San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Police reform, virus stand out in mayor’s race
Two years after a bruising battle between San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg and former City Councilman Greg Brockhouse, the two men will likely face each other once more for the mayor’s seat in a race defined by the human and economic toll wrought by COVID-19 and cries from activists for police reform.
Last time, Nirenberg eked out a slim victory after Brockhouse forced him to a runoff in an often bitterly personal campaign. Then, the mayor won re-election by a 2.2-point margin.
But the landscape has changed dramatically in the two years since. The coronavirus pandemic has devastated the city — killing more than 2,000 residents, hospitalizing thousands more and decimating thousands of jobs, particularly in the city’s restaurant and hospitality industries.
On top of that, activists in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have pressed San Antonio leaders to spend less on policing and more on social services such as housing, health care and help for the homeless.
Nirenberg, seeking a third term, is much better off than he was two years ago, his advisers and backers say — pointing to the mayor’s improved poll numbers and his nightly TV appearances
alongside Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff to give residents the latest on the virus.
Bolstering their case was the landslide victory in November of Nirenberg’s $154 million sales tax plan to pay for job training and college degrees. Nearly 77 percent of voters agreed to help San Antonians put out of work by the pandemic — the biggest electoral victory of Nirenberg’s career and a sign, his allies say, that the mayor has broadened his support amid the pandemic.
“I believe he’s in a stronger position than before,” said Gilberto Ocañas, Nirenberg’s chief political consultant and chairman of his reelection campaign. “He has handled himself — from what other people tell me — in a way that makes them feel comfortable that he’s the mayor. They know that somebody serious is at the wheel.”
Brockhouse has yet to file for the race — he has until Feb. 12 — and his coffers seem low. His last campaign finance report, covering August through December, showed no income except a $17,000 loan. He says he’s raised more but didn’t say exactly how much.
But he’s ready to take on Nirenberg.
He’s unimpressed with the mayor’s approach to managing the pandemic and its recovery. The former councilman has accused Nirenberg of using the bully pulpit to unduly spread fear about COVID-19 — though he says the virus should be taken seriously — and lacking aggression in his economic recovery efforts.
“There’s a palpable lack of hope in this city,” Brockhouse said. “You just sense it, and it comes from the lack of leadership out of City Hall. And the problem with it is it’s only on one person.”
There’s potential room for Brockhouse to hammer the mayor on economic recovery and police reform, said Christian Archer, a veteran campaign operative who ran winning mayoral races for Phil Hardberger and Julián Castro.
But the former councilman will have to bring in his own economic recovery plan if he wants to unseat Nirenberg and avoid a second loss, the consultant said.
“That is trying to put the thread through three needle holes,” Archer said. “It’s a difficult task for Brockhouse, especially if he doesn’t have the money.”
Still hanging over Brockhouse are a pair of domestic violence allegations from a former spouse and his current wife, Annalisa, although the latter is something he and his wife have sought to put to rest.
For Nirenberg, his advantage over Brockhouse is simple.
“We have 18 months of work to run on,” Nirenberg said.
Pandemic recovery
Amid the economic damage caused by the virus, the two men will square off over whether Nirenberg and the city have done enough to stem the bleeding.
Nirenberg points to the $255 million in city, state and federal dollars city leaders have allocated since the pandemic began for housing assistance, business aid, workforce development and efforts to bridge geographic gaps in internet access. Roughly half a billion dollars has gone toward the city’s public health response as well as providing economic relief to those hard hit by the pandemic.
Workforce development in particular has been the mayor’s baby. Nirenberg sees those efforts as a crucial relief measure, meaning people who have lost work because of the pandemic get skills needed to work in higher-paying jobs that are available now. In the long term, with the aid of the sales tax program, that benefit would be expanded to tens of thousands of residents to put a dent in the city’s endemic poverty.
“It’s a short-term response and a long-term recovery,” Nirenberg said. “We have to do both. Otherwise, we’re repeating the same mistakes.”
Brockhouse accuses Nirenberg of being too focused on long-term recovery efforts instead of shortterm help for small businesses — particularly in the restaurant and hospitality industries.
The city has spent roughly $27 million on emergency small-business grants, including $8.7 million to bars and restaurants — a sufficient sum to some, a paltry one to others.
“He doesn’t want to bring those industries back,” Brockhouse said. “His answer is retrain them into
something else.”
Brockhouse said he’s drafting a policy platform that will focus on “aggressive relief for San Antonio now. That’s it.”
One idea is tap the city’s $120 million in reserves to funnel to small businesses. City officials have cautioned against such a move, warning that doing so would damage the city’s credit rating and borrowing power needed to take out debt to build roads and capital improvements.
Brockhouse doesn’t buy that argument.
“If we ever needed to break into a reserve fund, this is the time period to do it,” he said.
Police reform
Standing on the front steps of the Bexar County Courthouse in early June, Nirenberg made a pact with protesters demonstrating against police brutality: that he would pursue police reforms, or those present should hold him accountable at the ballot box.
“I’m the mayor of this goddamn city, and we’re going to make change together,” Nirenberg said.
Months later, Nirenberg now faces the task of convincing activists that he’s made headway on a police reform agenda without alienating too many voters who consider themselves pro-police — or giving ammunition to Brockhouse, a longtime police union ally.
Many involved in the summer protests feel burned. For one, activists who wanted to see the Police Department’s budget substantially cut this past September and money rerouted to social services including housing, health care and aid to the homeless were irate when the City Council instead increased the city’s police spending by $8 million. That was largely the result of spending increases mandated by the city’s contract with the police officers union.
“The trust that we felt like we had built and created with the mayor and with local elected officials is really up in the air after months have gone by and Black Lives Matter activists still have to proclaim that our life matters to the city,” said Kimiya Factory, a local community activist who heads the organization Black Freedom Factory.
The city has made progress on reforms, the mayor argued: speeding
up the process of releasing body camera footage when officers shoot someone or use force, banning police use of chokeholds and no-knock warrants, and pinpointing ways to push for stricter accountability measures for officers accused of misconduct in the city’s upcoming contract negotiations with the police union.
“I feel that we are delivering,” Nirenberg said. “It’s certainly a process, and it’s not at its conclusion. That’s what accountability looks like.”
Complicating matters for the mayor: He may wind up sharing the ballot with a referendum on whether the police union will still be allowed to collectively bargain for wage and benefits.
The organization Fix SAPD turned in more than 20,000 signatures — still to be verified — to put the question before voters in the hopes of stripping the union of the ability to sway how officers are disciplined.
If the measure makes it onto the May ballot, the San Antonio Police Officers Association will wage an all-out war to defeat it, churning out ads and turning out conservative voters who aren’t likely to be kind to the mayor.
Nirenberg hasn’t taken a position on the initiative. In the past, he has said the police union should agree to changes to provisions in the contract that give Police Chief William McManus more authority to punish bad officers.
“If the Fix SAPD petitions end up on the ballot, it will be up to the voters to decide, and we’re going to have to operate within the guidelines set by the voters,” Nirenberg said. “But my focus and my mandate, on behalf of the people of this city, is to achieve their priorities at the bargaining table.”
Count Brockhouse as a staunch opponent of stripping the union of its collective bargaining rights, though he thinks union leaders should at least be open to changing the contract’s disciplinary provisions.
“The sad part is, in the whole debate, that both sides want the same thing: They want bad officers gone,” Brockhouse said. “But it is a very small percentage. A tiny percentage of officers are bad. You do not upend entire contracts and throw them out the door or make threats when you root out the .1 percent.”
Known allies
To what degree either candidate can rely on key allies whose backing proved crucial in the last race remains to be seen.
For Nirenberg, that means progressive organizers who helped deliver the mayor a second term. A cadre of local progressives raised eyebrows at the mayor’s workforce proposal, blasting the plan as overly beneficial to employers, not workers, and claiming it was cooked up behind closed doors.
The grassroots group Texas Organizing Project, which withheld its endorsement of Nirenberg until Brockhouse forced the runoff, hasn’t yet decided whether to wade into the race. TOP deployed its high-powered network of canvassers and organizers during the runoff — and Nirenberg won by about 2,200 votes.
For Brockhouse, that means again enlisting the help of the police and fire unions, which helped bridge a fundraising gap between him and the mayor with an advertising blitz and their own get-outthe-vote efforts.
It’s likely that both unions will at least endorse Brockhouse again. But the police union may have its hands full fighting back against the changes sought by Fix SAPD should its proposed amendment make it onto the ballot.
“That fight comes first because that’s our livelihood,” said John “Danny” Diaz, the incoming president of the San Antonio Police Officers Association.
Business view
Sitting out the race so far are the city’s business leaders. Nirenberg and the business community have often butted heads during his tenure, while business groups were wary of Brockhouse in the last election.
For a brief moment last year, Nirenberg and business leaders seemed to reconcile.
San Antonio’s most prominent employers — including H-E-B, Valero Energy and USAA — lined up beside the mayor and gave heavily to the campaign to pass the workforce measure in November.
But so far, the business community hasn’t come out in favor of the mayor or his opponent.
“I think there’s no doubt that Ron coming to the San Antonio business community and asking for thoughts, assistance helping shape it, that brings credibility,” said Richard Perez, head of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and a former City Council member. “When you reach out to the business community and say, ‘Can you help us with this,’ we say, ‘Heck yeah.’ But I don’t know if it’s happening on a regular basis. That’s episodic, I think.”
Still, behind-the-scenes efforts to recruit a mayoral challenger with business bona fides — rumored names often include philanthropist Gordon Hartman, now on the mayor’s team, or Eddie Aldrete, senior vice president of IBC Bank — appear to have fizzled.
“I will say there is that feeling that Ron has done a good job of being the mayor of San Antonio in the pandemic, speaking truth and being confident in our recovery and what people should or shouldn’t do,” Perez said. “That’s still separate from the issues that are still affecting business on a daily basis. That’s really where the line gets drawn.”
Past allegations
Unclear is whether Brockhouse will continue to face questions over a pair of domestic violence accusations in which a former spouse and his current wife called police to report that he had assaulted them. Brockhouse was not arrested or charged in either incident.
According to a police report, Annalisa Brockhouse called police just before midnight Dec. 23, 2009, and accused Brockhouse of grabbing her, throwing her to the ground and trying to hit her.
The former councilman initially claimed ignorance of a 2009 police report about the call she made to 911, dodged questions about it throughout the campaign and later insinuated it was fake.
After he lost, Brockhouse and his wife appeared on KSAT-TV and explained that she had indeed called police that night but that her husband “never assaulted” her. Annalisa Brockhouse said she was suffering from postpartum depression at the time and made a false police report after an argument.
Brockhouse said in a recent interview that he didn’t admit the incident during the campaign because he was protecting his family, although he said his wife asked him daily to let her set the record straight.
“The last thing I wanted to do was be a politician that wheeled his wife out there and said, ‘Here, go save me, go get me a vote,’” Brockhouse said.
Brockhouse now says he should have been “as open and transparent as possible” and explained the incident earlier in the campaign. But he doesn’t regret it.
“To me, defending my family and protecting my wife … to me, that’s not the wrong decision,” Brockhouse said. “If protecting my family cost me the mayor’s job, OK. I’m OK with that.”
Whether the issue will dog him this campaign isn’t yet known.
“If you don’t trust me on it, I appreciate that,” Brockhouse said. “I’ve got a long way to go to repair that, if it’s even repairable. But I’ll try.”
Assembling a team
Both men are off to a slow fundraising start. At the end of last year, Nirenberg had a war chest of $61,000. That’s less than a quarter of what he had at the outset of his first matchup with Brockhouse in 2019.
Brockhouse put out an appeal on Facebook, seeking to raise at least $100,000 by the end of January. He kept a running tally on the page but took it off in mid-January when the count was at just $17,000. Brockhouse had nothing in his bank account at the end of December except the $17,000 loan. On Thursday, he said he was three-quarters of the way to the $100,000 goal, counting contributions and pledges.
Nirenberg has shaken up his campaign team since his last election. Last year, he parted ways with longtime campaign manager Kelton Morgan and brought on Ocañas, a former deputy executive director of the Democratic National Committee, as his chief political adviser.
Nirenberg also has recruited businessman Hartman, founder of Morgan’s Wonderland, as his finance chair to oversee the campaign’s fundraising efforts.
Brockhouse is still assembling his campaign team. One of the possibilities is Matt Mackowiak, a consultant who advised Brockhouse’s 2019 run and is fresh from Republican Tony Gonzales’ win in Congressional District 23.
In the coming mayoral race, the landscape has changed dramatically over two years. The pandemic has devastated the city, and activists in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd have pressed for less spending on policing and more on social services.