Bravo, relying on the board’s report, Kaur focused on the basics in the second round of District 1.
SAN ANTONIO – Councilman Mario Bravo faces an uphill battle next month as he is the only sitting San Antonio City Councilman forced into a runoff.
In a seven-way race for a May 6 District 1 City Council seat, Bravo finished 8 points behind top contender Sukh Kaur with 26% of the vote to her 34%. However, since neither of them won a majority of the vote, they will go to a much less publicized runoff on June 10th.
Sitting on the porch of her Beacon Hill home and campaign headquarters, Kaur attributed her campaign’s success to the fact that she’s knocked on thousands of doors since she announced her campaign in October.
Kaur holds a PhD in K-12 Educational Management and owns EDreimagined, which works with public charter schools. She sees a seat on the council as an opportunity to address the root causes of injustice faced by students.
“If students can’t get to school safely, they can’t see, or if they don’t have access to health care, all of these issues that are controlled by the city really really affect children’s lives,” Kaur. said.
Bravo itself toppled incumbent President Roberto Treviño in 2021 at a time when homelessness was a top priority for the county. He says it remains a priority for him and cites progress on that front as the main success of his first term.
“When I was in my first term, we allocated $43 million to work on permanent assisted housing,” he said, citing city and county total appropriations between city bond funds and federal dollars.
Although, as a current member of the council, he is famous, there is not always a good reason for this. A confrontation with his council colleague and former romantic partner, Ana Sandoval, last fall saw him suspended from city council committees and denounced by his peers.
“It was a hard lesson to learn,” he said. “It was a hard lesson to learn publicly – even harder. But I learned a lot from him“.
However, he says it was one day in a two-year period.
“I have a proven track record of being a partner who shows up and listens and speaks to the people at City Hall… And I do have experience working with my colleagues, getting them to sign my political proposals and promote them. Go ahead,” said Bravo.
Both he and Kaur talked about the problems with property taxes and how longtime residents are being forced to give up their homes.
Kaur said her other top priorities include infrastructure such as streets, sidewalks and drainage, as well as public safety.
Bravo said he avoided taking a public stance on Proposition A, which was the main reason for voting in the May 6 election, telling KSAT, “I didn’t like the fact that we were solving something that the city attorney said we couldn’t solve.” apply”.
Kaur, on the other hand, supported it because of elements related to the decriminalization of abortion, although she told KSAT she believes in the need for “stronger public safety solutions” and that our prisons are “overrepresented by certain populations” .
However, in her KSAT interview, she also noted that “most people knew that this policy was not enforceable.”
“I really want to focus, if elected, on an enforceable public safety policy that supports our police force because I really believe in it, but also be held accountable if incidents occur,” she said.
Without Proposition A on the ballot to attract voters, the turnout in the second round is likely to be much lower than the 15,400 District 1 voters who voted in the original race.
Early voting will last from May 30 to June 6, and the last day of voting will be on Saturday, June 10.
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