Gina Ortiz Jones wins hyperpartisan mayoral race with 54% of vote

Gina Ortiz Jones will be San Antonio’s next mayor, becoming just the third woman elected to the city’s top post.

Jones won 54% of the vote in Saturday’s hyper-partisan runoff election to replace term-limited Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

Rolando Pablos trailed by more than 12,000 votes.

“We’re going to move forward with everyone in mind, and now the hard works begins,” Jones said, shortly after declaring victory around 9:30 p.m. at her watch party at Dakota East Side Ice House — her first electoral victory after two previous failed campaigns for a Texas congressional seat.

On the campaign trail, Jones cast the city’s nonpartisan mayor’s office as a chance to rebuke the far right policies of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and President Donald Trump. She frequently called Pablos, who served as Texas secretary of state from 2017 to 2018, an “Abbott puppet” who would do the governor’s bidding.

“With everything happening around us at the federal level and at the state level — some of the most un-American things we have seen in a very, very long time — it is very heartening to see where we are right now,” she said after early voting returns were posted.

Jones’ victory is a win for Texas Democrats who sought to keep the technically nonpartisan seat in Democratic hands.

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin congratulated her for “beating back massive amounts of right-wing dark money.”

Pablos has a long history in Texas Republican politics and served as an appointee under Abbott and his predecessor, Gov. Rick Perry.

“I will continue to serve this community with pride,” Pablos said in a concession speech. “We want the best for this community and for our families.”

The recently formed Texas Economic Fund political action committee has spent more than $800,000 to date to get a conservative elected San Antonio mayor — something that last happened in 1995, when voters elected oral surgeon William “Bill” Thornton, who served one term before failing to make it into the 1997 runoff.

But in 2025 they were fighting an uphill battle. In last November’s presidential election, nearly 58% of San Antonians voted for Democrat Kamala Harris against 41% who picked Republican President Donald Trump, according to a San Antonio Express-News analysis.

Jones, a former Air Force undersecretary under President Joe Biden, had the support of Washington, D.C.-based Fields of Change, which backs Democratic candidates running at all levels of government. It has spent more than $260,000 helping her campaign.

The Texas Democratic Party spent more than $70,000 in its support of her, and local progressive organizations Act 4 SA and the Texas Organizing Project spent about $50,000 combined through their respective political action committees.

Jones, 44, is the first mayor elected to serve a four- rather than two-year term, the result of a city charter amendment voters passed last year.

She will be sworn in on June 18. She will be the first mayor to have not first served on City Council since voters elected former Fourth Court of Appeals Chief Justice Phil Hardberger in 2005.

Saturday’s election is her first electoral victory in six years. She narrowly lost her first campaign for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District in 2018 to incumbent U.S. Rep. Will Hurd by less than 1,000 votes. In 2020, she lost by a wider margin to political newcomer Tony Gonzales.

District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, who endorsed Jones, told the crowd at the Dakota East Side Ice House — which is in his council district — that “we deserve candidates who recognize that in order to succeed we have to invest in human beings, not in skyscrapers or stadiums.”

That’s a reference to one of her first big decisions as mayor: whether to alter the city’s plans, which Nirenberg helped put in motion, for a downtown sports and entertainment district anchored by a new Spurs arena better known as Project Marvel.

Jones has been critical of the plan, but has also said she is not opposed to the use of tax dollars —which could be a combination of state, county and city tax dollars — to fund elements of the district.

City Manager Erik Walsh, an architect of Project Marvel, made a brief appearance at Jones’ party

“He was very kind and offered his congratulation and desire to work together, and I obviously expressed the same, and I look forward to that,” she told the San Antonio Express-News.

More than 142,000 San Antonio voters participated in the mayoral runoff, which brought turnout to 17%. That’s five points higher than the crowded May 3 election that narrowed the 27-candidate field down to Jones and Pablos.