Campaign finance reports filed last week offer the first look at money raised for a tough Bexar County Judge primary between two popular, well-known Democrats, plus a host other state and county races on the March 3 primary ballot — and the final totals on the Spurs’ massive investment in getting Props A and B over the line.
Early voting for the Republican and Democratic primaries starts Feb. 17.
With the exception of the U.S. Senate race, where Democrats Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico have been holding their own, Republican statewide candidates were crushing their little-known Democratic counterparts in fundraising on the most recent reports, which cover money raised between July 1 and Dec. 31.
Congressional candidates are on a different filing schedule, and will report their hauls for the final months of 2025 at the end of January.
Here are the six biggest takeaways from the semi-annual campaign finance reports, which trickled in slowly this week due to an antiquated county reporting system.
1. A few big donors are fueling the Bexar County Judge race
In the first campaign reports filed since former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg launched his Democratic primary challenge to incumbent Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, Nirenberg reported raising $360,000, plus a $100,000 loan from local philanthropist Harvey Najim, leaving him with about $355,000 on hand as of Dec. 31.
Sakai raised about $254,000 during that same span and ended the year with $563,000 on hand. Very little had been spent by either candidate between July 1 and Dec. 31.
Nirenberg termed out as mayor last year, where individual campaign contributions are limited to $1,000 per campaign cycle.
Sakai, whose four-year term started in 2023, has had more time to collect checks without an individual contribution limit, but Nirenberg was able to make up ground quickly thanks to the help of a few large donors, including Najim and his old campaign hand Christian Archer.
2. So far, personal money — not national — fuels DA candidates
Money is one of the few ways for candidates to stand out in the crowded race to replace retiring District Attorney Joe Gonzales (D), where most big-name candidates who considered running ultimately decided against it.
So far there’s no sign of the national progressive money that rocked the 2018 race, helping Gonzales topple then-District Attorney Nico LaHood in the Democratic primary.
Instead, the largest donors to this year’s race include law firms that go up against the office’s prosecutors in court, as well as the candidates themselves, who’ve put significant personal resources into their campaigns.
In the Democratic primary:
- Former Fourth Court of Appeals Justice Luz Elena Chapa (D) raised $157,000, spent $14,000 and reported $242,000 on hand. She loaned her campaign $100,000 and received $100,000 from Chapa Law Group. Chapa hired San Antonio political strategist Kelton Morgan of CSG Strategies to run her campaign.
- Jane Davis, chief of the Juvenile Section of the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office, joined the race just before the filing deadline and loaned her campaign $107,000. She’s raised very little otherwise, but is paying local political strategist Laura Barberena of Viva Politics to run her campaign.
- Angelica “Meli” Carrión Powers, who oversees the Family Violence Division at the District Attorney’s Office, raised $25,000 and reported $22,000 on hand. She’s paying local political strategist Christian Anderson to run her campaign.
- Shannon Locke, a defense attorney, raised $17,000, spent $15,000 and reported $38,000 on hand. He loaned his campaign $21,000.
- Oscar Salinas, a prosecutor in the DA’s office, raised $15,000 and spent $8,600. He didn’t report his cash on hand, but loaned his campaign $4,500.
- Meredith Chacon, a defense attorney, reported raising $20,000, including $10,000 worth of in-kind political consulting from Christopher Forbrich.
- Veronica Legarreta, a defense attorney, reported spending $1,250. She did not detail her fundraising or report her cash on hand.
- James Bethke, executive director of the Managed Assigned Counsel Office, reported no money raised or spent. He picked up an endorsement from the progressive Texas Organizing Project, however, which had about $500,000 in its PAC’s account as of Dec. 31.
Read about all of the Bexar County races on the March 3 primary ballot here.
3. Deep-pocketed legal reform group takes on GOP incumbents
Texas House District 121: Headed into his first reelection race, state Rep. Marc LaHood (R-San Antonio) faces an expensive GOP primary challenge, thanks to disagreements with a deep-pocked business group, which publicly threatened to spend big against him after he helped shut down a pair of their priority legal reform bills.
That group, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, is one of the most prolific spenders for Republican causes, and its PAC is boosting LaHood’s challenger, Terrell Hills business consultant David McArthur, who raised $573,000 between July 1 and Dec. 31.
About $350,000 of McArthur’s haul came from TLR, which went up on TV months ago with ads attacking LaHood and has funded some polling and other campaign work for his challenger.
Meanwhile, LaHood raised even bigger money from trial lawyers and medical groups who benefitted from his actions at the end of the session, and reported spending close to $1 million between July 1 and Dec. 31. He was sitting on about $128,000 as of Dec. 31.
Going up against an incumbent is a risky gambit for outside groups, and the most recent campaign finance reports indicate that Texans for Lawsuit Reform has also been spending against state Rep. Mark Dorazio (R-San Antonio), as well as promoting a candidate in the open race to replace state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio).
“TLR works with job creators across the state to support candidates who believe in fair courts,” the group’s new CEO Ryan Patrick said in a statement Tuesday. “These candidates for public office will not be swayed by billboard lawyers who want the same one-sided benefits they get in California, Illinois, and New York courts.”
Read about all the candidates for the Texas Legislature running in the March 3 primaries.
Texas House District 118: In a three-way Republican primary the race to replace state Rep. John Lujan (R-San Antonio), personal injury attorney Desi Martinez leads the cash race and is sharing a Southside campaign office with Lujan.
Martinez loaned his campaign $250,000 and reported $322,000 in the bank as of Dec. 31.
But his biggest competition comes from Jorge Borrego, who worked on education issues at a conservative think tank and received $50,000 from TLR in December — part of the group’s efforts to stop trial attorneys from adding any more allies within the Republican conference.
Borrego has allies in the national school choice movement also coming to his aid, thanks to his involvement in creating the state’s first ever school voucher program last session. He hauled $78,000 from July 1 to Dec. 31, while a third Republican in that race, Joseph Shellhart, didn’t report any money raised.
The Democrat in the race, Kristian Carranza, doesn’t face a primary. She was a prolific fundraiser in 2024 and again has the backing of a deep-pocketed national group aligned with gun safety activist David Hogg. She reported $63,000 raised between July 1 and Dec. 31.
Texas House District 122: Perhaps most surprising, however, is TLR’s involvement in an uphill race against Republican state Rep. Mark Dorzaio (R-San Antonio).
Dorazio remains popular with the GOP base after taking over moderate Rep. Lyle Larson’s old seat in 2022.
Yet challenger Willie Ng, who owns a security company, got a $50,000 check from TLR, plus some in-kind polling. Ng reported about $80,000 on hand, including a $20,000 personal loan.
Dorazio reported $400,000 on hand as of Dec. 31, and in the past has been able to self-fund.
4. Frontrunners emerge for open Texas House District 125
As state Rep. Ray Lopez (D-San Antonio) retires from a deep blue Westside seat, two candidates have raised the most in a four-way Democratic primary to replace him.
Lopez’s chief of staff Donovon Rodriguez raised $34,000 in first reports since Lopez announced plans to retire, boosted by a $13,000 contribution from Lopez’s old campaign account.
Meanwhile SAISD teachers’ union leader Adrian Reyna, whose father represented the seat in the early 2000s, has the backing of some trial lawyers, plus deep-pocketed allies in organized labor. Reyna brought in $51,000 between July 1 and Dec. 31, including $10,000 checks from both the Texas American Federation of Teachers and the San Antonio Alliance.
Former Bexar County Constable Michelle Barrientes Vela brought in $14,000 for the race. Carlos Antonio Raymond, a realtor who ran for City Council in 2025 and previously left the Democratic Party to run for the Texas House as a Republican, filed a report with no money raised or spent.
5. Facing primaries, Cortez and Campos stockpile money
State Reps. Liz Campos (D-San Antonio) and Phil Cortez (D-San Antonio) each drew primary challengers this year, but leveraged the power of incumbency to raise big money for their reelection races.
Cortez raised about $142,000 in the second half of 2025, to challenger Robert Mihara‘s $27,000 haul in that span. Cortez’s biggest contributions came from health care groups and other PACs.
Campos brought in $145,000, with many of her biggest contributions coming from law firms. Her Democratic primary challenger Ryan Ayala, an attorney, raised $18,000 and loaned his campaign close to $50,000.
Both Cortez and Campos picked up $10,000 checks from Texans for Lawsuit Reform.
6. Spurs PAC hauled $9M+ for Props A and B
The most recent round of campaign finance reports also provided the most complete look at spending to sway voters ahead of the Nov. 4 vote on county funding for a new downtown Spurs arena.
A PAC aligned with the San Antonio Spurs collected a total of $9.2 million between August and November, with $2.3 million of that coming in just days before the vote. Most of the money came from the San Antonio Spurs LLC, but major developers, including Guido Construction Co. and Sundt Companies, also kicked in big checks.
The final report indicated that $2.3 million went toward canvassing, political consulting, town halls and rallies in the final stretch of the campaign. Nearly all of San Antonio’s best-known political consultants were paid to work for the pro-Spurs PAC at one point or another, including MAP Strategies and Viva Politics, which are now working on Sakai and Nirenberg’s county judge campaigns, respectively.
In the final weeks before the vote, pubic polling had shown Prop B’s support underwater. But 52% of voters approved it, clearing the biggest hurdles for a landscape-changing project that’s now in the hands of city leaders to help execute.
Opponents of Prop B had their own PAC, aligned with the community organizing group COPS/Metro Alliance. That PAC, called Defending Public Money for Public Good, spent a total of roughly $270,000 — or about 3% of what the Spurs’ Winning Together PAC spent.
Its final report showed the group collecting about $50,000 from a sister organization in Austin.
COPS/Metro Alliance organizer Josephine López Paul said the groups’ campaign against Prop B campaign drew interest from chapters across the state and country because so many other cities are in the process of developing so-called sports and entertainment districts.
Like the sports franchises, the community groups learn from one another, and look at agreements in other cities for precedent to help shape their own negotiations, she explained.
“Our sister organizations have been contributing to our PAC in solidarity because we’re fighting their fight too,” López Paul said.
Other notable takeaways
Judicial: In the Fourth Court of Appeals chief justice race, District Court Judge Antonia Arteaga and Justice Velia Meza (Place 2) are competing for the Democratic nomination. Arteaga, who has only run in Bexar County and is now campaigning to represent a 32-county political subdivision, hauled $138,000. Meza, who was elected to the court in 2024, raised about $22,000 in that span.
The winner will go up against Republican Bert Richardson, who has been elected to a statewide bench twice. He was headed for retirement when Republicans recruited him for this race, and reported just $11,000 on hand, but outside groups pitched in big to help Republican candidates in appellate court races last cycle.
City Hall: San Antonio City Council candidates won’t be on the ballot until November of 2029, having moved from two-year terms to four-year terms, and more recently pushing their May municipal elections to November.
Their semi-annual reports were also due this month, however, and several candidates viewed as potential 2029 mayoral contenders posted big hauls. Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), who has sparred with Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones over the past six months, brought in $43,000 and spent some money on political consulting. Councilman Marc Whyte (D10) brought in about $37,000.
Both Alderete Gavito and Whyte could use that money for a reelection campaign in 2029, but they’d be running for an abbreviated, two-year term, because they were first elected in 2023 and can’t exceed the eight-year eligibility cap.
Jones raised $53,000 and reported about $43,000 on hand. Most of hers are still small-dollar contributions from Democratic donors across the country, but she did hold a September fundraiser at the members-only Club Giraud, hosted by some folks who supported her opponent, former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos, in the June runoff.
