Nearly a year after publicly floating her potential candidacy, Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6) formally joined San Antonio’s 2025 mayoral race on Wednesday.
The disability attorney has represented District 6 on the council for nearly six years.
“My community has been asking me to run for a long time,” Cabello Havrda said in a press conference outside City Hall on Wednesday. “I never saw this for myself, but when your community lifts you up, encourages you, believes in you, and asks you, you have to respond.”
Her socially progressive values, combined with pro-business and law enforcement stances, have gotten her reelected twice in the politically swingy Westside district.
Cabello Havrda has tried to continue threading that needle — while also shaking up her image as a quiet behind-the-scenes policy maker — throughout a lengthy wind-up to her mayoral launch.
In January she all but announced a campaign at Dream Week, saying she planned to make history in a city that hasn’t yet elected a Hispanic woman as its leader.
“They told me Westside girls don’t become lawyers … but I proved them wrong. They told me it’s too late in life to get an MBA, it’s too late in life to start a business, but I proved them wrong,” she said. “… They’re also telling me there has never been a Latina mayor, but I am determined to prove them wrong.”
In the months after that, she began taking increasingly public stances at odds with city leadership.
Last spring Cabello Havrda, who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, took center stage in an effort to oust City Attorney Andy Segovia, who she accused of locking the council out of contract negotiations with the politically influential firefighters’ union.
She also became the lone mayoral hopeful to push for the city’s so-called “Reproductive Justice Fund” to pay for out-of-state abortions.
Since Cabello Havrda’s mayoral ambitions have been well-publicized, a number of candidates are already lining up to run for her District 6 council seat.
