San Antonio’s newly approved city budget is 5.8% larger than last year’s but it does include some significant cuts. Credit: Shutterstock

Editor’s note: This story was updated to note that Morgan is doing consulting work for current mayoral candidate Beto Altamirano and also to fix a typo.

Fatigue from the November election, Fiesta and a lack of controversial charter amendments is likely to keep many voters away from San Antonio’s first wide-open mayoral election since 2009, longtime political consultant Kelton Morgan told the Current.

Indeed, just 14,000 San Antonians — or about 0.001% of the city’s registered voters — have cast ballots since early voting kicked off Tuesday, the latest figures from the Bexar County Elections Department show.

“Even though it’s the first time in a dozen years you actually have an open seat for mayor, you don’t have anything terribly sexy that’s pushing people to the polls,” said Morgan, who ran termed-out Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s first campaigns for the city’s top elected office and also is consulting for current mayoral candidate Beto Altamirano.

San Antonio’s 2021 and 2023 elections saw record turnout. However, both featured hotly contested charter amendments, including changes to police bargaining agreements and the failed Proposition B, which would have decriminalized abortion and marijuana along with a slate of criminal justice reforms.

Morgan said the total number of candidates in the current mayoral contest, which stands at 27, is also a major turnoff for voters. Despite big money pouring into this year’s election, 45% of people surveyed in a recent University of Texas at San Antonio poll said they were either undecided or unfamiliar with any of the candidates.

“The person who spent $20 million running for Congress over the last five years is still barely in double digits,” Morgan said, referring to former U.S. Under Secretary of the Air Force Gina Ortiz Jones, who leads the polling at about 13%.

Jones ran two failed congressional campaigns in 2018 and 2020 to represent Texas’ 23rd congressional district as a Democrat.

“Even the campaigns that spent $400,000, even the guys who’ve spent the better side of a decade in public office and in the public eye, are all bunched up down there between 3% and 12%,” Morgan added. “People are just not tuned in, and I think they’ll wait for the runoff.”

Here, Morgan is referring to tech entrepreneur and political novice Altamirano, whose campaign has raised more than $500,000.

Despite the low turnout, Morgan predicts Jones will face either Altamirano or former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos — an ally of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott — in the June 7 runoff. However, he added that District 9 Councilman Courage or District 8 Councilman Manny Pelaez could squeak out a spot in the runoff, although both remain long-shot candidates.

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