SAN ANTONIO – For two and a half years, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai and former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg overlapped as the heads of their respective local governments.
Now, it’s their political ambitions taking up the same space. Less than six months after leaving San Antonio City Hall, Nirenberg announced his intention to run for Sakai’s office in Paul Elizondo Tower.
In blue-leaning Bexar County, their matchup in the March 3 Democratic primary is likely to be the main event in the 2026 race for Bexar County judge.
It’s a political challenge the first-term county judge seemed almost offended by at a Friday morning Democratic candidate forum hosted by the Metro SA Chamber.
Watch the full candidate forum below:
“I’ll tell you what the elephant in the room is: Why is my opponent running against me?” Sakai asked, sitting next to Nirenberg at a table in Alamo Colleges District headquarters.
The “two good, strong Democrats,” as Sakai described Nirenberg and himself, sparred for close to an hour in their most high-profile debate or forum so far.
Shortly before Sakai’s “elephant” comment, Nirenberg addressed a pachyderm of his own.
“Peter Sakai is a good and decent man,” Nirenberg said. “I have great admiration for the work that he did as a children’s court judge, but this is a chief executive role of a 5,000-member organization that has to collaborate with dozens of elected officials and jurisdictions way far outside of the city’s reach."
Sakai called himself a “proven leader,” and told the crowd the county needs to stay the course.
“This isn’t the moment for experimentation. It’s the moment for steady, continued stewardship,” he said.
Nirenberg said it’s time to change things up.
“Right now in Bexar County, we are reacting to every issue,” he said. “Critical systems that the Bexar County government oversees that affect your daily life are in a state of disarray.”
It wasn’t just county government they argued over. Sakai knocked Nirenberg for one of the signature initiatives of his eight years as mayor: the $237 million Ready to Work job training program.
“I’m going to put on record: The Ready to Work program has not created a return of investment. The projected goals have not been met,” Sakai said.
Estimates ahead of the 2020 election that temporarily funneled a 1/8 cent sales tax toward the idea focused on 10,000 people getting training every year of a four-year program, for a total of “up to 40,000″ people served.
But after voters had approved the plan, the city presented a different set of goals: 39,000 people interviewed, 28,000 enrolled in approved training, and 15,600 placed in approved jobs.
The city announced the opening of enrollment in May 2022. As of Friday, a city dashboard showed only 14,800 had been enrolled in training, and 5,800 had completed it.
A little under 3,700 of those graduates had been placed in an approved job.
Nirenberg acknowledged a “slow start” for the program but continued to defend it.
“There are 15,000 plus people in the pipeline. This program is moving. It is changing the direction of lives and this economy,” he said.
Even after the debate, the two candidates had pointed words about each other’s records.
“I come up with solutions,” Sakai told KSAT. “The mayor speaks very well and articulate, but he provided no solutions of what he did as mayor.”
Meanwhile, Nirenberg told KSAT that “Judge Sakai is not performing.”
“We have not seen improvements on the issues that we were talking about three years ago,” he said.
The primary election is less than six weeks away, March 3, with early voting starting Feb. 17 and ending Feb. 27.
Patrick Von Dohlen is the sole candidate in the Republican primary and will face either Sakai or Nirenberg in the Nov. 3 general election.
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