Homegrown tech leader Beto Altamirano is gearing up to join San Antonio’s open 2025 mayoral race after months of meeting privately with political operatives and business leaders.
Altamirano is best known for creating the city’s first digital service request platform — a precursor to the 311 app — and now runs an artificial intelligence company.
An Eventbrite invitation to a “special announcement” party at the Friendly Spot on June 1 shows a smiling Altamirano against a blue background with his name in red and white script, inviting community members to “get ready to meet Beto and hear his vision for our city.”
“This in-person event is a great opportunity to show your support and learn more about Beto’s plans for our community,” the invitation says.
Though he wouldn’t confirm the nature of that announcement when reached by phone Wednesday, Altamirano did speak about his vision for San Antonio in unvarnished terms.
“I look at what’s happening today in City Hall and I get frustrated,” Altamirano said. “I think my set of skills being an executive at a company will fit well in an environment where you need to build the right team, go after the right projects, gain momentum, talk about a vision forward for the city of San Antonio, but most importantly, moderate and engage the community on a conversation about what they would like to see happen.”
Two sources reached by the San Antonio Report this week who were familiar with Altamirano’s plans referred to the June 1 event as a 2025 mayoral campaign kickoff.
Among Altamirano’s early supporters, there’s enthusiasm for a candidate they believe would bring private-sector experience to a mayoral race that’s so far been dominated by City Hall insiders.
The contest to replace term-limited Mayor Ron Nirenberg currently includes two city council members, Manny Pelaez (D8) and John Courage (D9). Two others, Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6) and Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4) have said they’re considering the race.
Altamirano has been taken under the wing of Reed Williams, a retired oil and gas executive and former District 8 councilman, who wields influence in the business community and has introduced him to a network of other power players. That relationship comes after Altamirano spent years building connections on the left as a political organizer and staffer for Democratic candidates and officeholders.
Williams said he had low expectations when a mutual connection first asked him to meet with Altamirano, but came away convinced the millennial had the right skills to be able to work with the City Council, combined with the business experience needed to avoid policy decisions that would be too onerous on employers.
“I thought it’d be 30 minutes. I was there three hours,” Williams recalled of their first meeting. “He’s young, but it’s time my older generation starts trusting younger people, and he’s done a lot.”
Altamirano, 34, grew up in Mission, Texas, studied government at the University of Texas and received a master’s degree in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.
He’s been involved with a host of nonprofits and other groups that seek to encourage San Antonio’s growing tech industry, after his own first venture, a company called Cityflag, started out of Geekdom.
Before that business, Altamirano had started down the path of a career in politics. His father was deported when he was 17, and he became a campus organizer for Democrat Bill White’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign, as well as former President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
He went on to work in the Texas Legislature, the U.S. Senate and for the United States Trade Representative’s office.
In a 2020 Forbes interview, Altamirano seemed to hint his ambitions had been long in the making. He described Cityflag’s work as “technology that allows people to better connect with their city governments.”
He went on to say that young people should get more involved in politics, starting with what they can accomplish in their “backyard.”
“Sometimes we think that in order to have an impact or change in the world, we have to think at the macro level, and that’s not the reality,” he said in the video interview. “You need to think locally. That’s how you truly enact change.”
