San Antonio mayoral candidate Rolando Pablos gives a speech during tenure as Texas Secretary of State. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Texas Secretary of State's Office

For the first time in recent memory, the Bexar County Democratic Party his weighed in on a San Antonio mayoral race, officially a nonpartisan political contest.

Local Democrats on Tuesday shared a 30-second YouTube attack ad blasting mayoral candidate Rolando Pablos, who served as Texas Secretary of State from 2017 to 2018 under Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, for what the ominously narrated clip calls his attempts to suppress voters.

The video also highlights Pablos’ financial backing from a conservative political action committee, or PAC, linked to Abbott, which has pledged $2 million to put candidates friendly to the governor in local leadership roles.

“Makes you wonder who Pablos would be working for if elected, Greg Abbott or Abbott’s rich friends?” the voiceover in the 30-second clip says as an image of the governor and billionaire Elon Musk appear onscreen. “We need a mayor who will work for us, and it’s not Rolando Pablos.”

In a statement emailed to the Current, Pablos said the video amounts to “pure fear-mongering.” He accused “entrenched political insiders who have mismanaged our city for years” of attempting to misinform voters about his record.

“This flailing attack makes clear that the San Antonio political class is panicking and using the Bexar County Democratic party to try to undermine my candidacy, as they are terrified that I will finally bring accountability and sanity to City Hall as mayor,” Pablos said. “This race must not be about ideology and protecting power. It must be about the good people of San Antonio deserving more than what they have gotten for decades.”

The Bexar County Democrats are circulating the video via social media but don’t have funding to back a TV ad buy, party Communication Director Martha Spinks said. The clip marks the first time in at least 10 years — likely longer — that the party has waded into a San Antonio mayoral race, she added.

However, Spinks said the Republican-aligned Texas Economic Fund (TEF) PAC, which was created to promote right-wing candidates at the local level — from school board races to county judgeships — fired the first partisan shot in the election.

This cycle, the TEF targeted citywide races in San Antonio and McAllen in an effort to elect mayors who will get in line behind Abbott, who’s frequently tussled with outgoing Mayor Ron Nirenberg and other big-city leaders. The PAC has a $2 million fundraising goal across “critical” local elections, based on an internal memo obtained by the San Antonio Report.

“That is an obvious partisan goal, and it would be remiss of Democrats not to point that out and to respond to it,” Spinks told the Current via email. “Our response is that Rolando Pablos has been chosen and richly funded by TEF to accomplish that goal, and if anyone wants evidence that his election will not serve San Antonio well, they need only to look at the way that Pablos has followed the direction of Greg Abbott and the Texas Republican Party so far when he was willing to help suppress elections.”

Beyond Pablos’ ties to Abbott, the video points to two times voting-rights groups sued him while he headed the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, which oversees voting and elections.

A 2017 suit filed by the NAACP and League of Women Voters halted Texas from turning over sensitive voter data as part of a voter-fraud investigation ordered by then-President Donald Trump to back up his unsubstantiated allegation that fraudsters cast “millions” of illegal ballots in the 2016 election.

In a separate legal challenge from 2020, Democrats sued the secretary of state in federal court for rejecting 2,400 voter-registration applications submitted through the site Vote.org. On Oct. 4, 2018 — five days before the state’s deadline for new voter registrations — Pablos declared the digital applications bogus because they “lacked an original, wet signature,” according to the suit.

Despite the legal fights, Pablos said he stands behind his record overseeing elections for the state.

“I’m proud of my record as Texas Secretary of State, particularly my work to help more young Texans register to vote when they turn 18, during which I recruited hundreds of educators across the state to promote voting and civic engagement among the next generation of Texas voters,” he said in the emailed statement.

However, the Bexar Democrats’ Spinks said the lawsuits suggest what may be in store for San Antonio should Pablos be elected mayor.

“If [Pablos] was willing to comply with this well-documented assault on democracy while in an official office, why should we assume he will act in the interests of our community?” Spinks told the Current. “We do not support the position he has taken on elections and voter privacy, and we do not want those values to energize our city hall.”

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