Former Councilman Clayton Perry (D10) is letting friends know he plans to join San Antonio’s open 2025 mayoral race, he confirmed to the San Antonio Report on Friday.
Perry’s political career was cut short by charges of driving while intoxicated and failing to stop after a hit-and-run crash in 2022. His political allies urged him out of the race for a fourth term in his Northside council district after body camera footage and other security video from the night depicted an overall unflattering series of events.
Still, Perry has been floating the idea of a comeback for several months now, telling a gathering of young conservatives in June he’d been “toying with the idea” of running for mayor.
“I’ve been getting so much positive feedback from across the city saying, ‘Hey Clayton, you were awesome on City Council, you need to get back up on the council,'” Perry said in an interview on Friday. “I certainly wouldn’t be running for District 10 again, and so the next one up is mayor.”
In an interview after the June GOP event, Perry gave a more detailed outlook on his reasoning. He said he believes “there’s a conservative yearning here in San Antonio” among people who are fed up with crime and other quality of life issues, such as the overall “dirtiness” of the city.
While the lane for a conservative candidate is narrow in bright blue San Antonio, Perry said he was in the process of putting together a campaign team and a strategy for a race that’s likely to include at least a dozen candidates.
“I’m going through that process now doing my due diligence,” Perry told the San Antonio Report. “There’s a lot of different opinions out there and a lot of different ideas on how to [be successful citywide as a Republican]. I’m listening to all that and taking notes and learning a lot.”
Perry retained a strong base of support among conservatives even after the 2022 incident.
“The thing is with Perry … his supporters are almost rabid about him,” then-Republican Party of Bexar County Chair Jeff McManus characterized it at the time. “I mean, they just love the guy.”
Perry called the experience a “terrible embarrassment,” but declined to say whether he ever received formal substance abuse treatment since then.
His colleagues granted him a leave of absence from the council under the impression he planned to do so, but Perry surprised many of them when he returned to work weeks later.
“I like Clayton Perry… I don’t think he should be running for mayor,” Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8) said on Friday. “But that’s his right. We’ll still be friends when I beat him.”
Perry pleaded no contest to the charges and was sentenced to 12 months of deferred adjudication.
“I’ve done everything that was asked of me. I’ve done everything humanly possible and more,” Perry said when asked if he’d been to rehab. “I look at that as the past, and I learned a valuable lesson. I’ve changed a lot of my ways, let’s put it that way.”
