Bexar County voters are choosing from a long list of little-known candidates to be their next district attorney — a position that’s been under increasing scrutiny from both the left and right in years.
The role oversees roughly 600 employees and has significant discretion over how crimes are charged which cases are prioritized.
As a result, national progressive groups have spent big money turning Texas’ large counties into laboratories for justice reform, while the state’s Republican leaders have made it easier to remove DAs they feel aren’t being tough enough on crime.
This year bigger-name candidates took a pass on the race to replace retiring District Attorney Joe Gonzales, who was helped into office in 2018 by liberal billionaire George Soros’ Texas Justice and Public Safety PAC, and later criticized for allowing an Austin-based justice reform group to have unusual access to his office’s work.
So far no such outside money has appeared in the race to fill Gonzales’ seat, where the best-known candidates are a former appellate court judge with no prosecutorial experience, and a longtime defense attorney known for his TikTok videos.
The winner of an eight-way Democratic primary will be the odds-on favorite to carry the blue county in November. They’ll be up against Ashley Foster, the lone Republican running, plus a potential independent candidate, who must collect signatures to qualify for the general election ballot.
Early voting for the March 3 primary starts on Feb. 17.
Watch the candidates present their qualifications and ideas for the office at the San Antonio Report’s Feb. 3 debate, or get smart quick with our roundup below.
Candidates are listed in the order they’ll appear on the Democratic primary ballot.
Jane Davis
Jane Davis, 78, is the chief of the juvenile section of the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office, and has the longest experience as a prosecutor. She’s worked in all 15 sections of the DA’s office, and served under seven district attorneys.
At a time when the office as a whole is struggling from a lack of prosecutors, Davis said people want to work in her section because “it’s productive, it is fun, and the one at the top needs to make it that way.”
Davis said she hadn’t planned to run for DA, but was underwhelmed by the other candidates who filed. Now she’s loaned her campaign $100,000, making her one of the biggest spenders in the race.
Before working at the DA’s office, she was a public school teacher, a professional mediator, and she once interned at the U.S. Attorney’s office.
“I have the experience, I have the maturity and I have the temperament to lead this office,” she said at the San Antonio Report’s debate. “I’m a commissioned pastor, so I understand mercy, and I’m also a rancher and a beekeeper, so I understand being tough.”
Meli Carrión Powers
Angelica “Meli” Carrión Powers, 50, serves as chief of the District Attorney’s Family Violence Division. She previously worked as an assistant attorney for the City of San Antonio and as a regional attorney for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
Opponents like to point out that Powers currently holds one of the biggest leadership roles in an office that’s been criticized for case backlogs and inadequate staffing.
But Powers says that her department has been a model of finding creative solutions to problems outside of their control — like using a high-risk intake program to pay prosecutors more money — and eliminating a case backlog they inherited in 2019.
“The hard work that we have done over the past seven years is important, because leadership in this office is key,” she said at Tuesday’s debate. “… If you compare Bexar County to the 10 largest counties in Texas … We have the fourth-best dismissal rate, where many of our neighboring friends are far, far, far above us and dismissing many, many more [family violence] cases.”
Shannon Locke
Shannon Locke, 52, worked at the DA’s office in the early 2000s and went on to open two law firms focused on criminal defense.
He’s billed himself as a high-energy leader with the experience needed to train young prosecutors and turn around a “toxic” culture at the DA’s office.
“The district attorney’s office should be looked at as a training hospital … You’re not getting paid as well as you should … but you’re getting more experience,” he said at the Democratic Party’s forum in January. “Right now, the district attorney’s office has such a low conviction rate when they go to trial that they’re not getting good experience. They’re only learning how to lose.”
He brings some of the most experience, having tried more than 200 jury trials.
But he’s come under fire from opponents who say his promises to investigate ICE officers are misleading the public to gain advantage in a Democratic primary, where Locke has picked up endorsements from organized labor and other progressive groups.
He reiterated the idea nearly every time he had the microphone in Tuesday’s debate, saying Bexar County should be doing everything it can to fight back against unlawful immigration enforcement tactics — even as the very progressive incumbent has called his ideas a “concerning” misinterpretation of the role.
“Eleven district attorneys across this country have joined me in calling for local investigations into ICE agents when they commit crimes while conducting their duties — two of those district attorneys are in Texas,” Locke said at Tuesday’s debate. “We can do this, but we’re choosing not to.”
Veronica Legarreta
Veronica Legarreta, 51, started as a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s office, and is now a criminal defense attorney with her own firm, specializing in DWIs. She’s also a part-time magistrate judge for the City of San Antonio.
Through those roles, she says she’s been exposed to the many problems plaguing the DA’s office that she’s now running to lead.
“I represent individuals at the lowest times in their lives. I have seen cases that have not been well balanced. I have seen people wrongfully accused,” Legarreta said at a January forum hosted by the Bexar County Democratic Party. “We have to change our system now.”
Outside of that work, Legarreta chairs the Hispanic Women’s Network of Texas and serves as the chair-elect for the Hispanic Lawyers Section of the State Bar of Texas, where she says she’s been on the frontlines of trying to diversify Bexar County’s courtrooms.
Bexar County has never had a Latina for its District Attorney, and she’s among several candidates running this year who could be the first.
“I have been discriminated against in court by white men telling me, ‘Mija, what are you doing here?'” she said at the January forum. “I’m fighting for my client. That’s what I’m doing, and that’s what I’m going to do for Bexar County.”
Luz Elena Chapa
Luz Elena Chapa, 52, was elected twice as a justice on the 32-county Fourth Court of Appeals, giving her the most political experience in the race. But her opponents point out she’d be an unusual choice for DA, having never served as a lead prosecutor before.
Chapa brushed off that criticism at Tuesday’s debate, saying that as an appellate judge she’s “graded all of their papers,” and knows how to “work a case from the ground up.”
She’s framed her lack of experience in the DA’s office as a uniquely fresh perspective, and won over allies in law enforcement by lobbing some of the toughest criticisms of the office’s current administration.
“We do have a big issue of repeat offenders, especially habitual repeat offenders … who have actually been let go and then they re-offend,” she said Tuesday. “We haven’t been tough on crime in our community. We need to make serious changes to improve public safety.”
Chapa worked as a visiting judge after losing her seat on the Fourth Court of Appeals in 2024, when Republicans spent big money to wipe out Democratic appellate judges across the state.
She resigned that role to run for DA, loaned her campaign $100,000 to start, and has since raised about $100,000 more, putting her at the top of the fundraising charts.
At debates she’s leaned on a compelling personal narrative, recalling how she spent time in courtrooms as a child while her immigrant mother fought an alcoholic father for custody. But she’s struggled to present a clear vision for how she’d get up to speed on the role, something she acknowledged in the face of criticism from other candidates on Tuesday night.
“I admit, I’m not the world’s best debater, but I can certainly weather political attacks pretty well,” she said at the San Antonio Report’s debate. “More importantly, I’m the only candidate who can bring real change to the DA’s office, because I’m the only one on this stage who hasn’t been a part of the problems and the dysfunction.”
Meredith Chacon
Meredith Chacon, 51, grew up dreaming of being the District Attorney, and spent most of her career there before Gonzales was elected in 2018.
She handled cases involving domestic violence and human trafficking, and eventually oversaw the division handling child protection cases, where she says she gained a reputation as an innovative prosecutor.
“I have only ever wanted this job, I have felt called to it since I was very young,” she said at the Democratic Party’s debate in January. “I want to protect victims and I have always done that … even as a child. I don’t suffer bullies.”
But Chacon found herself at odds with the new progressive DA, and left to go into private practice before he took office. She later tried to run against Gonzales in 2022, but didn’t advance from the GOP primary.
“I am a woman of principle, and I did not want to work for the current administration,” she said of that decision. “I saw what problems were coming when you put political advantage and political gain in front of what is best for victims.”
Chacon said she’s still a sounding board for both prosecutors and law enforcement officers, who frequently call seeking her help on cases.
She’s also trained prosecutors across the state with the Texas District & County Attorneys Association, as well as victim advocates with the children’s advocacy center — experience she said has earned her allies among those she’d be managing at the DA’s office.
“I had a prosecutor approach me the morning I filed, and he said, ‘I was going to turn in my notice, but I heard you filed, and I’m hanging on because I’m hoping you’re going to win,'” Chacon told the crowd Tuesday night. “I know that they want me, I know that they respect me. If you want someone to teach you how to go into battle, you need someone who’s been in the battle themselves.”
James “Jim” Bethke
Jim Bethke, 52, is a U.S. Army veteran and longtime executive director of the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, a state agency that oversees public defense for people who can’t afford it.
Since leaving that role in 2017, he’s traveled the state setting up public defense programs in Lubbock and Harris County, and Judge Ron Rangel recruited him to run the Bexar County’s Managed Assigned Counsel Office in 2021.
“I am the only candidate with experience and qualifications to lead this district attorney’s office into the 21st century,” Bethke said at Tuesday’s debate. “For more than 30 years I have built from scratch three major justice programs … I know what works. I know what doesn’t. I know how to fix it.”
Though new to San Antonio, Bethke picked up the endorsement of the Texas Organizing Project, a deep-pocketed bail reform group that’s formidable in Democratic primaries, but has come under criticism after posting bond for a man who went on to kill six people in Bexar County in 2023.
At the January forum, Bethke said he caught the attention of progressive groups because his life’s work has been about providing “equal justice for all,” something he’s even advised on at the The Hague, a court in the Netherlands that handles international war crimes.
While that may not be the same mission as a district attorney, he continued, the DA’s office lacks a strategic vision, and needs to get better at advocating for itself in front of the lawmakers holding the purse strings.
“If you’re going to run a major organization or major county, there’s certain principles that you’ve got to apply,” he said. “What separates me from the other candidates … [I’m] somebody that’s got both serious local [and] serious state-level legislative experience.”
Oscar Salinas
Oscar Salinas, 38, is a Brownsville native who has been a prosecutor in Bexar County for more than a decade, most recently working in the Family Violence Division.
“I always wanted to be an attorney because my grandmother used to watch Matlock and Perry Mason,” he said at the Democratic Party’s debate in January. “I was the first one in my family to go to college, so I didn’t think it was a possibility, but somewhere along the way, I gained that confidence.”
Though the youngest of the candidates, Salinas stressed his experience putting away serious criminals.
“I’ve prosecuted a man who bragged about killing a child and telling me that I’d never find her body,” he said at Tuesday’s debate. “Now he’s doing 75 years for a different case.”
Compared to candidates who worked at the DA’s office many years ago, Salinas said he’s closer to the ground on the issues challenging today’s prosecutors, who get paid less than their counterparts in rural counties, and must sift through far more digital evidence than prosecutors did several decades ago.
“If you want someone that’s going to tell you what you want to hear, then don’t vote for me,” he said at Tuesday’s debate. “But if you want someone who’s going to give you practical solutions and have an open dialogue about what our limitations are, what we can actually do, then I’m that person.”
