In District 10, four challenging incumbent Perry
Voters in City Council District 10 might be feeling a sense of déjà vu: Once again, the ballot lists Clayton Perry and Ezra Johnson, as it did in 2017.
There are also three other challengers to incumbent Perry this time around: Army Reserve 1st Lt. Gabrien Gregory, University of Texas at San Antonio graduate Emily Norwood and educator Alexander Svehla.
In the 2017 general election, Johnson came in first in a 10-way race but didn’t have enough votes to avoid a runoff; he was just 18 votes ahead of runner-up Perry. Perry went on to win the runoff, defeating Johnson by 831 votes.
Perry, a retired Air Force civil engineer, easily won reelection to a second term in 2019, with 64 percent of the vote despite four challengers.
Last year, however, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, won in District 10 by almost 7 percentage points over Republican Donald Trump.
Seeing a possible shift in political ideology in the district, Johnson decided the time is right to challenge Perry again.
“Perry’s opposition to just about everything is based on a liberal or a conservative basis,” Johnson said. “The fact is he never offers any counterproposals.”
Perry doesn’t think his district has changed its conservative tendencies
just because of the presidential vote in November.
“That was at the national level,” said Perry, 65. “I feel I represent the majority of District 10.”
“I haven’t changed my stripes in four years, and I’m not going to change them now,” he said, adding that his constituents know “where I stand and what my priorities are.”
Johnson, 44, perceives Perry’s position as the lone conservative on the council dais as a hindrance to the city’s progress.
“I want to work with my council colleagues to make sure that if the entire city succeeds, then District 10 succeeds as well,” said Johnson, an administrative law judge and former vice chair of the VIA Metropolitan Transit board.
Perry countered that he has a “great relationship with all the other council members” and added that “being conservative doesn’t mean that you’re not getting along with other council members.”
“I vote a lot of times in favor of other council members’ requests. There are some that I vote against,” he said.
Johnson said his main priorities are the city’s response and recovery to the coronavirus pandemic, public safety, transportation and utility oversight. If elected, Johnson wants to expand the mental health and homelessness response units within the Police Department, as well as get involved in the workforce development program.
“Perry sees providing basic services as a ceiling for what the city should be doing,” Johnson said. “To me, it should be a floor.”
Challenger Gregory, 24, also doesn’t believe Perry is representing his district.
“People do not feel represented,” said Gregory, who works in human resources for the Army Reserve and is a barista at Starbucks.
“I refuse to believe, actually, that this is as conservative a district as it has historically been stereotyped based on local turnout,” Gregory said. “In the District 10 boundaries, folks want a change. They see an opportunity for more solutions on a whole range of issues. We just need to get out there and increase that turnout.”
Gregory is skeptical of Perry’s perceived frugality with tax dollars, claiming he is “guarding tax dollars in a way that is actually harmful to the productivity and the benefit” of District 10.
“If we’re afraid of using any of those dollars to help people in our community who are facing those hardships or to improve our parks or to address serious needs ... then we have a serious issue,” Gregory said.
Perry disagreed with Gregory’s claims, saying, “We spend every dime of our taxpayers’ money in our yearly budget.”
“I’ve really been a leader on infrastructure and putting more toward particularly our streets,” Perry said, adding that he helped bring property tax relief with the homestead exemption program and supported filling vacant police positions to enhance safety in the community.
Gregory, if elected, would like to implement housing-first policies in San Antonio, as well as expand the homestead exemption, boost the coronavirus recovery response, support veterans and advocate for police accountability.
Norwood, who graduated from UTSA with a bachelor’s in political science in 2020, worked six years at Whataburger before leaving to care for her father in the last year of his life.
She said she decided to run after attending Black Lives Matter protests in the summer and finding that elected officials weren’t doing enough to address protesters’ concerns.
“I saw my current councilman refuse to stand in solidarity with the movement and knew we needed someone else to represent us,” she said.
Norwood said she would focus on the environment, creating fair housing policies and improving public safety.
She said Perry has brought improvements to the district, but not enough.
“Perry has focused on roads and sidewalks and brought a lot of infrastructure improvements to District 10, which was needed,” Norwood said. “However, I feel that there’s a lot of other things we need to address.”
Candidate Svehla said his focus would be on representing the working people of District 10.
“I believe representatives need to be as indistinguishable from those that they represent,” he said. “We do not need politicians who are disconnected from the realities of the world and do not understand the struggles of the working-class person.”
If elected, Svehla would prioritize vaccine distribution and coronavirus relief, environmental protections, police accountability, infrastructure and education.
“Education never seems to be at the forefront of campaign discussion,” said Svehla, who teaches social studies at Madison High School, according to the school’s website.
He said the educators and parents he has talked with on the campaign trail are concerned about that.
“They are frustrated that education is not being talked about during the most difficult year that education has ever faced,” Svehla said.
He said the city needs to do more to get technology to families that don’t have access and to better prepare students for careers that lead to higher-paying jobs.
“There are so many working-class people struggling to get by,” Svehla said. “We know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck, to have the economy affect how you live and to have to worry about everything you pay for.”
For his part, Perry said he puts his focus on public safety by supporting the fire and police departments, as well as on lowering property taxes and improving infrastructure.
“Those are always consistently the top three issues in District 10,” Perry said. “There are a lot of other issues, and I understand those and I’ve been working on those, but my commitment has always been to help satisfy their needs in those top three areas.”
Perry said he also wants to increase connectivity in parks and trails in his district and help the homeless population.
And he cites his two terms as a full-time council member as an advantage.
“I’ve certainly got the experience,” Perry said.
Early voting starts Monday. Election day is May 1.