SAN ANTONIO — Ron Nirenberg rode a wave of support to victory Saturday night as he captured his fourth and final term as San Antonio mayor.
Nirenberg was supported by 60.2 percent of early voters, and that total held up throughout the night. His closest challenger, Christopher Schuchardt, had 23.1 percent of the early votes.
Nirenberg has held the mayoral office since 2017 and was being challenged by several candidates looking to up-end his re-election bid.
There were eight challengers in all, though none carried the cache of Greg Brockhouse, who was Nirenberg's strongest opponent at the polls in the last two municipal elections. He sat out this year.
Jon Taylor, chair of political science at UTSA, previously said it would have taken an upset "of biblical proportions" for Nirenberg to lose.
"His margin of victory may depend as much on voter turnout, incumbency and name recognition as much as anything else," Taylor said in the days leading up to Saturday's election, citing his "substantial war chest, the support of the business community and high marks for his leadership during COVID-19" as factors driving a likely victory.
Nirenberg filed for re-election in late January, at the tail-end of a third term that saw him leading the community through the latter stages of a tumultuous pandemic while emphasizing initiatives to build up the Alamo City workforce, help small business recovering from COVID-19 and develop more affordable housing.
Earlier this spring, he came out in opposition of perhaps the most-discussed item on the ballot: Proposition A, an omnibus measure that looks to, among other things, have law enforcement issue citations for low-level theft offenses; end criminal enforcement of abortion; codify the city's current cite-and-release policy; and establish a justice director position in San Antonio. He called it "problematic" that Prop A collects "so many issues into one single proposition, forcing people to vote up or down one time." The ballot measure failed by a nearly 3-to-1 margin Saturday.
Nirenberg's latest victory is historic, putting him in line to become the first person since Henry Cisneros in the '80s to serve four straight terms as San Antonio mayor. (Lila Cockrell served a fourth and final term from 1989 to 1991, having previously held office from 1975 to 1981.)
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