As several San Antonio mayoral candidates’ large fundraising hauls helped them pull away from the pack this month, some of the candidates who’ve been left behind held a Hail Mary press conference on Thursday to decry the influence “dark money” is having on the race.

Out of the 27 candidates running this year, it appears only one, Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8), is receiving help from a group that legally doesn’t have to disclose its donors.

Oddly, Thursday’s press conference outside City Hall barely mentioned Pelaez, and instead focused on three other top fundraisers: Former Air Force Under Secretary Gina Ortiz Jones, former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos and tech entrepreneur Beto Altamirano.

All three of those candidates have political action committees spending on their behalf that listed where the money came from on the groups’ campaign finance reports — though two of them, helping Jones and Altamirano, reported large sums of money funneled through other entities.

Pablos’ supporting PAC has ties to state GOP leaders, Jones is supported by a PAC aligned with national Democrats, while Altamirano’s PAC and campaign have both been buoyed by business interests.

“As a group, we wanted to make voters aware that three candidates in particular in this race are supported by private special interest money from Washington [D.C.], from Austin, from California,” said Councilman John Courage (D9), who was joined by financial consultant Mauricio “Mau” Sanchez, Jade McCullough, who owns a child care center and Clayton Perry, a former District 10 councilman.

Of those, only Perry has spent significant money on the race, in part because of a $100,000 personal loan he made to his campaign earlier this year.

“That money is pouring into the mayoral races because those interests want to control the mayor of San Antonio and the city of San Antonio,” said Courage, whose campaign reported spending just $5,500 in the past month. “We think that is unacceptable.”

Early voting concluded Tuesday, meaning the candidates have dwindling hours to make their point to voters before Saturday’s election. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on election day.

“We are fighting hard to get our names out there, and it is not becoming a fair game,” said McCullough, whose campaign has raised so little money the city told her not to bother filing a campaign finance report.

Blame to go around

San Antonio’s mayoral race has indeed experienced an influx of outside spending in recent weeks, but as Thursday’s press conference highlighted, there are competing narratives about why.

The city caps individual contributions at $1,000 for mayoral candidates — something some political strategists say has led to the rise in PAC spending and self-funders — both of which are allowed to contribute unlimited funds without breaking any rules.

Asked by reporters if they were opposed to spending that’s allowed within the city’s campaign finance rules, Courage said yes, because even the PACs that filed fundraising reports aren’t being clear who their individual donors are.

“It’s all dark money,” said Courage, who last year supported making the council’s own donor disclosures less frequent ahead of the high-profile mayoral race. “I don’t see any list being published … about who gave to anybody. So to the general public, it’s unknown.”

But Sanchez quickly jumped in to cast blame on the council members — including those standing by him at the press conference — who he said haven’t done anything to tighten the city’s rules.

Just last year, he noted, the council even turned down an opportunity to add teeth to the Ethics Review Board tasked with enforcing campaign finance rules, as part of the City Charter Review.

“When you look at what changes could have been implemented in the City of San Antonio for the past, we’ll say 20 years, things could have been done to revitalize the Ethics Review Board and the actions [it] could take when it comes to these type of situations,” Sanchez said. “Now that all this money is coming in, we should not be surprised.”

A toothless ethics process

This year the Ethics Review Board has seen an influx of complaints involving campaign activity, including one alleging that some of Altamirano’s contributions were unlawfully being funneled through corporate entities with untraceable donors.

While the city has hired an outside attorney to look into that complaint, as well as ones made against candidates in District 1 and District 8, it’s unlikely any of them will go before the full board before the May 3 election.

The District 8 complaint was dismissed, but part of the District 1 complaint was forwarded to the board for consideration at a date that has yet to be determined.

As of last week, no determination had been made about whether the complaint made against Altamirano would be forwarded to the full board.

Even if the candidates are found in violation of the city’s ethics policies, the board’s toughest punishment options include letters of condemnation and mandatory ethics training.

Outsider candidates

At Thursday’s press conference, Courage acknowledged that most of the spending he was upset about is perfectly allowable under the city’s current campaign finance laws — though he agreed with Sanchez they were worth revisiting in the future.

But in a city that’s historically shown preference for candidates with council experience — San Antonio has elected just one mayor without it in 70 years — the dominance of three City Hall outsiders in this race has been a confounding problem to the five past and present council members who have largely been overshadowed.

Courage and Perry each stressed that their bigger concern was about money coming in from outside of the city, which they said could potentially make the next mayor beholden to special interests.

“What is this money coming to San Antonio for? What influences are they going to be doing?” Perry said of the groups backing those three candidates. “I call these three individuals carpet-baggers, that are being paid for, that are trying to parachute in.”

Pablos responded to the press conference Thursday afternoon, calling Perry and Courage’s comments sour grapes.

“I suppose it’s only natural that candidates who haven’t raised any money and had to dip into their retirement accounts would feel threatened by a surging campaign like ours,” Pablos said in a statement. “Mr. Courage and Mr. Perry each had their chance to lead and failed to deliver real results for San Antonio.”