Leticia Van de Putte
Former state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte is set to face San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor in a runoff for the city’s top job.
With 95 percent of all precincts reporting late Saturday, Van de Putte led Taylor 31 percent to 28 percent, according to unofficial returns. Former state Rep. Mike Villarreal trailed in third at 26 percent, and former Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson in fourth at 10 percent.
With 14 declared candidates — four considered runoff prospects — the chance of an outright victory seemed slim Saturday. The runoff is scheduled for June 13, with early voting taking place from June 1-9.
“Our work’s not over, because what this means is we’re doing to work even harder to convince those who may not have cast a ballot to trust Leticia, to believe in her vision in this city,” Van de Putte said shortly after 10 p.m., surrounded by her family as confetti lingered in the air at her campaign headquarters on San Antonio’s West Side.
As results came in, Taylor told supporters at her election night party she was ready for a runoff.
“We can’t rest on our laurels because we’ve got some work to do to get to June 13,” she said, shortly after Adkisson and Villarreal conceded.
The four major candidates were seen as Democrats, though the election was nonpartisan.
That much is true, though as the Rivard Report notes, Taylor was generally the preferred candidate for Republican voters. It’ll be interesting to see how the runoff plays out, as there was no love lost between Van de Putte and Villarreal in the first round. She’s going to need Democrats to turn out to win, and if Villarreal supporters carry a grudge, that could get dicey. I’m no expert on San Antonio’s politics, so take that with some salt. Runoffs are tricky things, and anything can happen.
That was the marquee race, but I was at least as interested in Pasadena and Fort Bend ISD. Here are the unofficial results from Pasadena:
DISTRICT A — Ornaldo Ybarra leads Keith Nielsen 284-45;
DISTRICT B — Celestino Perez leads Bruce Leamon 118-107;
DISTRICT C — Sammy Casados leads Emilio Carmona 108-81;
DISTRICT D — Cody Ray Wheeler (182) leads J.E. “Bear” Hebert (77) and Pat Riley (28);
DISTRICT E — Cary Bass leads Larry Peacock 144-96;
DISTRICT F — Jeff Wagner 219 (unopposed)
DISTRICT G At Large — Pat Van Houte leads Steve Cote 859-599;
DISTRICT H At Large — Oscar Del Toro leads Darrell Morrison 755-728.
If you look at the comment on that Pasadena post, you’ll see that the folks who opposed Mayor Johnny Isbell and his power grabbing did pretty well. I wish I could find a list of candidates endorsed by the Texas Organizing Project to compare to this, but I can’t. Still, it looks good. And finally, as far as FBISD goes, I’m glad to see that Addie Heyliger won her race, which will help make that board a little more diverse and a little more reflective of the community. Congrats to her and to all of yesterday’s winners.
Final unofficial results:
http://www.ci.pasadena.tx.us/default.aspx?name=election2015
I was unaware of this suggesting a Texas Democratic Farm Team, which should also be the TOP candidates, until I went looking as they counted votes.
http://stylemagazine.com/news/2015/apr/29/meet-team-texas-democratic-party/
Mayor Isbell has to step down in two years. Steve Cote and Darrell Morrison both wanted to succeed him. With Cote being defeated by Pat Van Houte and Pat being term limited at council she might be persuaded to run for mayor despite her dislike of fund raising and collecting large donations from individuals.
Congratulations to Pat Van Houte who won mainly through blockwalking a city of 152,000. Congratulations to the two out of three candidates who beat the $66,000 in negative advertisements that Mayor Isbell threw at them from his campaign chest funded by city contractor money. Congratulations to all the volunteers and both winning and losing candidates who worked hard and proved that money isn’t the most important thing in elections.
https://www.facebook.com/EasterLemming/posts/642968222513510:0