San Antonio's new mayor

Phil Hardberger
Originally uploaded by mwthomas87.

Well I called it wrong way back when this city election was just getting started. I assumed as many people probably did that Julian Castro would sweep to victory in the San Antonio mayoral contest. But late last night he fell short by 3,829 votes in a squeaker of an election.
One of those votes that put Phil Hardberger over the top was mine. While I had assumed that Castro would probably win, I remained undecided up until the fiasco involving the city manager candidate from Phoenix. Castro’s lead role in derailing Sheryl Sculley's bid for the city manager job at the last moment is the point where he lost my vote. By joining in with the short-sighted mob mentality that harangued over the trivial details of Sculley’s compensation package, I lost faith in Castro as someone with a big-picture view of San Antonio.

But Castro supporters should not despair. All they need to do is wait four years and thanks to San Antonio’s idiotic term limits policy he can take the mayor’s job then. That is unless he decides to run for the congressional seat that Henry Bonilla will be vacating when he runs for the Senate seat that Kay Baily Hutchison will be giving up to challenge Rick Perry in the 2006 governor's race.

In the meantime, we have a new mayor who has the distinction of being both a long-time San Antonio political figure and an outsider to city government. I wish him well and hope that he has a relatively scandal-free term in office.