Precinct 3 hopefuls tout defeat of Prop A in GOP race
Proposition A, the controversial bundle of criminal justice reforms that San Antonio voters resoundingly rejected in May, is enjoying a second life as a hot issue in the GOP primary race in Bexar County’s Precinct 3.
When County Commissioner Grant Moody named his “conservative wins for Bexar County” at Friday’s Bexar County Republican Women candidate forum, the defeat of the ballot measure was high on the list.
“Back in May, we helped lead the fight against Proposition A,” Moody told the club’s members at Anne Marie’s Event Center on the North Side. “And I don’t have to tell anybody in this room how disastrous that would have been for our community if that radical measure would have passed.”
Prop A is also central to opponent Christopher “Chris” Schuchardt’s political origin story. The trucking company owner said he launched a long-shot self-funded campaign for San Antonio mayor in the May election to help defeat Prop A.
As his current campaign website tells it, he ran with the “express mission of canvassing every corner of the city to get out the vote against Prop A.”
The ballot measure aimed to decriminalize abortion and lowlevel marijuana possession, ban police no-knock warrants and chokeholds, and create a “justice director” at City Hall to oversee criminal justice policies. The most divisive part was a provision requiring police to issue citations for select low-level, nonviolent crimes instead of making arrests.
Republicans and Democrats alike balked at Prop A, saying it would increase crime. Most of City Council, a nonpartisan body, came out against it. The San Antonio Police Officers’ Association
spent more than $1.8 million to defeat the measure.
The result: 72% of voters rejected the measure.
So why are the two Republicans vying to win their party’s primary nomination for Commissioners Court Precinct 3 talking about a dead issue — and a municipal one at that?
Because public safety is top of mind for most Republican primary voters.
“If nothing else, it helps to establish conservative bona fides,” said Kelton Morgan, a Republican political consultant who is not involved in either candidate’s campaign. “Law and order is at the center of just about any political message right now, so I think you see both candidates trying to stake out the strongest lawand-order position.”
Republican priorities
Voters may be more familiar with Prop A than with the role and responsibilities of Commissioners Court.
After all, the police union ran ads on TV and radio in heavy rotation, and “Vote Against Prop A” signs dotted front lawns and appeared on highway billboards throughout the city.
“Prop A was a serious threat to public safety,” said Morgan, who was the political consultant for the San Antonio Safe political action committee, which business leaders formed to fight the measure.
Talking about the proposition is also a way to bring the issue of abortion into a local race, said Sharon Navarro, a political science professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“It’s the hope that abortion, which is a social-religious issue, will mobilize some Republicans to come out and vote,” Navarro said.
Moody has touted his primary-election endorsement from Texas Alliance for Life, an Austin-based anti-abortion group that unsuccessfully sought to block Prop A from getting on the city ballot.
That Prop A was a city measure, and not a county one, may not matter to most Republican primary voters.
“Even though people, for the most part, certainly don’t have the level of indepth understanding about county government that they do about city government, they do know what issues are driving them to vote,” Morgan said.
Debra Villalba, who attended the Bexar County Republican Women forum, is most concerned about “crime, what’s going on in schools and immigration.” She plans to vote for Moody in part because he showed up for the Friday event. Schuchardt did not attend.
For Gary Chick, election integrity is the most burning issue — something he thinks Moody isn’t concerned enough about. Chick wants the county to count ballots by hand instead of relying on machines, which experts say would be a costly, time-consuming endeavor that would be less accurate and less secure.
Chick is leaning toward Schuchardt because Moody missed the Republican Party of Bexar County’s Feb. 1 debate — and Schuchardt didn’t.
“I kind of had my mind made up, but it does depend on what (Moody) would have said,” Chick said. “I haven’t paid as much attention to the county commissioners as I probably should.”
The five-member Commissioners Court is the governing body for the county. The county judge and four commissioners adopt the county’s annual budget (which nearly topped $3 billion this year) and set the property tax rates for the county and the Bexar County Hospital District. The court also oversees the building and maintenance of county roads, bridges, drainage projects, parks and county facilities.
But county government is fragmented, with a web of elected officials — such as the sheriff, district attorney, tax assessor-collector, district clerk and judges — whose budgets are set by Commissioners Court but are otherwise autonomous.
It’s confusing to many voters.
Precinct 3, which spans much of northern Bexar County, long has been the court’s sole Republicanheld seat. The winner of the March 5 primary will face Democrat Susan Korbel in November’s general election.
Moody beat Korbel with more than 53% of the vote in the November 2022 special election to fill the vacancy left when Republican Trish Deberry resigned to run — unsuccessfully — for county judge.
Dueling messages
In bold yellow text, one of Moody’s campaign mailers reads: “Grant Moody Fought to Defeat Radical Prop A.”
“When radicals sought to let criminals run free and undermine law enforcement, Republican Grant Moody said, ‘Not on My Watch,’ ” the other side reads.
Like all of his mailers, it lists his endorsements from the Deputy Sheriff’s Association of Bexar County, the San Antonio police union and the Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas.
He maintains that Prop A was a county issue because the city of San Antonio makes up a large portion of the county’s boundaries and because the jail, sheriff’s office, district attorney’s office and the criminal courts are funded out of the county budget.
“If you are going to implement soft-on-crime policies like Proposition A, then you’re going to have more crime and ultimately that’s going to make the criminal justice system more of a burden, more challenging and more costly,” said Moody, 43.
Schuchardt took aim at Moody’s mailer in a Jan. 26 campaign Facebook post that ridiculed the incumbent for being “so removed from the actual fight to defeat Prop A” that his mailer misstated the election as taking place in May 2022, not last year.
Schuchardt, 34, said he brings up Prop A as a way “to show the failures that I’ve seen with both our city and county government.”
“My hope is to create an atmosphere where the people who propose things like Prop A don’t feel like this is a fertile ground for something like that,” he said. His campaign website tells visitors, “It’s Time to Lead a Conservative Revolution in Bexar County.”
Schuchardt’s political outsider status extends to his voting record — at least when it comes to GOP primaries, in which he voted only in the March 2008 and March 2022 elections, according to his Texas voter history, a copy of which he gave to the San Antonio Express-news. He is a more regular general election voter.
“If those who have been showing up — who voted in every primary and have been in every (Republican) club meeting — didn’t have such abysmal records, I wouldn’t be here today,” Schuchardt said.
Moody contrasted his primary voting record with his challenger’s at the forum Friday.
“In this race, I’m the only candidate who voted in the 2010 Republican primary. I’m the only candidate who voted in the 2012 Republican primary. I’m the only candidate who voted in the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 Republican primary,” Moody told members of the Bexar County Republican Women club.
Moody has voted in every general election since 2004 and in every primary since 2010, according to voting records.
Kathy Smith, a Republican Women club member, said she hasn’t decided which one of these candidates — who have “totally contrasting” personalities — will get her vote. She’s been impressed by Schuchardt, particularly his success in business. On the other hand, Moody’s consistent primary voting record underscores his involvement and interest in politics, she said.
While Smith appreciates that both candidates were staunchly opposed to Prop A, “I had kind of filed that away as a win,” she said. “You know, move on to the next battle.”
She wants to hear about other things, such as how each candidate will “make as good a fight as you can and get as much as you can for our precinct,” she said. “It’s hard to be the minority (on the court), but that’s a fact of life here.”
‘Law and order’
Schuchardt’s focus on who fought harder against Prop A is a reflection of the fact that Moody is a “proven” candidate while Schuchardt is “conjectural,” Morgan said.
“Schuchardt is bringing it up solely because he needs something to establish that he actually has credibility on law-and-order issues, and he doesn’t,” Morgan said.
Though Moody has been in office for only 14 months, he can point to his first — and only — county budget as a “win” for public safety. The 2023-24 budget funds 50 new positions for the sheriff’s office, which included 36 patrol deputies, and 16 new constable deputies (four for each precinct). That was in addition to 12 new patrol deputies the court approved in April.
In August, Commissioners Court approved raises for deputies of about 9% on average.
Moody said he is focused on filling vacancies at the sheriff’s office in order to reduce the millions of dollars that the agency requests annually for overtime pay.
Schuchardt said he would prioritize better management within the sheriff ’s office.
“We all support law enforcement and want law and order, and I don’t necessarily think the only way you achieve that is through an open-ended checkbook,” he said. “One thing I would really push is, ‘If you want more money, start showing me better management.’ ”
In his campaign, Schuchardt has attacked Sheriff Javier Salazar and District Attorney Joe Gonzales, both Democrats. Only Salazar is up for reelection this year.