After a Democratic midterm wave, San Antonio is getting three freshmen millennials in the Texas House of Representatives.
Two of them flipped districts that previously elected Republicans, including House District 121, which hadn’t elected a Democrat since 1981.
“The odds were stacked against us,” said Zack Dunn, the Democrat who flipped HD 121 on San Antonio’s North Side.
These state House blue wins happened as Texans picked Democrats in all statewide races, including the Senate and the governor’s office and despite huge spending from national groups hoping to keep Bexar County-area Republicans in office.
Democrats also flipped the Texas House, which has been overwhelmingly dominated by the GOP.
On the West Side in HD 118, voters elected Democrat Adrian Reyna, a 39-year-old public schoolteacher and union leader, with 67.53% of the vote.
Over 25 on the South Side, in one of the most hard-fought races in Texas, Kristian Carranza flipped HD 125 back to blue with 61.69% of the vote.
And in one of the more shocking turns from Tuesday night, Dunn flipped HD 121, a historically business-centric Republican stronghold, with 54.06% of the vote.
The Northside district includes some of the area’s wealthiest enclaves and once belonged to Texas House Speaker Joe Straus (R-San Antonio). It has long chosen moderate, business-focused Republicans, but as the GOP continued shifting right in recent years, Democrats have targeted the seat repeatedly.
All other Bexar County incumbents held onto their seats, including Rep. Mark Dorazio (R-San San Antonio) who kept his seat with 50.90% of the vote, even though his Democratic opponent Shelly Nickels raised just $5,600.
The connecting thread for most of the local races was education, given the massive changes that came down from the 89th Texas Legislative Session last year, including a school voucher program that Gov. Greg Abbott had been pushing for years and a hefty volume of new mandates.
But even on a night where Democrats swept state-level races, voters in several local school districts shot down school bonds and requests to increase tax rates.
While local education leaders say they are hurting from the losses on school finance measures, they’re also cautiously optimistic about what’s possible with pro-public education lawmakers in Austin.
Kicking off in January, the 90th Texas Legislative Session is expected to focus on education, as public schools deal with tighter budgets, historic dwindling enrollment, the first year of school vouchers and the fallout from education laws passed during the previous session.
A Democrat flips the North Side
Texas House District 121 on San Antonio’s North Side hasn’t elected a Democrat since 1981, but the race became fiercely contested after Dunn entered the picture, getting help from state and national Democrats.
He beat out the incumbent, Rep. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio), who was among the roughly dozen Republicans whom Abbott backed over popular GOP incumbents who stood in the way of the governor’s much-desired school voucher program two years ago.
In the only general election debate of that race, in October, nearly all the questions were about school vouchers.
LaHood was grilled about the program, which is very unpopular with public school advocates.
“I could not be more anti-ESAs [education savings accounts], anti-voucher scams,” Dunn said at the debate. “This is a billion dollars that was taken away from our public education system, and it was given to private institutions.”
“Fully funding our public education system is a great way to make sure we cover a lot of those bases in terms of safety, economic opportunities, all of it,” he said during an election night interview.
Dunn arrived in San Antonio as a child, as the Air Force moved his family around. He worked for an array of local Democrats earlier in his career, and most of his money came from state and national groups who saw potential in a wave election.
He works in the Family Violence Division at the Bexar County District Attorney’s office and previously worked as an attorney for the U.S. Air Force.
The DLCC, a national Democratic group focused on flipping state legislatures, put Dunn on its list of top 10 candidates nationwide.
A schoolteacher on the West Side
Reyna is a public schoolteacher at San Antonio Independent School District and was favored to win the reliably blue West Side district since his primary.
He’ll be replacing retired state Rep. Ray Lopez (D-San Antonio) as one of the only public school educators — and one of an even smaller number of union members — to make it to the famously business-friendly Texas Legislature.
Reyna’s father Arthur “Art” Reyna represented HD 125 from 1997-2001, and his mom Sylvia Reyna worked in the same school district as Reyna for decades.
Not only does the legislature lack teachers, Texas’ GOP leader also spent millions rooting out some of their party’s biggest public education supporters in 2024 to pave the way for school vouchers.
Before Democrats took control of state government, Reyna said he was prepared to play defense.
“But the conversation immediately shifted to like, well, now we have to deliver,” Reyna said.
Reyna said he is for repealing school vouchers, but it’s too soon to tell exactly how Democrats will revisit the program or any of the other controversial education laws passed last session.
“Take your pick on where you want to start on the attacks on public ed, as far as what needs to be fixed first,” Reyna said. “For me, like we start on the fundamentals. We fully fund our schools. We make sure that we have robust mental health supports for our young people who have been crying out for them since COVID. And again, we make sure that we take care of the school workers.”
Outside his teaching job, Reyna is vice president of the San Antonio Alliance, a union for district teachers and staff, sits on the board for San Antonio’s AFL-CIO Central Labor Council and the board of VIA Metropolitan Transit.
In 2023, Reyna was part of pushing the city of San Antonio to pass an ordinance requiring contractors who work on city-funded projects to provide shade, water and breaks for workers exposed to extreme summer heat.
State leaders soon came down on municipalities that passed similar policies with Senate Bill 2127, which aims to prevent local governments from making rules beyond what the state already specifies on labor-related issues.
“Talk about some other things to repeal, along with school vouchers: right to work … preemption,” Reyna said in a preelection night interview, referring to a law against requirements that workers join a union and the concept of state laws taking precedence over local laws. “Last couple years ago we won in the city … did a whole press conference on the front steps of City Hall, only to have Gov. Abbott and the state come in and preempt us and say, ‘You can’t do that.’”
First Latina on the South Side
HD 118 on the South Side was one of few truly competitive races in Texas, where national groups from both parties poured money in, hoping to keep it red or flip it back to blue.
The district was a blue stronghold before state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio) flipped it in 2022, a good year for Republicans.
Carranza ran against Lujan in 2024 after having worked on many Democrats’ campaigns. She lost but raised more money than any first-time state House candidate in Texas history.
Now she’s the first Latina in the HD 118 seat. She has more than a decade of experience with community organizing, working on political campaigns and registering Texans to vote and access Medicaid.
“I wasn’t sure that we would see a blue Texas in my lifetime. And now that we have secured every statewide seat, now that we’ve secured the state house, it really does feel like there’s so much that can be done,” Carranza said. “And I have a vision for what I want District 118 to look like.”
Lujan left the seat to run for Congress this year and Republicans picked Jorge Borrego, a well-connected up-and-comer in his party, who helped shepherd Abbott’s school voucher plan while working at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Before election night, Carranza said that if she was elected, the first thing she would do is call for an audit of the voucher program, which she campaigned against the first time she ran, in 2024.
But now that Texas is blue, Carranza’s approach is more ambitious.
“What we need to do is go far and beyond an audit of the vouchers,” she said. “What we really need to do is … overturn the voucher program.”
She also wants to focus on access to healthcare by expanding Medicaid in Texas.
HD118 overlaps with the gerrymandered 35th Congressional District — where Democrat Johnny Garcia also beat a well-funded Republican.
Garcia and Carranza held their election watch parties together and it was attended by San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, who said the Southside community would “finally” be well represented.
“We are seeing what is happening both at the state and federal level,” Jones said. “We know that we are going to need strong voices to maximize this moment, and I can’t think of anybody more ready to do that than our very own Kristian Carranza.”
