5/6 Primary Preview
Brownsville
Mayor
Erasmo Castro vs. Jessica Tetreau vs. John Cowen vs. Jennifer Stanton
Incumbent Trey Mendez is retiring rather than seeking a second term. Running to succeed him are Republican Erasmo Castro, a school board trustee who recently resigned after being convicted of a DWI; Jessica Tetreau, a City Commissioner who at this point may as well be a single-issue, pro-SpaceX politician…and who has been endorsed by the Texas Democratic Party; City Commissioner John Cowen, a bog-standard Republican; and Jennifer Stanton, who’s kind of an enigma, but at least not trying to sell the city to Elon Musk?
Dallas
City Council District 1 (Near Southwest)
Chad West (i) vs. Mariana Griggs vs. Albert Mata
Personal injury attorney Chad West is a moderate and ally of Mayor Eric Johnson, though thankfully not a total devotee, just 90% of one. The name of one of his opponents, Mariana Griggs, might be familiar to those familiar with Dallas politics. Specifically her surname, Griggs, which is no coincidence. She is, in fact, the ex-wife of ex-Dallas City Councilmember, mayoral candidate, and progressive standard-bearer Scott Griggs. But someone is working to prop up a challenger to West that isn’t her, but tech consultant Albert Mata. Round after round of mailers have shown up in voters’ mailboxes promoting him and attacking West for, among other things, taking donations from Harlan Crow, the GOP billionaire who appears to be funding Clarence Thomas’s entire lifestyle. The backers are anonymous, and Mata denies having anything to do with them. Thanks to that outside money (and Griggs’s poor fundraising), Mata is the more likely candidate for the runoff against West if there is one, but West, who is merely a business-friendly candidate instead of overtly conservative, will be hard to beat.
City Council District 2 (nonsense district straddling the city east-west)
Jesse Moreno (i) vs. Sukhbir Kaur
Jesse Moreno was progressives’ pick for this district two years ago, when Mayor Eric Johnson was going to war trying to elect a pliant centrist majority to the city council. Now he’s everyone’s pick, from local Democratic clubs and labor unions to police unions and realtors, which might have something to do with Sukhbir Kaur’s campaign consisting of a frequently all-caps pro-cop Facebook page and little else.
City Council District 3 (Far Southwest)
John Sims vs. Joe Tave vs. Zarin Gracey vs. August Doyle vs. Denise Benavides
Local pastor and former city official Zarin Gracey is the clear favorite here somewhat by default. Denise Benavides is a community activist running a shoestring campaign against short-term rentals, August Doyle is a community activist running a shoestring campaign without a clear focus, and John Sims is a Dallas GOP-endorsed phantom candidate. Joe Tave has a resumé of civic involvement and the money to actually run a modest campaign, but Gracey has a boatload of cash from a very interesting source: the Crow family, currently in the news for patriarch Harlan’s practice of brazenly bribing Clarence Thomas. Harlan himself gave $1,000 on April 24, and on the same date, so did seven other members of the Crow family, each giving the same $1,000. More than half a dozen employees or spouses of employees of the Crow family also donated on that same date, though most opted for a more modest $150 contribution. District 3 has a host of options ranging from confusing to nightmarish, and the likeliest winner is bought and paid for by a billionaire collector of Nazi memorabilia.
City Council District 4 (South Central)
Carolyn King Arnold (i) vs. Jamie Smith
Carolyn King Arnold survived an attempt by Eric Johnson and the city’s conservative elements to oust her two years ago; the Dallas Police Association is back for another bite at the apple, backing accountant Jamie Smith over the incumbent.
City Council District 5 (Far Southeast, Pleasant Grove)
Jaime Resendez (i) vs. Terry Perkins vs. Yolanda Faye Williams
Jaime Resendez also survived a Johnson-backed challenge from the right two years ago, motivated by his vote to trim a little bit from the police department’s bloated overtime fund. He’s even got the same challenger Johnson and friends supported last time, back for another try. Yolanda Faye Williams is a perennial candidate at this point; 2021 was her second campaign against Resendez, and she did worse than in her initial 2019 run. Pastor and community activist Terry Perkins also ran against Resendez in 2021, actually outpacing Williams to take second place. This district was drawn to elect a Latino, and Resendez is now the only Latino on the ballot for the first time in his city council career—which bodes well for him, because he won without a runoff in 2019 and 2021 even with another Latino candidate, Ruth Torres, on the ballot.
City Council District 6 (West and Northwest Dallas)
Omar Narvaez (i) vs. Tony Carrillo vs. Sidney Robles-Martinez vs. Monica R. Alonzo
Please, Dallas, we’re begging you. Find some new candidates. Omar Narvaez has defeated perennial candidate Tony Carrillo before, in three different elections: 2017, 2019, and 2021. He also defeated former District 6 Councilor Monica Alonzo in those same three elections, unseating her from office in 2017 and holding the seat with ease in subsequent elections. Alonzo is running with the support of the Dallas Police Association, but she doesn’t have a total lock on the right lane; Democratic precinct chair Sidney Robles-Martinez has the Dallas County GOP in his corner (they’ve recommended a vote for him or Carrillo.) Narvaez is one of the more progressive and less Johnson-friendly members of the council, so it’s not hard to see why the right is so persistent in challenging him.
City Council District 7 (Near Southeast)
Adam Bazaldua (i) vs. Tracy Dotie Hill vs. Marvin E. Crenshaw vs. Okema Thomas
Adam Bazaldua is another councilor who can reliably be found on the progressive side of most council disagreements. This is the first election in which he’s not facing a current or former councilor, and the police union didn’t even bother endorsing any one of his opponents despite their dislike of Bazaldua. Bazaldua was forced into a runoff two years ago by former councilman Kevin Felder, and Eric Johnson backed another challenger in that race, but nobody of that caliber is running this time.
City Council District 8 (South Dallas)
Tennell Atkins (i) vs. Subrina Lynn Brenham vs. Davante "Shawt" Peters
We’ve already run this race, basically. Both Brenham and Peters ran against Atkins in 2021, and he won with 74% of the vote. This year they both admit to being longshots again. Neither challenger really has an ideological angle either. This just isn’t an interesting race.
City Council District 9 (East Dallas)
Paula Blackmon (i) vs. Kendra Denise Madison
You’d think local races would bring more variety into campaigns. So many local characters, kooky ideas, and hyper-specific divides. In practice, many big cities have one or two big issues at the forefront of Council fights, and basically every candidate can be laid out across those one or two dimensions. Anyway, Kendra Denise Madison wants to hire more cops and get rid of the homeless, while incumbent Paula Blackmon doesn’t. Madison is on the lightweight side as far as challengers go, even saying she’s the only person involved in her campaign, which generally doesn’t work out well in a district this large.
City Council District 10 (Northeast/Lake Highlands)
Kathy Stewart vs. Brian Hasenbauer vs. Sirrano Keith Baldeo vs. Chris Carter
Welcome to a district that’s still upholding Dallas’s old image as a conservative bastion—despite voting 62-36 for Biden in 2020. The only candidate here who isn’t an open conservative is Brian Hasenbauer, who wouldn’t be mistaken for a progressive but is not recommended by the Dallas GOP, like Confederate monument enthusiast Chris Carter and city official Kathy Stewart, and he’s not obsessed with banning drag shows like “independent Christian conservative” Sirrano Keith Baldeo. Outgoing Councilor Adam McGough and the Dallas Morning News are also backing Stewart, and if we had to guess, she’s the candidate to beat here.
City Council District 11 (Mid-North Dallas)
Jaynie Schultz (i) vs. Candace Evans
Jaynie Schultz won a symbolically loaded race in 2021 that focused far more on the role of policing in Dallas than on any other issue, and that was only decided by an 8% margin against Barry Wenick, a fellow member of her synagogue who ran as the cop candidate, while she supported policing reforms. We can’t exactly say her competition this year is going to be as strong. There are so many right-wing real estate candidates this year, but Candace Evans might take the cake, as the proprietor of candysdirt.com, “an award-winning real estate news site for the truly real-estate obsessed in Dallas and North Texas”. The backing of police unions, and Congressmember Michael Burgess (who represents the Dallas suburbs, not any of this district) prevent her from being a total joke, but she’s running too much as a Republican to get anywhere.
City Council District 13 (Near-North Dallas)
Gay Donnell Willis (i) vs. Priscilla Shacklett
Gay Donnell Willis is another fine but unspectacular incumbent being challenged by a right wing nut, but unlike in some other districts, realtor and developer Priscilla Shacklett wasn’t able to solicit much support from normally conservative sources. Even the cop unions are backing Willis.
City Council District 14 (Downtown Dallas)
Paul E. Ridley (i) vs. Joseph F. Miller vs. Amanda Schulz
Paul Ridley defeated incumbent David Blewett in 2021, in a campaign that saw the incumbent Democrat desperately scrambling for conservative voters, while Ridley, badly outspent, stuck to progressive messaging, and won by 21%. More conservative forces in Dallas aren’t giving up on this seat, and they’re backing realtor Amanda Schultz. Seriously, her endorsement page is, in order: the police union, the firefighters union, a PAC from Georgia that we can find no information on, the Real Estate Council PAC, and the Dallas metro’s landlord association PAC. The gang’s all here! Joseph Miller is an elderly former railroad engineer from Scotland who wants the city to put in more transit. We hope Dallas listens to him, but he’s not getting elected to anything.
Fort Worth
City Council District 5 (East)
Gyna Bivens (i) vs. William McKinley Jackson vs. Bob Willoughby
Gyna Bivens has been on the Council for many years, and in that time it’s become clear her favorite issue is zoning. Sometimes that’s for the best, like how she scrapped a historic designation that was trapping her neighborhood in disinvestment and decline, but often it manifests itself in trying to stop apartments from getting built because she prefers single family houses, or killing a low-income senior housing project over traffic concerns. One of her two challengers is Bob Willoughby, running for this district for the fifth cycle in a row (he took 11% of the vote in 2021) and indicating that he’s to Bivens’s left on housing and policing, but also giving off major crank energy, for instance dedicating a large portion of his website to the ads he takes out in local newspapers, most of which are him complaining that he isn’t allowed to speak at Council meetings anymore because he wouldn’t stop using his time to accuse city employees of fraud. The other is William McKinley Jackson, a pastor who seems much more normal than Willoughby and hasn’t said anything bad about apartments, but who also very clearly lives outside of the city. Bivens has the Fort Worth Star Telegram endorsement.
City Council District 6 (South)
Jared Williams (i) vs. Tonya Carter vs. Italia De La Cruz
This race is very simple. You’ve got your boringly moderate but basically fine Democratic incumbent, Jared Williams, your right-wing conspiracy theorist being propped up by the county’s GOP, Italia De La Cruz, and finally your mystery candidate who barely even has a Facebook page, Tonya Carter.
City Council District 9 (Central)
Elizabeth Beck (i) vs. Pamela Boggess vs. Jason Pena vs. Chris Reed (vs Taylor Mondick [withdrawn])
Elizabeth Beck is facing two Republicans for her first reelection campaign: Former prosecutor Pamela Boggess has the money and the police union endorsement, while Jason Peña is laser-focused on opposing a housing project for the homeless while contracting with a Republican firm to do campaign work. However, another Democrat is actually running: Chris Reed, a software developer who opposes spending cuts that Fort Worth government has been pushing through recently.with a Linktree and no money. Beck is the Democrat with a chance.
City Council District 11 (West-central)
Ricardo Avitia vs. Rick Herring vs. Christopher Johnson vs. Tara Maldonado-Wilson vs. Jeanette Martinez
This election is likely between Tara Maldonado-Wilson, a nurse who identifies herself as a progressive, and Jeanette Martinez, a staffer to County Commissioner Roy Brooks. While Brooks is a Democrat, and Martinez appears to be one too, her endorsers include both moderate Democrats and former Republican mayor Betsy Price, as well as the Fort Worth police union. She’s also taken money from GOP sources, like the Good Government Fund. By contrast, Maldonado-Wilson has both feet in the Democratic camp, with endorsers including labor and some Democratic-affiliated orgs like the Sierra Club.
The other three candidates are unimpressive. Retirement planner Rick Herring is a hardline NIMBY, who brags on his website that he helped kill a proposed shelter for human traffic victims, but will probably draw support from Riverside, where he’s been extensively involved in community activities. He was also endorsed by the local Tea Party group, but he refused their support. Christopher “CJ” Johnson is a self-styled “entrepreneur” with barely a Facebook page as a campaign. Ricardo Avitia is a former Marine who really wants you to know that he knows how to kill people, and also uses this photo on his website.
Irving
City Council District 3 (West)
Mark Zeske (i) vs. Abdul Khabeer vs. Paul Bertanzetti
This is kind of a rematch of 2020, when Mark Zeske narrowly defeated Abdul Khabeer for Council. Both seemed like similar center-left politicians, though some progressives like Candace Valenzuela supported Khabeer over Zeske then. Conservative group Families for Irving has endorsed Paul Bertanzetti, making him the only clear wrong choice.
City Council District 5 (Central-East)
Anthony Stanford vs. Heather A. Stroup vs. Jesse Koehler vs. Matt Varble vs. Mark Cronenwett
Families for Irving also has a candidate in the city’s only open blue district: Mark Cronenwett. Matt Varble is merely endorsed by the cop union. No right-wing orgs support Jesse Koehler—he’s a right-wing anti-LGBTQ/anti-woman culture warrior all for his own satisfaction. The other two candidates are not overt Republicans, but, unlike in District 3 where the non-Republicans appear similar, Heather Stroup does seem more overtly liberal than Anthony Stanford, especially by promising on her website to oppose book banning attempts in Irving.
San Antonio
The San Antonio elections are all happening in the shadow of Proposition A, a project of progressive activists in the city. It would end no-knock warrants, as well as criminal prosecutors for abortion or simple marijuana possession, and direct the police issue citations for a court date instead of immediately arresting alleged offenders for many low level misdemeanors as civil citations instead of criminal prosecutions, including theft of $750 or less, graffiti and vandalism of $2,500 or less, drug possession, and driving with an invalid license. The conservative backlash to this measure has been intense, with close to $2 million being spent in opposition, more than 10 times that of the Prop A supporters, who appear blindsided by the intensity of opposition. Early voting indicators also point to a swell of conservative voters showing up to defeat the measure, which could mean a right-leaning electorate, especially without any other major races to draw voters.
Mayor
Ron Nirenberg vs. Christopher T. Schuchardt vs. Christopher Longoria vs. Armando Dominguez vs. Michael Idrogo vs. Gary Allen vs. Michael Samaniego vs. Diana Flores Uriegas
Ron Nirenberg is running for his fourth term as mayor in one of the few major American cities with two-year mayoral terms. While 2017 and 2019 were high-profile knife fights—first Nirenberg ousted socially conservative Democratic incumbent Ivy Taylor, then had a tough reelection against moderate, Republican-backed Councilmember Greg Brockhouse—2021 was a quiet affair where Nirenberg waltzed to victory, and 2023 looks like it's going to be much the same. Nirenberg got 62% of the vote in 2021 against more formidable opponents than the ones he’s got this year. The only question is whether he breaks 70%.
City Council District 1 (Downtown/North-central)
Mario Bravo (i) vs. Jeremy Roberts vs. Roberto Rios Ortega vs. Sukh Kaur vs. Ernest Salinas vs. Lauro Bustamante vs. William T. Lamar-Boone
Mario Bravo shocked San Antonio politics in 2021 when he narrowly unseated three-term incumbent Roberto Treviño. While some called both candidates progressive, Bravo differentiated himself from Treviño by demanding a crackdown on the homeless, something Treviño had fought against his whole career. Bravo made it about a year before being censured by the Council for confronting and shouting at fellow Councilmember Ana Sandoval, his ex-girlfriend. Sensing blood in the water, candidates have emerged to his left(?) and right. On his right are perennial candidate (and perennially-in-danger-of-disbarment lawyer) Lauro Bustamante, Dellview Area Neighborhood Association president Ernest Salinas, Jeremy Roberts, and marketing executive Jeremy Roberts, all of whom oppose Proposition A. The only candidate willing to support the measure is education administrator Sukh Kaur. Roberto Rios Ortega and William T. Lamar-Boone are ghost candidates we can’t find out anything about.
Labor has mostly stuck with Bravo, as have some neighborhood associations. Kaur has an odd collection of supporters, including County Judge Nelson Wolff, generally recognized as a moderate. In fact, Kaur being the only candidate to embrace Prop A is odd, and she doesn’t even seem sure why she’s supporting it, even saying about coming out in support of it, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to be pegged all the way progressive, because I don’t think I am.” She’s also involved in helping open charter schools; though the school board she works with has made clear that those charters are actually setting up non-traditional learning environments students can’t get in public school, and Kaur herself is staunchly against vouchers, it’s still not behavior you want to see from someone who’s asking for the power to vote on education funding decisions. The teachers’s union doesn’t trust her, and we don’t blame them. Finally, the Police Officer’s Association has endorsed Jeremy Roberts, as has Manny Pelaez, one of the more conservative members of the council.
City Council District 2 (East)
Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (i) vs. Rose Requenez Hill vs. Edward Earl Giles vs. Patrick Jones vs. Carla Walker vs. Denise McVea vs. James M. Guild vs. Michael John Good vs. Wendell Carson vs. Denise Gutierrez
Jalen McKee-Rodriguez is a teacher and DSA member who crushed incumbent Jada Andrews-Sullivan 63-37 in 2021. He now faces an onslaught of challengers, who are individually unlikely to do very well, but collectively may be enough to deny him the 50% necessary to avoid a runoff. The San Antonio Express-News’s Molly Smith identifies four—Denise Gutierrez, Patrick Jones, Carla Walker, and Rose Requenez Hill—as potential second place finishers.
Gutierrez ran for Council in 2019 and placed third with 20% of the vote, then ran for mayor in 2021 and again placed third, but with less than 2% of the vote. Her “the city should be run like a business” campaign (actual quote from her website) would have trouble in a runoff. Jones is a pastor who backed Andrews-Sullivan in 2021, and allegedly told his congregation that voting for a gay candidate like McKee-Rodriguez was a sin. Jones denied it, but his case wasn’t helped by a Facebook post he made saying that homosexuality is a sin. Carla Walker, who describes herself as a pharmacy and assisted living facility owner on her typo-ridden website, was taken off of San Antonio’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commission by McKee-Rodriguez. Finally, Rose Requenez Hill is the President of Government Hill Alliance Neighborhood Association, and has recently been protesting changes to a local park.
City Council District 3 (Southeast)
Phyllis Viagran (i) vs. Jayden Muñoz vs. Erin Gallegos Reid vs. Larry La Rose
Phyllis Viagran is from a political dynasty, but from the relatively rare sibling dynasty; her sister Rebecca retired from this seat in 2021 ahead of her unsuccessful 2022 congressional run, handing it off to Phyllis. Phyllis shouldn’t have much trouble keeping this seat in the Viagran family’s hands; former TV broadcaster turned schoolteacher Erin Gallegos Reid is running a campaign that’s vaguely about crime and public safety, but Viagran isn’t a natural choice to challenge on a crime panic campaign. Larry La Rose and Jayden Muñoz are also on the ballot, but neither seems to be campaigning very much; Muñoz doesn’t even appear to have filed any campaign finance reports. (La Rose has self-funded a bit to pay for some lawn signs.)
City Council District 4 (Southwest)
Adriana Rocha Garcia (i) vs. Gregorio De La Paz
Adriana Rocha Garcia, who often goes by ARG, is running for her third term in the Council. After crushing all opposition in 2021 with almost 70% of the vote, only a single opponent bothered to file against ARG: Gregorio De La Paz, a middle-aged veteran hilariously still using his cadet photo as his main campaign headshot, running as a conservative.
City Council District 5 (South-central)
Teri Castillo (i) vs. Arturo Espinosa vs. Rudy Lopez
Along with Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, Teri Castillo’s election made 2021 a banner year for the San Antonio left. Like McKee-Rodriguez, Castillo is an unabashed democratic socialist and DSA member, and with him she’s held down the left flank on the city council. She trounced former police officer Rudy Lopez by 15 points in the 2021 runoff that put her on the council, and he’s back for another try with a credible amount of money behind him. The presence of paper candidate Arturo Espinosa makes a runoff theoretically possible, but unlikely.
City Council District 6 (West)
Melissa Cabello Havrda (i) vs. Irina Rudolph vs. Chris Baecker
Irina Rudolph and Chris Baecker both ran to unseat Melissa Cabello Havrda two years ago. She won with 55% of the vote to Rudolph’s 28% and Baecker’s 3.7% (which, to be fair, is a good performance by the standards of Libertarian Party members.) Like Phyllis Viagran in District 3, Havrda is just not a good target for someone running a crime panic campaign like Rudolph, and like Phyllis Viagran, she should easily clear 50% in the first round.
City Council District 7 (Northwest)
Sandragrace Martinez vs. Jacob Chapa vs. Dan Rossiter vs. Marina Alderete Gavito vs. Andrew "AJ" Luck
Woof. This seat is really in for a downgrade; Ana Sandoval was one of the most progressive members of the council until her resignation earlier this year, and her interim successor, Rosie Castro (a veteran civil rights activist also well known as the mother of Julián and Joaquín) has stuck with the progressive bloc on the council. None of the candidates running are promising to govern in that mold. Local attorney AJ Luck has nothing beyond a website and doesn’t really seem to be campaigning, and UTSA student Jacob Chapa is a Republican, so no thanks to both of those. Sandragrace Martinez is running a shoestring campaign that’s not much focused on the issues, but where she does focus on them she’s a little better than the rest of the field—if only because she reversed course to oppose Proposition A after claiming she got backlash while knocking doors, while the rest of the field hated it from the start. She also has a demonstrated ability to outperform on a budget of $5 and a prayer; she held King Ranch heir Jay Kleberg to a single-digit victory in a 2022 statewide primary runoff for Texas land commissioner—and mind you, the Kleberg family has an entire Texas county named after it, because they own most of it. Dan Rossiter, a local neighborhood association president, is really, really focused on widening a local highway. And all of these candidates are functionally just trying to deny Marina Alderete Gavito a first-round majority. Gavito’s father Joe Alderete was District 7’s first councilman back in the 70s, and his daughter is looking to follow in his footsteps; she’s also the beneficiary of spending from not one, but two business-backed PACs, both of which are spending on her and one other candidate, Republican District 10 candidate Marc Whyte, as well as the police union. (Districts 9 and 10 are San Antonio’s conservative strongholds.)
City Council District 8 (Northwest)
Manny Pelaez (i) vs. Cesario Garcia
There are no good candidates here. Both are running to give more money to cops and defeat progressive initiatives. Incumbent Manny Pelaez is at least openly a Democrat, and will be term limited out of office in 2025, making room for a councilmember who potentially doesn't suck.