Bexar County Democratic Party Chair Monica Ramirez Alcántara won reelection Tuesday night while Republican Kris Coons defeated two opponents to become the next county GOP leader.
“We do this with heart and we do this to ensure that we have great Democrats running Bexar County,” Alcántara told a crowd of supporters at Dave & Buster’s.
With most of the vote counted, Alcántara held a roughly 40-point lead over Sandragrace Martinez, a family counselor who ran unsuccessfully for City Council in District 7 last year and made it to a runoff in the 2022 Democratic primary for Texas Land Commissioner.
“Hard work over the past six years” got her to Tuesday night, Alcántara said. As county party chair, she said she’s built a foundation of support for candidates and trainings on how to get people to vote.
In the Republican party chair race, Coons, the past president of the Bexar County Republican Women, had about 52% of the vote, ahead of Robert Flores, a former lobbyist who last year ran unsuccessfully for City Council in District 10, with 34%.
Jacinto “Chinto” Martinez, a Southsider and print shop owner, took 14%.
“I am so ready to reinvigorate and re-energize the grassroots of the Republican Party,” Coons said Tuesday night. “San Antonio is going to end up being the jewel of Texas for the Republican Party, and I say that optimistically, because obviously we have an uphill battle.”
Coons’ father was a City Councilman in Monroe, Louisiana, and her mother was a state House representative, but she spent her professional career in retail management, traveling for a company that sold maternity wear.
“They sent me in to turn around the stores [that were struggling],” Coons said, adding she hopes the experience will help her as party chair.
The leadership role was open because current Republican Party of Bexar County Chair Jeff McManus did not seek reelection.
County party chairs oversee local party operations, including candidate filing and primary elections, and the Democratic and Republican party chairs hold seats on the boards tasked with hiring and overseeing the county elections administrator.
The new leaders will take over June 17, after the results of the primary runoff have been canvassed.
In recent years, both of the parties’ county leadership roles have drawn spirited disagreements among party faithful.
McManus unseated an incumbent for the role in 2022, putting the party back in the hands of a leader who hoped to purge its moderates.
McManus tried to censure two sitting Republicans, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, and when that effort failed, endorsed a slate of GOP primary challengers. That approach mirrors the Republican Party of Texas, which will hold its convention in San Antonio in May, but all of the candidates seeking to replace McManus said they hoped to lead the party in a more inclusive direction.
“It’s been a struggle with our donors, with getting great qualified candidates… because they’re afraid. So we’re having to rebuild a lot of that,” Coons said in an interview last month. “They need to know that they can have a cup of coffee and not worry about getting censured the next week.”
Ongoing disputes among Democrats
On the Democratic side, Alcántara also came into the role hoping to get rid of Democratic candidates that didn’t embody progressive values, and has faced pushback from those who want the party to maintain its appeal with older, socially conservative Democrats.
The litigation paralegal unseated longtime party leader Manuel Medina in 2018, who was accused of mingling the role with his political consulting work, but some of Medina’s political allies had a hard time accepting the loss.
Leading up to this race Alcántara’s critics attacked her for not filing campaign finance reports with the state and accused her of using campaign funds for personal travel. They’ve vowed to continue pursuing the issue even if she’s reelected.
Alcántara’s supporters, meanwhile, argue that she’s led the party through some of its most successful years.
“With Chairwoman Monica Ramirez Alcántara at the helm, all we have done is win,” Sheriff Javier Salazar, who shares a political consultant with Alcántara, said at a gathering with the Communications Workers of America on Saturday.
