When Democrat Rebeca Clay-Flores defeated an incumbent to win a seat on the Bexar County Commissioners Court in 2020, she arrived with few connections from her campaign or previous jobs.
Clay-Flores raised just $32,000 for that long-shot race against a well-funded commissioner from her own party and received almost no attention from local political leaders.
Now headed into her first reelection race, the onetime insurgent has become a formidable incumbent whose relationships and fundraising ability have helped keep any of her five Democratic challengers from gaining much traction as the March 5 primary approaches.
As of Jan. 25, the last date covered by the most recent campaign finance reports, Clay-Flores had more than a half a million dollars in the bank. Her best-funded opponent, former nonprofit leader Amanda Gonzalez, who has the backing of the Deputy Sheriff’s Association of Bexar County, reported $9,300 on hand.
While a runoff is still entirely possible, political watchers say none of the challengers have picked up much momentum, in part because of Clay-Flores’ success navigating the county’s power structures.
“[Her 2020 race] was a stunning victory and she did it with very few resources, so nobody really knew her, myself included,” former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff said. “But she had a stunning academic background … so I knew she was going to be bright, and it didn’t take her long to assimilate.”
An unusual rise
Clay-Flores grew up on San Antonio’s South Side, where her family was at times homeless when she was a child. She attended Princeton University on a scholarship, received a master’s degree in education from Harvard and spent most of her career teaching before going to work for the city’s Metropolitan Health District.
In her campaign for Commissioners Court, Clay-Flores promised to bring a new perspective to a body that had never elected a woman of color. But after defeating four-term incumbent Sergio “Chico” Rodriguez in a runoff with more than 60% of the vote, her policy objectives remained a mystery to colleagues and staff.
“She was independent,” Wolff said. “And people didn’t really know her philosophy.”
Longtime observers of the court suspected Clay-Flores would team up with Commissioner Tommy Calvert (Pct. 4), who also represents some of the county’s most economically disadvantaged residents and has long butted heads with county leaders over spending priorities. Calvert’s father, community organizer T.C. Calvert, was one of Clay-Flores’ few well-known supporters during her campaign.
But shortly after taking office, Clay-Flores found herself in closer alignment with Wolff.
In April 2021 Gov. Greg Abbott was seeking to shut down a county-run shelter for unaccompanied migrant youth, claiming they were being abused by facility staff. Clay-Flores, who started a Bible study at the facility, crashed the governor’s press conference and got him to tour the facility.
No abuse allegations were ever substantiated, and Clay-Flores defended the county’s work in a host of English and Spanish-language TV interviews.
“The governor was giving us a lot of trouble and saying a lot of horrible things, and she went out there and handled it,” Wolff said in a recent interview. “She gained my enduring admiration for standing up and doing the right thing during a difficult time politically for me, as well as a difficult time for the migrants.”
Going forward, Clay-Flores had the ear of Wolff, a seasoned political leader who was both invested in her success and known for keeping a tight grip over county operations. While Calvert continued trying to influence the county from the outside, Clay-Flores began learning to navigate the system.
Those efforts seem to have paid off. Her precinct, which is the largest in square miles and spans the western and southern parts of the county, now enjoys the largest share of the county’s capital budget, while Calvert ended the most recent budget cycle without funding for some of his top priorities, including an advanced manufacturing training center he accused county staff of sidelining.
In an interview after the 2024 budget vote, Clay-Flores acknowledged she was initially wary of the power wielded by Wolff and County Manager David Smith in county government, based on what she’d heard from the critics.
“I was pleasantly surprised to see that all those things that people were trying to put in my ear were wrong,” Clay-Flores said.
Long list of challengers
That change in perspective has earned Clay-Flores some vocal critics who say she’s lost sight of bigger plans to shake up the system.
When new Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai was elected in 2022, he and Calvert both expressed a desire to shift authority away from county staff but encountered pushback from other commissioners, including Clay-Flores, who urged commissioners to be cautious about overriding an experienced budget staff.
At a Sept. 11 budget work session T.C. Calvert and dozens of community members lobbied the county to fund projects that didn’t make it into the budget and criticized Clay-Flores for not doing more to help them.
“We have no problem, Sister Rebecca Clay-Flores, with you getting the bulk of the money … because we understand that the southern sector of this city has been redlined,” T.C. Calvert said at the meeting. “But so has Precinct 4, so you and Tommy have got to work together.”
At a candidate forum hosted by the Tejano Democrats in November, those concerns were echoed by several of Clay-Flores’ opponents. South San Antonio ISD Trustee Ernesto Arrellano Jr. and marketing professional Lawson Alaniz-Picasso said they had been attending meetings hosted by Calvert to investigate the county budget.
”We have to be able to say as a county commissioner, I’m making the decisions on what this [budget] looks like, and that authority should go back to the county commissioners, not the county manager,” Alaniz-Picasso said. “If we have the authority to say what’s going on with the budget, then guess who else has the authority? The community.”
The crowded field also includes Anna Uriegas Bustamante, a popular Southside High School music teacher who serves on the Alamo Colleges District board, and Isamel Garcia, a transportation specialist.
Clay-Flores did not attend the forum. But the Tejano Democrats group, which includes some of her toughest critics, ultimately declined to make an endorsement in the race.
“One of the complaints is that [Clay-Flores] doesn’t have much communication with the people,” Tejano Democrats Chair Emilio Peña said. “People don’t know what she’s doing personally, and there’s a lack of information” from her office.
A quiet candidate
Clay-Flores has indeed weathered criticism for her blunt communication style as a commissioner.
Careful to guard her privacy, she is slow to build trust with newcomers. Her chief of staff, Frankie Gonzales-Wolfe, attended Brackenridge High School with Clay-Flores, and her staff includes several other longtime friends. (Special Projects and Operations Director Marcus Primm came with her from the city, and Outreach and Technology Director Patty Hernandez has known Clay-Flores for many years)
As the dynamics on the Commissioners Court have shifted with the arrival of Sakai and a new Precinct 3 commissioner, Grant Moody, Clay-Flores has at times vented frustration about efforts to change its structure.
At one particularly tense April 2023 meeting, she voiced opposition to the addition of more public budget meetings, telling colleagues that “while I love being county commissioner, Commissioners Court days are my least favorite day.”
The comments have since been picked up by some of her challengers, including Gonzalez, who told the Tejano Democrats her own qualifications for the job include having “the temperament to serve.”
In an interview, Clay-Flores said she puts tremendous effort into studying county procedures and researching agenda items ahead of time and expects fellow commissioners to do the same.
“Commissioners court day should be: We’ve done our homework, we say what we need to say, we vote, and we get back into the community,” she said.
Among county staff and lobbyists who work with her frequently, many say they have learned to appreciate Clay-Flores’ direct, no-nonsense approach.
Though she’s known for asking tough, intimidating questions, they know that once she is on board with a project, she’ll put everything she has into getting it across the finish line.
For example, last year she helped secure a complicated funding path for installing sewer in Von Ormy, involving close coordination with U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales’ office. Afterwards Rob Killen, a land use attorney who was involved with the project, praised her work finding and championing a creative solution to a “prohibitively expensive” problem.
Clay-Flores has also won over some community leaders who praise her for running a far more organized and responsive office than her predecessor.
“[She] has been able to build quite an impressive résumé, and even though I don’t think that communication is something that comes naturally to her, or that she comes off as a little guarded, she obviously has overcome that,” said Jeff Hunt, president of the Roosevelt Park Neighborhood Association.
“In some ways, it makes me even more impressed with her,” he said.
Priorities revealed
The policies and projects Clay-Flores has championed as commissioner often are deeply personal to her and occasionally revealing.
In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting, she led an effort to direct federal COVID relief money toward mental health services for public school students, something she said she wished had been available when she herself was a struggling young person. She’s also been an outspoken proponent of the county funding performing arts, noting the benefit to school children from backgrounds like her own who wouldn’t otherwise have access to it.
During a March 2023 discussion about county-funded legal resources for migrants facing deportation, Clay-Flores, a supporter of the idea, told colleagues the highlight of her week is leading a worship service every Saturday at the city’s migrant resource center.
While describing plans for a new county park in her precinct, Clay-Flores spoke passionately about the need for more preventative and mental health resources for the South Side. She walks outside for 45 minutes every day, rain or shine: “That’s how important preventative health is to me personally.”
Longtime civil rights leader Rosie Castro said she has been impressed by Clay-Flores’ work ethic since she was elected and now serves as treasurer for the commissioner’s reelection campaign.
“It takes a lot of work to be able to know the budget and get things done,” Castro said. “She was brave when nobody else thought they could challenge someone who had been there so long.”
