The race to replace Ana Sandoval in San Antonio’s District 7 — a starting point for two recent mayors and a county commissioner — has drawn interest from a field of up-and-coming potential city leaders.
While just one of them will join City Council in June, the race is unlikely to be the last for any of the District 7 hopefuls polishing their skills in recent candidate forums.
Two candidates with impressive professional résumés are making their political debut after serving on committees and boards where potential candidates often gain experience before running for office.
Marina Alderete Gavito, a businesswoman who led a public-private partnership that seeks to expand internet access in Bexar County, and Dan Rossiter, a computer scientist who developed transportation technology at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), were among the first candidates to file for the May election on the morning filing opened in January.
Rossiter and Gavito are joined in the race by two candidates with less local government experience, but who already have proven appeal among local political activists.
Last year family counselor Sandragrace Martinez ran a shoestring campaign for the Democratic nomination for Texas Land Commissioner that forced King Ranch scion Jay Kleberg into a runoff, despite raising roughly $4,000 for her race. (Kleberg, who spent more than $1 million on the primary and runoff, lost to Republican former state Sen. Dawn Buckingham in November.)
Meanwhile, Jacob Chapa, who is still a month shy of completing a political science degree at UTSA, has earned the support of the Republican Party of Bexar County in the District 7 race. He received applause from a GOP gathering last month when he declared the current council too caught up in “virtue signaling, identity politics [and] ideological battles” to address weightier issues like crime and domestic violence.
A fifth candidate, Andrew “A.J.” Luck, did not attend any public forums, submit a campaign finance report or respond to emailed questions about his policy positions. Luck received a law degree from St. Mary’s University, was a diver in the U.S. Navy, and interned for U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Don Rios, president of the Culebra Park Neighborhood Association, said he believed Rossiter, who served as president of the Thunderbird Hills Neighborhood Association, and Gavito, a former vice president of the Woodlawn Community Association, had the most compelling qualifications, but the district would be in good shape with any of the candidates.
“We have a lot of caring and well-intentioned people here,” Rios said of the candidates.
Absent from the field, however, is any candidate in the mold of Sandoval, whose unabashedly progressive views have only grown more popular among municipal candidates since she upset incumbent Cris Medina to win the seat in 2017.
Sandoval was reelected with 68% of the vote in 2019, and 71% of the vote in 2021.
“All throughout District 7 we hear about safety and security, safety and security, safety and security,” said Gavito, who described her politics as “socially progressive and fiscally conservative” at a League of Women Voters candidate forum at Maverick Library on Saturday.
Gavito has raised more than 15 times as much money as Rossiter, according to campaign finance reports covering Jan. 1 through March 27. She has been endorsed by both the Tejano Democrats and the San Antonio Police Officers Association.
Like the other three candidates who participated in forums last week, Gavito opposes Proposition A — a policing reform measure that seeks to decriminalize abortion and marijuana, prohibit police officers from making arrests in the case of some nonviolent crimes and codify the prohibition of police choke holds and no-knock warrants.
The police union and business groups are spending big to oppose Proposition A, an effort that has already made a clear impact on the municipal election candidates.
Though Martinez responded to a Bexar County Young Democrats candidate questionnaire on March 17 saying she supported the proposal, she told residents at an Ingram Hills Neighborhood Association forum at the Forest Hills Library last Monday that she had since changed her position.
“[Young people] were able to go out and hustle and get those signatures, and I am proud of that,” Martinez said of the organizers who petitioned to get Proposition A on the ballot.
But “what it’s done is divide us,” she continued. “It truly is causing a level of stress … that I can’t even describe when I go door knock.”
That dynamic troubled Robert Livar Jr., a Sandoval supporter who oversees corporate compliance for his family’s electrical contracting business. Livar attended the neighborhood forum to assess Sandoval’s potential successors, but said afterwards that he was disappointed to hear candidates echo the rhetoric of the police union and neighborhood leaders.
“District 7 is not just these homeowners. … [It] consists of houseless folks …[and] of refugees who are stuck in apartment complexes that are run by slumlords … right around the corner from here,” said Livar. “That is also our community, and to see these politicians pander to a bunch of homeowners … was really sad.”
The Westside council district has the second highest population among the newly redrawn council districts — 153,000 residents — living in one of the smallest geographic council districts, roughly 30 square miles, according to SA2020’s estimates.
Though voter engagement is not as high as Northside districts 9 and 10, it enjoys a significantly higher voter turnout rate than the city’s lower-numbered districts.
Former District 7 Councilmen Ed Garza and Julián Castro each went on to serve as mayor, and Castro was later tapped to serve as the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary during the Obama Administration. Justin Rodriguez, who held the seat for two terms, went to the state Legislature, and now serves on Bexar County Commissioners Court.
Many expected Sandoval, a Jefferson High valedictorian with engineering degrees from MIT and Stanford and a master’s in public health from Harvard, to follow suit in 2025 when term limits would have kept her from seeking reelection and San Antonio is expected to hold its first open mayor’s race in eight years.
Instead, Sandoval resigned before the end of her term to accept a higher paying job, surprising candidates who say they’d been privately making preparations for a race in 2025.
City Council barred candidates who are running in the May election from applying for a temporary appointment to replace Sandoval. Last month they chose Rosie Castro, a civil rights leader who fought the business community for single-member council districts, to represent District 7 until the next council member takes office in June.
Castro isn’t weighing in on the District 7 race but supports Proposition A and has largely joined forces with the council’s progressive bloc.
“Neighborhood associations’ power kind of fluctuates… [but] in past times they were very important in gearing up the vote,” Castro said.
The groups typically ramp back up over a specific issue though, Castro said. And in recent years it’s been to oppose development she sees as necessary to address the housing shortage, as well as crime and safety.
Though progressive candidates were highly successful in 2021, the District 7 opening comes at a time when the business community is organizing to support candidates they hope will bring a better understanding of economic growth and development to city government.
“Marina can read a balance sheet, [she’s] a seasoned businessperson, [she] has the full faith and confidence of the job creators in San Antonio,” said Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8), a lawyer who often advocates for business interests on the council.
“I think Ana Sandoval missed some of those things,” Pelaez said. “Ana had some good ideas. … But [council members need] actual organizational experience to get ideas across the line.”
Following a father
Gavito was exposed to politics at an early age. Her father Joe Alderete became the first single-district councilman for District 7 in 1977, and both of her parents remain civically engaged, serving on a variety of boards.
Gavito’s career, however, began down a different path. At St. Mary’s University she pursued a double major in corporate financial management and management information systems. She then moved to Chicago with her twin sister, Carina, and worked for the telecom company U.S. Cellular and completed a Masters in Business Administration at DePaul University.
Returning home to San Antonio, Gavito started working in product development at Rackspace. She quickly became a leading voice in the city’s tech scene, and took a paid leave of absence from Rackspace to launch a new advocacy group for technology startups called TechBloc, at a time when local officials were trying to regulate rideshare services in San Antonio.
“At Rackspace … you had people there that were brilliant … but maybe [didn’t have] the best social skills or ability to explain things,” said former state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte reasoned of Gavito’s rapid rise in tech.
When Rackspace was acquired by a private equity firm in 2016, Gavito went to work for USAA as a business development director. While there she said she made a point to reengage in community service and joined the board of the Ella Austin Community Center on the East Side.
“I really think that was a turning point for me,” Gavito said in a recent interview. “USAA is an amazing place to work, people there are talking about skiing [and other activities outside of work] … then I would go from USAA on I-10 straight down to Ella Austin where they’re talking about carbo-loading meals on Monday and Friday [to make up for the days when] residents in the area don’t [have meals provided].”
Seeing both in the same day, Gavito said, “You’re just like, how is this San Antonio?”
The experience led Gavito to begin meeting with local leaders to gauge where she could be most effective in the political sphere. Van de Putte said she sought to recruit her to run for the state House, but Gavito wanted to prioritize her young daughters.
Instead Gavito took on volunteer roles to develop policy experience outside of the business world, first on the Bexar County Child Welfare Board, then on the board of VIA Metropolitan Transit.
“A lot of time [on these boards] the staff is the subject matter experts, and they need the board to poke holes … [and] to understand or look at things differently,” said Marcie Trevino Ripper, a former chief of staff to Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff who recruited Gavito for the Child Welfare Board and later worked with her at SA Digital Connects.
That’s precisely the type of perspective Gavito said she hopes to bring to city government.
“I’ve seen in different city decisions where they just keep throwing money at a problem and I’m like, ‘Is that shop run efficiently and effectively? What are their [key performance indexes]?” said Gavito, who pointed to the city’s Animal Care Services Department as an example.
“I think that’s a huge strength that I bring to the table, looking and asking tough questions,” Gavito said. “… I always set the stage like, ‘Hey guys, I’m not asking you these questions to be confrontational, I’m asking you so we can be better together.'”
A focus on transportation
Rossiter attended UTSA, where he ran his own campus tech support company and served in student government while studying computer science. Friends from the time say he was known for having his hand in a number of projects at once; juggling more than his share of student government committee assignments while working on a honors thesis late into the night.
Rossiter went on to work for the Southwest Research Institute, where he designed technology to support roadways and met his girlfriend, Analy Garcia, who also works in the intelligence system division.
Rossiter described his work at SwRI as both technical execution and product management for programs that try to move traffic through a corridor as quickly as possible. Like Gavito, Rossiter said he soon gravitated toward the industry’s intersection with public policy, working with state transportation departments to oversee multimillion-dollar projects aimed at making transportation safer and faster.
Because Thunderbird Hills is represented by District 6 and District 7, Rossiter said he asked Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6) for opportunities to serve on city panels related to transportation and infrastructure.
Havrda appointed Rossiter to the Brooks Development Authority board of directors and the 2022-27 Streets, Bridges, and Sidewalks Community Bond Committee.
“It’s hard to get people interested in what you do at City Hall. … It’s hard to even get people to want to tell you what’s going on,” said Cabello Havrda, who credited Rossiter with bringing a traffic issue at Oak Hill and Ingram Road to her attention and working with her office to address it.
“I think because he comes from neighborhood leadership, it’s already sort of entrenched in who he is to go out and talk to people, figure [out the problems], and then figure out the long-term solution,” she said.
Rossiter, who also owns several rental properties, resigned from his role at SwRI, the Thunderbird Hills Neighborhood Association and various city panels during his council campaign. He had raised about $4,000 for the race as of March 27 and loaned his campaign $20,000, according to his campaign finance report.
Mental health expertise
Martinez grew up in District 7, received a degree in political science from UTSA and interned for Van De Putte in her state Senate office.
From there Martinez said she worked as a parole officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which inspired her to go back to school for counseling. After completing a master’s in marriage and family counseling from St. Mary’s University, she went to work as an investigator for Child Protective Services.
She’s also served on the Bexar County Child Welfare Board and the board of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.
Martinez’s professional career has been interspersed by a handful of unsuccessful political bid, for District 2 in 2003, District 9 in 2017 and the Land Commissioner contest. She said she moved back to District 7 last year when she moved in with her elderly mother to care for her.
“Her heart’s in the right place, but … she’s always put her name in for different positions and never quite gotten there,” said Van De Putte, who said she has not kept in touch with Martinez since the internship. “I remember her being very friendly and very good with events and people.”
Martinez said her low-budget campaign for Land Commissioner defied conventional political wisdom and showed the power of identity politics.
“Last names like ours that used to not be on the ticket for executive positions, apparently they mean something now,” Martinez said of that race to the Tejano Democrats last week.
And on the heels of a pandemic that stirred a renewed focus on mental health, Martinez’s pitch for using her counseling background to address issues like crime and homelessness has been received positively on the campaign trail.
“My heart is of course going to be in mental health issues, but how we thread them into our services that we need, how do we thread them into safer communities or education?” Martinez said at the Ingram Hills forum.
Martinez loaned her campaign about $2,200 to pay for signs and cards. She has done little fundraising otherwise.
A young conservative
Just 21, Chapa is juggling his campaign and his studies while working 24 roughly hours a week as a legal assistant at Michael J Adams PC, a debt collection law firm where he’s a full-time employee during the holiday months and summer.
Chapa, the only self-described conservative in the field, says that if elected he’ll advocate for maxing out the homestead exemption, giving neighborhood associations ultimate authority over development, and pursuing partnerships with faith-based organizations to address homelessness.
“I also think we need to be enforcing Texas Penal Code 3005, which talks about criminal trespassing and property, private property,” Chapa said at the League of Women Voters forum. “This needs to be enforced so that we can stop the burden of homeless people affecting people in neighborhoods.”
In a recent interview Chapa downplayed the county GOP’s endorsement, noting that all of the District 7 candidates “tend to think similarly” on issues of crime and homelessness.
But his approach has been received positively at neighborhood association gatherings, even as residents expressed skepticism about a candidate with so little experience.
“I kind of point out to them, not that they’re wrong, but … you seem to be a little bit dissatisfied with people in the past,” Chapa said. “Maybe it is time to take a different approach and perhaps see that someone with ideas and aspirations and a fresh mind, even though they’re lacking the experience, may be a viable option.”
Nascent career aside, Chapa doesn’t miss a beat while campaigning with more seasoned opponents, who have indeed lent credibility to some of his ideas.
“Even in high school he knew a lot about what was going on [in both national and international politics],” said Annette Chapa, Jacob Chapa’s mother.
“When he decided to run [for council] he started doing a lot of research about what’s going on in the city,” she said. “He went into the [San Antonio Board of Realtors] and interviewed someone” about property taxes.
Chapa’s campaign is fueled primarily by family and friends, though he has received some campaign contributions from other conservative candidates.
Disclosure: Marina Alderete Gavito joined the board of the San Antonio Report in December 2022 and resigned her position in January 2023 to become a council candidate.
