SAN ANTONIO – Power struggles with the city council, a debate with a Spurs fan dressed like Jesus, passing a $4 billion budget while tackling a growing deficit, and losing a collection of high-profile votes might not seem to meet the definition of “fun.”
Still, it’s the one word Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones chose to describe her first 100 days leading San Antonio - a benchmark she hit Thursday.
“Hey, when you’re serving the people, right, and you know what you’re focused on,” Jones said. “There’s a lot at stake, I think.”
Jones — a former Air Force officer, Under Secretary of the Air Force, and two-time congressional candidate — was sworn into her first elected position on June 18. She and the new city council immediately faced a budget shortfall and a quick turnaround on a plan to fund a $1.3 billion Spurs arena.
Beyond that, Jones had repeatedly butted heads with council members who say she’s exceeding her authority and have successfully side-stepped her multiple times to force a vote or debate.
She has also faced an ethics complaint, experienced multiple staff turnovers and does not appear to have checked off many of the priorities she laid out for her first 100 days during the campaign.
“For me, success looks like ... at the end of the day, can I look in the mirror and say, ‘did you do everything you could possibly do for your community?’ And I know at the (end) of every single day I can say, ‘yes, I did,’ right?” Jones said in a sit-down interview with KSAT.
“Whether it’s asking tough questions, doing the due diligence to make sure that our investments make sense, asking tough question(s) and also just, ‘hey, is this gonna be implemented and have the effect that we think it should or it could,’ right?”
You can watch the full interview with Mayor Jones in the video player below.
Though she has lost multiple high-profile votes, Jones’ supporters appear to appreciate her taking a hard stand, especially regarding the Spurs arena deal.
Jones wanted to pump the brakes on a funding plan to allow time for a new, “independent” economic analysis, but couldn’t get traction among the rest of the council.
“I’m with Mayor Gina,” wrote a commenter under a social media post about Jones losing a vote 4-7 for a “strategic pause” on a Spurs funding deal.
“She’s simply looking out for what’s best for the city,” wrote another.
Ahead of the vote during the Aug. 21 meeting, some public speakers thanked Jones directly.
“In all the time I’ve been doing this work, I’ve never had a mayor who stood up for us,” Leticia Vela said during her remarks from the podium.
However, a pair of political consultants who have worked with the previous four mayors between them called Jones’ performance in the first 100 days “disappointing at best” and "a rocky road filled with unforced errors."
Christian Archer ran mayoral campaigns for Phil Hardberger and Julian Castro and helped Ivy Taylor and Ron Nirenberg with bond and ballot initiatives. Jones’ definition of success, he said, is ”not how it works.”
“You don’t just get to look in the mirror and say, ‘well, I lost every single vote. My agenda is dead on arrival,’ and all of these other things, and I’m just going to throw my hands up and say, ‘well, I can look myself in the mirror.’ No, you have to look 1.4 million people in the eye,” Archer said.
Both Archer and Kelton Morgan — who was chief strategist for Ron Nirenberg’s first two mayoral campaigns as well as one of Jones’ opponents, Beto Altamirano — pointed to Jones’ friction with her fellow council members as a liability.
In a weak-mayor system of government like San Antonio’s, where the city manager wields most of the administrative power and the mayor’s vote is equal to the other 10 council members’, both men say Jones needs allies, of which she is short.
“One of the criticisms when she was running for mayor was that she doesn’t know anything about municipal politics; she doesn’t know how city government works. I think the first 100 days has proven that to be true,” Morgan said.
“I think the next 1,200 days or 1,400 days, whatever, is going to be very difficult without just a hard reset,” he said.
Timeline: A look at Gina Ortiz Jones’ term as San Antonio mayor so far
Unfulfilled promises?
During the campaign, Jones outlined a list of 14 priorities for her first 100 days, many of which called for tangible results.
Among them were updating the city’s Tenant’s Bill of Rights, developing a program to help teachers, nurses, and others afford to live within the city, identifying possible funding to expand Pre-K 4 SA, finding ways to dramatically increase job placement rates in the Ready to Work program, and making a plan to repurpose recently-closed schools.
But in her interview with KSAT, the only priority Jones noted as being definitively completed was a change to the city’s process for handling non-disclosure agreements — a talking point that arose from the use of NDAs during the secretive, initial planning phases of Project Marvel.
A spokeswoman for the mayor’s office also pointed to progress on a priority to “elevate city-wide resources to help curb online financial senior abuse.” The city had partnered with the FBI to educate seniors on fraud, the spokeswoman said, and the federal agency had made a presentation during a town hall.
Asked about which of her priorities she had tackled, Jones said a “good leader” has a plan but “also recognizes when priorities shift, and when needs change in the community, you adjust accordingly.”
The mayor seemed to suggest the available data wasn’t detailed enough to fully pursue some of the priorities yet.
“Especially in tough fiscal environments, you need that data to understand, ‘if I had one more dollar, where would I get the highest rate of return?’” she said. “And whether that is on, you know, Pre-K 4 SA or whether on that’s looking at (an) affordable housing project.”
She also said the new Educational Opportunities Committee she established could tackle educational outcomes “more holistically.”
Spurs arena
Project Marvel, and the $1.3 billion Spurs arena at the center of the proposed sports and entertainment district, loomed large over Jones’ early days.
Developed in secret for more than a year-and-a-half before being publicly presented to the previous city council in November 2024, the multi-billion-dollar plan to overhaul Hemisfair with new and expanded venues and private development was a polarizing campaign issue.
By the time Jones and the new council had a public meeting about the project on Aug. 6, the outline for a funding deal had been largely sketched out by Spurs officials and city staff — though not the final price tag.
Jones spent the next two weeks pushing for an “independent” economic analysis of the project and said the city should pause negotiations on a deal until it could obtain that analysis and hold numerous community feedback meetings.
The economic impact analysis on the arena was performed by a consultant retained by the Spurs, and the city’s consultant for the larger Project Marvel is controlled by an investment group that has a minority ownership stake in the team.
As she prepared for an Aug. 21 vote on the deal, the mayor attempted to turn up the heat on her fellow council members. She urged San Antonians to contact their council member and pressure them to support a pause, even telling District 10 Councilman Marc Whyte’s constituents during his own town hall.
She also crashed a news conference on the City Hall steps hosted by a group of supporters of the Spurs arena deal, which resulted in one of the most enduring images of her term so far: a back-and-forth with the Spurs superfan known as “Spurs Jesus.”
At the same conference, the mayor invoked the late activist mother of Councilwoman Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8), who had been supportive of continuing negotiations on the term sheet.
“What would Choco Meza be doing right now?" she asked.
Ultimately, Jones only rallied three other votes in her attempt for a “strategic pause:” Interim Councilman Leo Castillo-Anguiano (D2), Councilwoman Teri Castillo (D5), and Councilman Ric Galvan (D6).
The voting bloc first lost a 4-7 vote calling for a pause, and quickly lost another 7-4 attempt to stop the current funding deal from moving ahead.
That vote approved a non-binding set of terms that includes the city chipping in up to $489 million of the arena’s construction costs, but Jones also wants voters to have the final say, saying the city should hold a bond election — presumably next year.
“The benefit of that is by the time we would do that, we would have the benefit (of) the independent economic assessment, and two, we’d have a much clearer idea of the economic environment that we’re in,” she said.
Though Spurs officials have said they are not open to a revenue-sharing agreement with the city under the current structure of the deal, Jones continues to push for it.
“We have to ask,” the mayor said when asked if she saw a path to actually getting it into the deal.
“It does not make sense that we’ve got this wonderful opportunity here that is going to generate a lot of money for people, that we would (not) also ask for our fair share of that, in light of all the needs that have in our community: law enforcement, senior centers, libraries, public health,” Jones said.
Despite her critical remarks about the current funding deal, Jones has not taken a public stance on a countywide vote in November for Bexar County’s share of the arena’s price tag, which is worth up to $311 million.
Voters must approve the use and partial increase of a combination tax on hotel stays and car rentals for the current arena funding structure to work. If the proposition were to fail, the deal would collapse.
The mayor laughed at KSAT’s question on whether she was worried about being the scapegoat in that situation.
“No. I am not,” she said.
Clashes with council
It took less than a month to set up the first showdown with council members.
In a July 14 memo, Jones outlined what she called “efficiencies” in the Council Consideration Request (CCR) process — one of the main avenues council members use to advance policy proposals.
But three returning council members from across the political spectrum, Castillo, Whyte, and Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), pushed back.
The previous council had already updated the process, they said, and told Jones to go through the “proper channels” with a vote by the full council if she wanted to update it.
When Jones did not schedule a meeting as they had asked, the trio forced one using a “three-signature memo.”
Though council members had previously used it only sparingly, the three-signature memo quickly became a go-to tool for side-stepping Jones.
After the resulting Aug. 13 meeting, in which she was the clear minority, Jones appeared to back off her changes. However, she also did not assign any of the three to permanent committee chair positions, despite giving leadership spots to some new members.
But the issue reared up again when Jones had a new ordinance on fines for dumping animals removed from an agenda.
The idea had come out of a proposal from before she and the other new members were sworn in, and the mayor wanted all previous proposals to go through the Governance Committee, which she controls, before they could move ahead.
The same trio of council members quickly used another three-signature memo to force a vote the next week anyway, in which Jones was the only dissenting vote.
The mayor says she is asking for “due diligence,” and pointed to the confusion over the ordinance, which turned out to be much narrower than originally described by city staff or understood by at least some council members.
“I think due diligence, in how I grew up, in the community that I grew up, that is just doing your homework, making sure you’re talking to the stakeholders, making sure that the thing that you’re talking about is going to work as intended,” Jones said.
Joined by Councilwoman Misty Spears (D9), the same trio forced yet another vote the next week, Sep. 18, to expressly allow CCRs to move forward, even after a change in the council, and to require a full council vote for any further changes to the ordinance.
This time, Jones lost 9-2, with only Councilman Edward Mungia (D6) joining her.
‘An embarrassment’
Archer thinks Jones’ leadership style so far is more reminiscent of her military background, with an expectation that “I’m the leader and everybody listens beneath me,” which is “not the way this form of government works.”
He called the mayor’s actions with the CCR fight “unforced errors.”
Angering members like Castillo or Alderete Gavito, whom Archer said should be “philosophically aligned” with the mayor, to the point that they would rebel and force a vote, is “an embarrassment,” he said.
KSAT asked the consultant whether Jones might simply be adopting a different strategy and approach to the job.
“Well, she’s losing. And she’s losing on almost every major vote that has had the public’s attention. And she’s not losing them by close votes,“ Archer said.
“And so I don’t understand the strategy, if that’s a strategy; it’s a bad one."
Morgan also framed Castillo as someone who should be a “natural ally” for the mayor, and said he doesn’t recall ever seeing a mayor on the losing side of a 10-1 vote.
“So she (Jones) has got to build relationships and build coalitions to be able to get the things done that she wants to do,” he said. “Otherwise, the next 1,400 days is gonna look just like the first 100.”
Jones would not say during her interview whether she was taking any steps to repair relationships with council members. And, when pressed on how she planned to “get to six” to move forward with her own agenda, she said, “We’re going to be focused on the things that move our city forward.”
"I think when we’re focused on work, when we focus on delivering for San Antonio, we will find that common ground," she said.
And while Jones said she was proud of “pushing the conversations on several issues in ways that need to be pushed,” she did not express any regrets.
Asked at the end of the 21-minute interview if there was anything she wished she could redo from her first 100 days, Jones gave her shortest answer.
“No.”