San Antonio’s South Side will be home to one of the state’s most competitive Texas House races this November. Ahead of that contest, Democrats must choose a candidate to take on a formidable incumbent in Republican John Lujan.
Two candidates vying for their party’s nomination, Carlos Quezada and Kristian Carranza, grew up on the South Side before pursuing careers that have helped them cultivate valuable political connections needed for an expensive race.
Quezada, 42, is an attorney who graduated from Harlandale High School and went on to serve as a district court judge from 2018 to 2022. Carranza, a 33-year-old political strategist, graduated from McCollum High School and most recently managed a 22-state territory for the Democratic National Committee.
Whoever emerges from the March 5 primary has a big challenge ahead.
In a state where gerrymandering has left few competitive races at any level of government, Texas’ House District 118 is one of the rare districts where the political makeup is split almost evenly between the two parties. It added Republican voters during redistricting before the 2022 election, but President Joe Biden would have still carried it by roughly 3 percentage points.
Lujan’s success in a Hispanic-majority district once dominated by Democrats has been a prized achievement for Texas Republican leaders who are eager to prove the party is making inroads with Latinos. While their investments helped Lujan take 52% of the vote in 2022, similar enthusiasm didn’t materialize among Democrats in a district that was once a stronghold for them.
“I don’t think anybody would be mistaken by saying this [race] is an uphill climb,” said Frank Ramirez, a San Antonio City Council aide who lost to Lujan in both a 2021 special election and the 2022 midterm.
“I think more money was spent on this race [in 2021 and 2022] than probably every single race in this district’s history put together, with the majority of that coming from Republican endorsements from state leadership and groups outside of San Antonio,” Ramirez said. “Now Democrats have an idea of what is at stake, and all eyes are on this district.”
At the close of the first campaign finance reporting period, Carranza had raised $70,000 to Quezada’s $21,000, according to reports covering July 1 through Dec. 31. Lujan reported raising $130,000 in that same span and has already been spending on campaign advertising despite running unopposed in the GOP primary.
From San Antonio to Laredo and back
After high school, Quezada studied political science at Palo Alto College, where he served as the secretary of student affairs for the student government.
“There was no money for college, and there was no financial aid. We were in that middle,” he said in a recent interview at his home, so he pursued an associate degree before receiving a full scholarship to St. Mary’s University. Quezada worked for H-E-B while in college and as an assistant jury room bailiff for Bexar County during law school at Texas Southern University.
Quezada started his legal career as an assistant district attorney in Laredo, where he prosecuted everything from marijuana to murders, and met his wife, Megan, who was studying to become a teacher.
When Quezada returned to work in San Antonio in 2013, people he had grown up with were already speculating about a potential political future.
“They joked about the state rep, they joked about city council,” said Quezada, who was eventually recruited to run for a seat on the Harlandale ISD board of trustees in 2015. He held the seat until 2018.
Quezada also was taken under the wing of longtime League of United Latin American Citizens attorney Luis Roberto Vera Jr., who offered him office space downtown where he could start his own practice.
“He knew I was from the South Side and that I had a law degree,” Quezada said. “He said, ‘You can come in for free, because I believe in you.'”
‘You’re a Democrat’
Carranza left San Antonio in 2008 to pursue a degree in communications at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.
Like Quezada, she worked various jobs throughout high school and college, but when her mother’s scoliosis worsened Carranza left school and returned home to help support her.
“I always knew I was a Democrat,” Carranza said in a recent interview. “My mom would say, ‘We’re too poor for you not to be a Democrat, so you’re a Democrat.'”
But it was state Sen. Wendy Davis’ 11-hour filibuster in 2013 — an unsuccessful effort to stop sweeping new restrictions for abortion providers — that inspired Carranza to make a career out of Democratic politics.
“I volunteered for her [2014 gubernatorial] campaign and it kind of quickly snowballed,” said Carranza, who met her fiancé, James Sonneman, while they were both working for Democratic candidates that year.
Carranza would later return to college but did not complete her degree. Instead, she went to work for state House Rep. Abel Herrero (D-Robstown) and was accepted into a fellowship program started by former staffers of President Barack Obama aimed at training the next generation of digital campaign operatives.
From there, Carranza took a job with Battleground Texas, a Democratic political group, then worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential race and several other high-profile campaigns before accepting a regional leadership role in San Antonio for the campaign arm of congressional Democrats.
Party divisions
For the most part, Quezada and Carranza have similar goals for the Texas Legislature, where Democrats hold 64 out of 150 seats. Both candidates say the state should increase gun safety measures, pay public school teachers more and make bigger investments in public health.
After many years of contending with her mother’s chronic illness, Carranza has become particularly focused on pushing the state to make health care affordable.
“[Texas has] the most uninsured people in the whole country, and if you look at them, they’re most likely to be people of color and low income,” she said. “What is the reason that we haven’t expanded Medicaid?”
Quezada, meanwhile, has been most moved by his experience working with children in the justice system and serving on the Bexar County Juvenile Board when he was a judge.
“Sadly to say, a lot of our kids came from this district,” he said of his time in the juvenile court. The state has much work to do improving its Department of Family and Protective Services, he added, an issue that isn’t getting enough attention this election cycle.
On one issue that’s front and center for many voters, the state’s handling of public school education, Quezada said he and his wife, who teaches at Briscoe Elementary, have first-hand experience.
“It’s hard to think that someone is up there in Austin, not representing our views, voting against our public schools, voting against teacher pay raises,” he said of Lujan, who this year supported Gov. Greg Abbott’s failed plan to tie public school funding to a private school voucher program.
At this point in the primary, neither Carranza nor Quezada is doing much campaigning against one another.
But Democrats in Bexar County are deeply divided between those who want the party to avoid alienating potential allies and those who want it to do more to fight back against state leaders’ conservative social agenda. And leaders from both camps have made their preferences known in Texas House District 118’s primary.
Quezada’s campaign has kept its focus on issues with broad appeal, like reducing the burden of property taxes and bringing new good-paying jobs to the region. He has been endorsed by two of the district’s former representatives, Tomas Uresti and Leo Pacheco, as well as by former County Judge Nelson Wolff and Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4).
“I’ll represent the Democrats and my democratic values, but I understand that [the district] is now almost a 50-50 split” between Republicans and Democrats, Quezada said.
Carranza’s campaign, meanwhile, is highlighting her support for issues like mitigating the impact of climate change, banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and fighting Republican-led immigration policies coming from both Washington, D.C., and the state Capitol.
She has picked up support from progressive Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2) and civil rights leader Rosie Castro, as well as Gina Ortiz Jones, former assistant secretary of the Air Force.
“When you look at Kristian, she’s got an agenda that’s local, statewide and national,” said Castro. “I just think she can see the bigger picture.”
In recent weeks Carranza has also picked up endorsements from some well-funded outside groups, including Planned Parenthood Votes, the Latino Victory Fund and several labor unions, whose support could go a long way in competing with Lujan’s allies.
“They’re both strong homegrown candidates in their own right,” Ramirez said of Democrats’ options this year. “You have a level of experience with Judge Carlos Quezada, and you have a new, refreshing sense of politics in somebody like Kristian Carranza.”
New faces
While both candidates have spent plenty of time around politics, neither Quezada nor Carranza has personal experience with the type of race they would be in for against Lujan.
The former San Antonio firefighter has spent more than a decade trying to build up a Republican presence on the South Side and finally found traction two years ago after appearing on the ballot many times.
Lujan first won the district in a January 2016 special election, only to lose to a Democrat that November in the general election. When the seat opened up with another special election in November 2021, he was personally recruited to run again by Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, who put major resources into helping him keep the seat in 2022.
Texas Democrats don’t enjoy the same level of candidate recruitment and support.
Quezada’s biggest political feat may be his successful school board campaign in 2015. He ran unopposed for his party’s nomination for the 289th Juvenile District Court in 2018 and won the seat in a Democratic wave for Bexar County. Four years later, he lost his first reelection race in the primary to Rose Sosa, who took 73% of the vote.
Quezada’s campaign contends that Latina candidates cleaned house in Democratic primaries that year. Others say he also was hurt by a campaign ad filmed in a laundromat that featured a parody trial over underwear. Some in the legal community considered the ad to be in poor taste.
“I wasn’t expecting a primary opponent, honestly,” said Quezada of the 2022 judicial race. For this state House race, he has hired San Antonio political strategist Christian Anderson.
Carranza has been a part of many tough campaigns, from building out a team of volunteers for Clinton in Florida to leading former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro’s campaign through the Nevada presidential primary in 2020. But she concedes that running for office herself has brought new challenges.
“As an organizer, I’m used to standing on a chair and getting everyone excited for the candidate,” Carranza said, whose fiancé is serving as the campaign’s general consultant during the primary.
“Being a candidate is very different, because you’re having to talk about yourself,” she said. “There definitely have been some learning curves.”
This article has been updated to correct the name of the elementary school where Megan Quezada teaches. It is Briscoe Elementary.
