Two years ago Mario Bravo pulled off a difficult feat to win a seat on the City Council dais. Though new to District 1, he defeated an incumbent who shared many of his progressive political values by courting some unlikely allies: neighborhood leaders who had grown frustrated with the incumbent’s approach to homelessness.
Now Bravo is making his case for a second term while trying to sidestep a contentious ballot proposition that could impact voter turnout in an otherwise sleepy May 6 municipal election.
Sukh Kaur became the first candidate to launch a challenge in October and has the endorsement of former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff. Former Dellview Area Neighborhood Association President Ernest Salinas, who helped Bravo defeat Roberto Treviño in 2021, joined the race soon after. With seven candidates in the field, a runoff isn’t out of the question.
Marketing executive Jeremy Roberts is attempting to fuel a campaign around neighborhood leaders’ frustration with policing and construction delays — both part of a larger argument about how City Council lacks members with business backgrounds.
With the help of donors in the business community, Roberts posted competitive fundraising numbers in his first campaign finance report — bringing in $27,600 to Bravo’s $31,600 between Jan. 1 and March 27. But neighborhood leaders, who often play an outsize role in municipal elections, haven’t flocked to his campaign, saying Bravo has effectively catered to their needs.
“[Bravo has] had great staff and they have been extremely receptive to the issues that are happening in neighborhoods,” said Cynthia Spielman, a founder of the Tier One Neighborhood Coalition, a group of neighborhood associations within Loop 410, and president of the Beacon Hill Area Neighborhood Association.
“That doesn’t mean he hasn’t made mistakes,” Spielman said. “But it takes at least two years [from] when someone comes on to the City Council before they start to understand what’s going on. … I can’t imagine doing another two years trying to get someone on board.”
By Bravo’s own account, his first term has indeed included some trial and error.
Speaking to the Tejano Democrats at a candidate forum this month, Bravo said one of the biggest lessons from his first term has been the importance of cultivating good working relationships with city staff.
“There’s a lot you learn while you’re [on council] about managing relationships [with city staff],” Bravo told the group. “You want to make change, you want to move things forward, but how much do you push without pushing too far?”
That acknowledgment comes as Bravo is still smarting from City Council’s vote of no-confidence against him after he berated then-Councilwoman Ana Sandoval to the point of tears ahead of a Sept. 15 budget vote.
Prior to that vote Bravo sought to scuttle a plan supported by city staff and Mayor Ron Nirenberg to refund excess CPS Energy revenue to ratepayers. Bravo hoped to delay discussion of the money so it could be used for other purposes, but Sandoval, a former romantic partner with whom Bravo had been living until 2020, abstained from a vote that caused his effort to fail.
Bravo apologized after details of his tirade against Sandoval became public in an Express-News report a week after the budget vote. City staff hired an outside investigator to look into the confrontation, and Nirenberg temporarily stripped his committee assignments. Sandoval resigned from City Council at the beginning of this year to accept a higher-paying job.
“I never stopped working for my district,” Bravo said in an interview this month, referring to the censure. “I think that’s why I’m doing as well as I am right now.”
The early bird
Though Kaur launched her campaign weeks after news of Bravo’s conflict with Sandoval became public, the 34-year-old education consultant said little about the incumbent, who continued to attend council meetings throughout the investigation but was viewed as a dead man walking at City Hall.
Instead Kaur focused on her experience as an educator and developer of a mixed-use building in Southtown, where she hopes to someday open a wine and yoga studio.
Two months later Bravo shocked political watchers with a campaign finance report that showed he had raised $55,000 in the second half of 2022, the majority of which arrived after the November rebuke by colleagues. Bravo also brought on Toni-Marie Van Buren, a past president of the Monte Vista Neighborhood Association and former United Way executive, to manage his reelection race.
Campaign finance reports show Kaur raised $41,000 in the last three months of 2022 but brought in only $13,000 in the first quarter of 2023.
In an interview after a recent candidate forum, Kaur acknowledged her first-time candidacy had hit some road bumps. In a district whose population is 71% Hispanic, Kaur, who was born in India, said she works to ease discomfort around how to say her first name, which is pronounced like “look.”
“I know my name is difficult to pronounce, but I own that and want everyone to feel comfortable saying my name and OK messing it up,” Kaur told the gathering of Tejano Democrats. She later addressed the group in Spanish, saying she believed it was important for a council member to be able to communicate with the entire community.
Kaur’s bigger communication challenge, however, has been talking to voters about her consulting work with charter schools in the midst of a Republican-led school voucher push in the Legislature that has drawn fierce opposition from public school advocates.
Kaur received undergraduate and master’s degrees from Rice University, taught middle school through Teach for America and worked in public school administration before moving to San Antonio for a job at the nonprofit City Education Partners in 2017. She has a doctorate in K-12 educational leadership.
Her education consulting company, Edreimagined, helps open charter schools, often in partnership with school districts, to offer innovative concepts that aren’t typically available at traditional public schools.
“These are not charter schools as you would think of traditional charter schools. …These are actually schools that are authorized by our board of trustees, and they reside within the district,” said Edgewood Independent School District Deputy Superintendent Phillip Chavez, who has worked closely with Kaur on innovation projects in his district.
Although Kaur has emphasized her opposition to giving parents money or vouchers to attend private schools, local teachers unions have characterized her work with charters as a threat to public school funding. The Tejano Democrats voted to back Bravo after their candidate forum, as some members cited concerns about Kaur’s charter connection.
“This City Council race isn’t even about education,” Kaur said in an interview. “If I really wanted to change that system, I would have run for the State Board [of Education] or state rep.”
“I’m running on my experience, but [on City Council] I really want to address poverty, address the issues of inequity and access,” she said.
In the final weeks of the campaign, political observers say Kaur has successfully honed her message.
She recently launched a direct mail ad attacking Bravo as “unfit to lead” due to the no-confidence vote. It also promoted her company’s work implementing budget equity tools at Edgewood ISD.
Kaur reported having $31,000 cash on hand for the campaign’s final month. Bravo had $57,000, and Roberts had $16,000.
Salinas has raised $1,400 and reported nothing left in the bank as of March 27.
Banking on a business background
Roberts had eyed a council bid in District 9, where Councilman John Courage is running for his fourth and final term and had appointed him to the Small Business Advisory Commission.
Instead, redistricting at the end of last year put the Greater Harmony Hills home where Roberts has lived with his mother since 2015 in District 1.
From his role chairing the commission, Roberts got an up-close look at the growing tension between city officials and small-business owners. The SBAC was created to help the city disperse its federal pandemic aid to help small businesses, and Roberts, then a marketing executive at Adobe, was its first chair.
The commission’s first project, setting the framework for spending $31 million of the city’s pandemic relief funding, was sent back for recalibration after the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce complained to City Council that it didn’t give enough money directly to businesses.
Later the commission’s plan for how to spend $400,000 aiding businesses impacted by construction was blasted at an Economic and Workforce Development Committee meeting where business owners said they needed grants, not marketing, to keep their doors open.
“Jeremy had his work cut out for him, managing strong opinions and managing people who were leaders of their own organizations” with personal interests in the pandemic relief money and construction grants, said Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8), who chairs the council committee and has donated to Roberts’ campaign, calling him a close friend.
Roberts sits on the board of the Hispanic chamber, which declined to comment on the race.
At candidate forums, Roberts is campaigning hard on his small-business experience.
Roberts owned a bar for three years before earning a master’s degree in business administration at Tulane University. A veteran of Rackspace, he currently works as the head of global marketing for financial services startup Prosperas, teaches marketing classes at Texas A&M University-San Antonio’s School of Business and recently completed a business doctoral program at the University of the Incarnate Word.
“The City of San Antonio is a job that is a $3.4 billion business,” he said at a forum. “You’re talking about multimillion-dollar projects, dealing with corporations, dealing with people, hiring and managing people. I’ve been doing this for 20 years. My résumé for success speaks for itself.”
Proposition A
Complicating matters in the competitive District 1 field is a proposed city charter amendment that’s roiled business groups and neighborhood associations.
Kaur’s tepid endorsement of Proposition A at an April 1 Asian American Alliance of San Antonio forum disappointed an audience with whom she was expected to connect. Later Kaur said she felt pressure to make herself stand out in the race but added, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be pegged all the way progressive, because I don’t think I am.”
Roberts considers himself generally progressive but, like Bravo in 2021, has seized on an issue of great importance to the more conservative neighborhood associations and business groups. His opposition to Prop A won him the endorsement from the police union.
Bravo spent his career helping progressive candidates and causes before running for council, including working on a campaign to decriminalize marijuana in Nevada roughly 20 years ago. He has served on the board of MOVE Texas, which has criticized Nirenberg for coming out against Proposition A, but Bravo has refused to take a position on the issue at candidate forums.
In an interview, Bravo characterized Proposition A as an unhelpful wedge issue but said his progressive beliefs haven’t changed.
“I still have those ideas. I’m still passionate about it,” said Bravo. “[But] you gain wisdom over time.”
Though Proposition A has fueled a handful of new business groups that are spending in some council races, they are not currently active in the District 1 contest.
A seasoned political operative
During his term on City Council, Bravo has worked to build loyalty among neighborhood leaders whose support his predecessor lost in 2021.
Hector Cardenas, president of the Friends of San Pedro Springs Park, said Bravo helped him secure police coverage of the park late at night.
“I didn’t support him at first. I was supporting Treviño,” said Cardenas. “But it turns out Mr. Bravo has been OK.”
The Tier One Neighborhood Coalition’s Spielman, meanwhile, praised Bravo’s hire of Anisa Schell, a former Tobin Hill Community Association vice president, to serve as his director of zoning and planning.
Bravo said he’s also worked to shore up relationships with city staff, something allies of Bravo’s predecessor say hurt Treviño’s ability to address residents’ concerns about homelessness.
“I have a really good relationship with the city manager,” said Bravo. “I’ve learned, go to him and he’ll help me get what I need.”
Bravo has never voted for a city budget since taking office. In 2021 he was frustrated his amendments weren’t included and abstained. In 2022 he disagreed about the use of CPS Energy revenue.
Although the tax rate is set in a separate vote, during the campaign he has framed the budget votes as rejecting higher property taxes.
“It’s extremely popular because they’re just like, hey, you guys are out of control over there with your spending,” Bravo said.
