Monday Musings #21: Rolando Pablos for Mayor

The poorly organized city election that led to a Fiesta parade ballot of 27 mayoral candidates, most lacking any standing, has now come down to two very different candidates: first-round frontrunner Gina Ortiz Jones and second-place finisher Rolando Pablos.

Ortiz Jones is a San Antonio native and the daughter of a Filipino immigrant mother who has taken some heat for adding “Ortiz” to her name in advance of the first of her two unsuccessful runs for Congress. That is her mother’s name, however opportunistic some find the addition. Ortiz Jones is an Air Force veteran deployed to Iraq and later served for 14 months as the Under Secretary of the Air Force. She has leaned most heavily on her military roots during this campaign.

Pablos, born in Sonora, Mexico, and brought to Texas by his Mexican parents, who legally immigrated here when he was 9 years old, has his own deep roots in San Antonio. While he was not born here, Pablos is more invested in the city than Ortiz. He earned undergraduate and law degrees from St. Mary’s University, has worked as an immigration attorney, and has served on an array of nonprofit boards. He is a past chair of the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and he served on the Greater SATX board, and before that, on the board of the Free Trade Alliance.

After their third child was born with Down syndrome, Pablos and his wife Laura, an orthodontist, agreed she would become a stay-at-home parent while he joined the board of Morgan’s Wonderland.

Rightfully, much attention has been focused on Pablos’ statewide appointments to the Public Utility Commission under Gov. Rick Perry and as Texas Secretary of State under Gov. Gregg Abbott. There has been too little media coverage of his extensive record of public service right here in San Antonio.

I’ve attended more debates, forums, and other campaign events than I can count in this election. And while I enthusiastically endorsed tech executive Beto Altamirano for mayor in the first round of voting, I now believe Pablos represents the best path forward for a city ripe with opportunity that comes with growth, even as it remains saddled with generational poverty and all the ills that stem from such inequity.

The mayor plays a somewhat symbolic, yet critical, role in economic development and job creation, especially in attracting companies relocating to Texas for its business-friendly environment and relative affordability. With redoubled private sector involvement and funding, San Antonio made impressive strides under greater:SATX CEO Jenna Saucedo-Herrera, who has departed for an executive position at USAA. Even still, San Antonio lags noticeably behind other Texas metros as a business destination.

Poor education outcomes worsened by the pandemic continue to impact the city’s workforce profile, but measurable gains have been made here, too, and an active mayor who speaks the language of business can help accelerate San Antonio’s competitiveness. 

Some voters fear Pablos will be too responsive to Gov. Abbott. He is positioned to establish more productive working relationships with Republican state and legislative leaders, but I believe he understands the mayor’s job will require him to place San Antonio’s interests above all else. He will have to win the support of six council votes for any of his initiatives. This will undoubtedly result in Pablos leading from the center.

That’s important in a city governed by nonpartisan elected leaders. An Ortiz Jones win, in my view, will give San Antonio an overly progressive city council that finds itself unable to accomplish much and on the wrong end of continuing battles with state leaders. Local officials need to pick their fights and stand up to be counted when it matters, but engaging in issues outside the council’s purview only results in negative headlines and community division.

Both candidates are smart, well-prepared on the issues, and well-funded. Pablos has much more local support, financially, than Ortiz Jones, reflecting the business community support he enjoys. Both also are funded by outside interests, which I lament. But the US Supreme Court has made it open season for outside forces to fund campaigns, locally and nationally. It’s reality.

The mayor’s persona matters enormously. Pablos presents as authentic and confident—he’s gregarious, fluent in Spanish, and just as comfortable in Mexico City as he is in Texas, Washington, D.C., or in meetings with relocating company executives. His roots as a Mexican immigrant, he insists, will make him more empathetic to immigrants and first-generation residents here than his law–and-order rhetoric would suggest.

While I want to take Pablos at his word, he recently stated on the bigcitysmalltown podcast that no one is being deported without due process. That is patently false. Multiple federal judges have now issued orders calling on the Trump administration to bring back people deported on false grounds and preventing others from being sent to impoverished, even war-torn countries willing to open their prisons for a price. So far, those orders have been ignored, leading many to believe a constitutional crisis is looming with Trump ignoring the separation of powers.

Ortiz Jones strikes me and many others who have interacted with her as aloof, even uncomfortable in unscripted dealings with the media and public. In this fast-growing city, a mayor needs to be open and comfortable with a very broad range of interest groups and constituencies. It’s a very public job, and how the mayor conducts himself or herself communicates a great deal to locals and to those outside the city looking in. 

Pablos, I believe, has chartered a course, much like former Mayor Phil Hardberger, in which his outside experiences and expertise have prepared him to lead San Antonio at a key inflection point. Ortiz Jones, who has been more oriented toward Washington, D.C. in her life and work, seems to be a candidate searching for an elected office to hold. She has campaigned vigorously, but there is no substitute for years of on-the-ground experience in the city.

Neither candidate spent much time, if any, focusing on the city’s moribund Climate Action & Adaptation Plan, passed in 2019 without any measurable near-term goals, and since then left on the shelf. Millennials and Gen Z voters might show more interest in local elections if they could hear a candidate actually get serious about climate change. Instead, we are experiencing more extreme weather, worsening air quality, and growing vehicle congestion. These are serious, yet neglected, issues of grave concern.

Our next mayor will be the first in contemporary times to serve a four-year term. It’s important that we get this right. I’m casting my early vote this week for Rolando Pablos. I respect your right to disagree, but I hope you don’t simply vote along party lines on what has proven to be San Antonio's most partisan mayoral election.