2016 and as a Republican in the next three elections.

“The chairman of the Democratic Party told me that I was too conservative,” said Raymond, who sued after his name was left off the primary ballot. “I’d been a Democrat for 35 years.”

Afterward, he said, “the Republican Party brought me in on faith and said, ‘We’re going to help you. Come and work with us.'”

City accountability activist

Chris Baecker, 53, had a corporate career but now teaches economics and algebra at Basis Middle School and economics at Northwest Vista College.

Most of his civic engagement work is related to the activist group InfuseSA, which seeks to hold the city to account by filing public records requests. It also holds community workshops on topics like protesting property appraisals.

Baecker said that work has taught him plenty about how business is done at City Hall, and that he would keep advocating for more transparency as a council member.

He’s also active in Libertarian circles, which shined through in his response to a question about working with state and federal leaders.

He said residents face constant overreach by both the “Republican state and the left-leaning council,” such as the recent use of eminent domain to pave the way for redevelopment of the Alamo and the council’s effort to remove horse-drawn carriages from the streets.

“My role is to defend the freedom and the autonomy of all citizens and all San Antonians, and that includes against all levels of government,” he said. “We’ve seen too many examples where that was needed in recent years.”

Baecker ran in District 6 in 2023 and took 11.2% in a three-way race.

Watch the full District 6 debate here: