Monday Musings #9: 10 Big Questions for San Antonio’s Mayoral Candidates—See What We’re Asking
We’ve got questions for the 27 people who ponied up $100 to run for mayor in the May 3 city election. For those of you who sent in or shared questions, thank you. Several were placed into our final questionnaire, which we sent to the campaign contacts last week.
Let’s see who responds and what they have to say. We will share the responses as we receive them. Frankly, I would not expect all candidates to participate, and we certainly won’t be inviting anywhere near all of the candidates on to the bigcitysmalltown podcast in April. I expect six or seven of the candidates to mount credible campaigns. We will invite them into the podcast studio in pairs. As soon as we have confirmed episodes, we will share those with interested subscribers to this newsletter and our general podcast audience.
Our questions are below. I welcome your critical feedback, but at this juncture, we cannot offer to amend our questionnaire.
Thank you for reading, and please share this edition of Monday Musings with friends and family who share your interest in city elections.
Questions here.
Mayoral Candidate Survey
- What qualifications support your bid for the job as mayor of San Antonio, and how are you reaching registered voters with a history of participating in local elections? (Please cite campaign fundraising, media buys, community events, mailers, etc.)
- What endorsements, if any, have you garnered?
- What programs and priorities initiated under Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s four terms in office would you continue and/or change? Which ones would you discontinue?
- What are your priorities for the city’s 2027 bond, which will be determined in 2026 by the new mayor and city council members?
- Do you support the city’s proposed public-private investments in Project Marvel, or do you oppose them? If you support Project Marvel, what do you think is a fair private/public split on building a new Spurs arena in Hemisfair?
- What are your economic development and job growth strategies? Since the pandemic, more than 150 corporations have moved their headquarters to Texas, yet San Antonio has not shared significantly in convincing those companies to come here. How can we change that?
- San Antonians do worry that as the city grows it could lose its unique cultural identity, much as Austin is no longer recognizable, with many forced out by rising housing and living costs. What will you do to grow the city’s job base while making sure what makes San Antonio special is not lost?
- San Antonio has faced record heat, extreme drought conditions, and episodes like Winter Storm Uri, yet city leaders have largely failed to implement the 2019 Climate Action & Adaptation Plan. Federal and state political leaders largely ignore climate change and are rapidly defunding renewable energy projects while subsidizing the oil and gas industry. What is your position on this critical issue?
- San Antonio is experiencing worsening traffic congestion and air quality, and rising incidence of asthma and other bronchial ailments in adults and children. How do you plan to improve mobility in the city while balancing affordability and sustainability? What role should alternative transportation options play?
- Describe one new idea you have for accelerating the city's trajectory as a destination for visitors, conventions, and people moving here for opportunities?
Bob Rivard
Host, bigcitysmalltown
Robert “Bob” Rivard is a veteran American journalist whose 46-year career has taken him across Texas, Latin America, and beyond. He co-founded the Rivard Report (later named the San Antonio Report) with his wife, Monika Maeckle, in 2012, building it into the city’s leading nonprofit news organization before retiring in 2022.
Bob has worked for five Texas newspapers, beginning his career on the border at the Brownsville Herald, then moving to the Corpus Christi Caller, the Dallas Times-Herald, and later serving as a foreign correspondent and chief of correspondents for Newsweek. He returned to Texas as senior editor of the San Antonio Light before becoming executive editor of the San Antonio Express-News (1997–2011).
His journalism has earned widespread recognition, including being named Editor & Publisher’s “Editor of the Year” in 2000 and receiving the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Award from Columbia University for his reporting on Latin America and the U.S.-Mexico border.
He is the author of Trail of Feathers, a nonfiction book chronicling the disappearance and murder of journalist Philip True in Mexico’s Sierra Madre. The book, published by Public Affairs in 2005, was widely reviewed, excerpted in Esquire, and selected by People magazine as one of five recommended nonfiction works that year.
Bob now hosts bigcitysmalltown, a podcast featuring the people shaping San Antonio’s future. He and Monika live in Southtown, where she runs the Texas Butterfly Ranch blog and previously founded the annual San Antonio Monarch Butterfly and Pol… Read More
