Rocky Start: Gina Ortiz Jones' first 100 days as San Antonio mayor were anything but ordinary

Gina Ortiz Jones was elected mayor after serving as the Biden administration’s Under Secretary of the Air Force. Credit: Public Domain / U.S. Air Force

First-term Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones promised to bring radical change to City Hall during her first 100 days in office.

Jones hit that milestone Sept. 25, and her tenure has certainly been rocky and unconventional, according to political analysts.

Some worry she squandered both time and goodwill on unnecessary fights with City Council. Others give her better marks, saying the former Under Secretary of the Air Force and two-time Democratic congressional candidate is experiencing a learning curve as she tries to get a better handle on city politics.

Either way, Jones has so far missed the mark on several key promises she said she’d achieve during her first 100 days. For example, she pledged to streamline the approval process for low-income housing projects, develop a home-ownership program for frontline workers and update the city’s Tenant Bill of Rights, according to her mayoral campaign website.

She also said she’d boost Pre-K 4 SA enrollment and hold “corporate landlords and investors accountable for their role in the housing crisis.”

So far, none of that’s happened, largely because she’s been saddled from her first day in office with defraying a major budget crisis, UT-San Antonio political scientist Jon Taylor said.

“Those were ambitious and great [goals], and they would have been great if the budget situation was more stable,” Taylor said. “ But, she has champagne dreams on what is a beer budget at best. We just don’t have the money to do some of this stuff.”

Jones didn’t respond to the Current’s request for comment on this article. However, in a statement marking her first 100 days in office, she blamed the city’s lack of data collection for her delay in implementing portions of her agenda.

“In exploring solutions on topics like early childhood education, affordable childcare and workforce development, the data is not readily available to inform our decision-making, and by working with city staff, we can better understand and address these gaps to put plans in place that build a strong foundation across the city,” the statement said.

Some experts said the data hasn’t been the sole problem. San Antonio political consultant Bert Santibañez, a former staffer on Jones’ mayoral campaign, characterized the statement as an attempt at deflection.

“I think it’s a smoke screen,” Santibañez said. “I mean, whenever she’s in a predicament, or she’s looking to deflect, ‘more data’ is usually her go-to.”

Butting heads

Observers point to Jones’ so-far tumultuous relationship with City Council as another reason she’s failed to rack up major victories during her first weeks in office.

Early on, Jones got sideways with potential allies on the dais when she tried to change how Council Consideration Requests — or proposals for introducing new ordinances — are brought up for public debate.

She subsequently lost a 10-1 vote on a pet dumping ordinance and seemingly underestimated the level of fan fervor over Project Marvel, the proposed $4 billion downtown sports and entertainment complex Bexar County voters will decide whether to move forward with in November, observers said.

“It’s disappointing,” Santibañez said. “She came in as a change agent, kind of against the status quo, and there was something inspiring about that. I think the electorate wanted to change business as usual, and she embodied that. There was a lot of hope.”

Half of City Council is new, which presented Jones an opportunity for a fresh start, Santibañez noted.

“But from the start, it just seemed antagonistic, tenuous and so much conflict,” he added. “That kind of infighting, picking fights and that kind of thing. It just seemed counterproductive.”

Crashing the presser

Arguably, the most memorable moment during Jones’ first 100 days wasn’t her meeting with a Taiwanese trade delegation or her victory in getting the council to unanimously pass a City Charter amendment discouraging members of council from signing non-disclosure agreements.

Instead, it was when Jones crashed a press conference organized by the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce in support of Project Marvel. At the event, the mayor got into an argument with local demi-celebrity Spurs Jesus.

“It definitely made for good TV,” UTSA’s Taylor said. “But, I don’t think it did anything for her cause. Had she instead worked with City Council members and expressed her concerns in informal meetings … . That’s where I think she stumbled. She just didn’t recognize the political landscape.”

Even so, St. Mary’s University political scientist Art Vega gives Jones’ first 100 days a letter grade of a low B. Although her tenure has so far been unconventional, he’s holding out hope that it could bring changes for the better.

“I think because she’s a bit of a maverick, she doesn’t fit the norm, and that could be a very positive and refreshing idea,” Vega said.

Staff exodus

One of the first indications that Jones might be in for a rough ride came when former campaign manager Jordan Abelson, who’d been promoted to chief of staff, resigned after serving only three weeks in the new position.

The exodus continued in July, when longtime media representative Gary Cooper was “reassigned” from his position as Jones’ spokesman after only a week on the job. The following month, Jones’ events director and former campaign staffer, Rory Vance, left the mayor’s office.

“She’s winning at something: the record for most staff turnover in a 60-day period,” longtime San Antonio political consultant Kelton Morgan said of Jones’ tenure so far.

Morgan has seen the mayor’s office up close, having worked as a political consultant and analyst during former Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s 2017 and 2019 races.

“Ron’s first 100 days weren’t great,” Morgan recalled. “He talked about crime, traffic and jobs when he ran. That was his exclusive focus. He takes office and immediately signs the Paris Climate Accords and establishes a Housing Task Force, neither of which was a focus of his campaign. He kinda threw some elbows and maybe misunderstood how much power the mayor had.”

Morgan said Jones has shown a similar inability to read the room.

“Gina just came through the door guns blazing with demands and sharp elbows and began alienating to people on the council,” he said. “Even council members that would be her natural allies, including [District 5 progressive] Teri Castillo, who was the only council person to campaign for her, openly endorse her and back her campaign.”

Building a majority

San Antonio’s city government operates under a system in which the mayor only has a single vote on council and can only request that the city manager add items to the agenda.

“It’s a weak-mayor system, but you can be strong,” St. Mary’s Vega said. “And the way you can be strong is by building a working majority to support your agenda.”

UTSA’s Taylor agreed, saying that the way for a San Antonio mayor to be effective is by engaging in retail politics and building relationships and coalitions in casual conversations with others on council.

Jones isn’t building the relationships on City Council to effectively lead, some critics charge. Credit: Instagram / mayorgoj

“Informally, go and take each council member out for dinner,” Taylor said. “Have drinks somewhere. Just casually get to know them and cultivate potential alliances on certain issues.”

However, Jones isn’t building the relationships necessary to forge that kind of coalition, District 7 Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito told the Current. Instead, the only meetings she’s had with the mayor are formal, monthly one-on-one meetings that feel more like a requirement than relationship-building sessions.

“I would say the meetings that I have with my [other] colleagues are much more informal,” Alderete Gavito added, pointing to late-night phone calls and casual meetings in other members’ offices.

“It’s a lot of those relationships that I have that I’m leaning on to get things done,” she said. “That is not a monthly, formal one-on-one meeting that I have with Ric, or Leo, or Misty, or whoever. [It’s] being able to pick up the phone and call each other as we need to, right?”

Vega speculates that Jones’ inability to build a functioning coalition on the dais stems from her background in the federal government.

On the campaign trail, Jones frequently mentioned she graduated from John Jay High School, but she attended college in the Northeast and spent most of her political career in Washington, D.C. While she did run to represent a South Texas district that included San Antonio in Congress, that’s a federal office.

Although not necessarily a bad thing, Jones has no working relationships with folks at San Antonio City Hall. And in this often-insular city, that can be a major burden.

“She’s bringing people in from D.C. that she knows and has worked with,” Vega said. “Now the question is finding people who will work with her style. I think she has a somewhat heavy-handed style of leadership.”

Jones’ current chief of staff, Jenise Carroll, last worked at the FBI, for example.

What’s more, the mayor outsourced her communications to Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Frontwood Strategies at a monthly taxpayer expense of $10,000. The Frontwood Strategies account executive who runs Jones’ communications, Philippa Martinez-Berrier, is based in Austin.

“The best way to establish a working relationship with the mayor is to ensure there’s a 65-mile buffer zone between you,” consultant Morgan cheekily commented on the relationship.

Further, unlike Nirenberg, whose office was fully staffed within the first two weeks of being in office, Jones’ office is still half vacant.

Taking on the world

The last time San Antonio elected a mayor with no prior City Hall experience was in 2005, when attorney Phil Hardberger took office.

“When Phil Hardberger was elected mayor, he went to every council member’s house over the course of a few weeks and had dinner and said, ‘What do you want, what are you looking to do the next two years, and how can I help you do that?’” Morgan recalled.

Instead, Jones has taken a different approach.

“It just seems like Gina Ortiz Jones against the world, and I don’t know if that’s a kind of default mechanism that she just operates under or what,” former campaign staffer Santibañez said.

Both Vega and Taylor maintain that there’s little problem with the issues Jones has tried to bring to the public’s attention.

For example, Jones’ call for an independent economic analysis on the Spurs’ proposed downtown arena — a centerpiece of Project Marvel — is completely valid given the money involved, Taylor said.

“She may very well be right about Project Marvel in terms of the cost, whether the city can afford its part,” the professor added. “If somehow the voters of Bexar County vote it down in November, what that means is that she actually might look like she was right.”

To that point, Jones warned council colleagues on several occasions that if the city didn’t complete more due diligence on Project Marvel, the public would likely vote it down in November.

Meanwhile, Vega said Jones’ proposed CCR change — throwing them out following every election — is exactly what Congress does every session.

However, Jones’ combative efforts to push her agenda have yielded bad press and negative public perception, Taylor said.

“Perception is everything in politics, and that perception that has been given is one of turmoil, instability and confrontation,” he added.

The way forward

Political consultant Morgan said it may be hard for Jones to hit “reset” at City Hall without stepping back and engaging in some deep soul searching.

“Based on what I’ve seen from her so far, I don’t think anyone is all that hopeful that there will be some kind of fundamental reset that will kind of set things right and establish a better working environment on that council,” he said.

Vega disagrees.

Indeed, he said Jones’ apparent disinterest in business as usual feels “refreshing,” even if it came with negative side effects. The mayor also was handed a difficult situation, he added, since she was thrown into Project Marvel discussions while also trying to solve a $ 170 million-plus budget deficit.

“I think the real question is going to be how things look at the end of the year,” Vega said. “If you still have these same problems, then we have an atypical situation.”

Meanwhile, Taylor said Jones could reverse early perceptions by seeking “easy wins” she can rack up over coming months.

“Look at the Ready to Work program and jobs assistance programs,” he suggested. “Look at ways to assist lower-income people in ways that are supported by the community, supported by NGOs, and supported by the business community. There are ways she can do this.”

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Rocky Start: Gina Ortiz Jones’ first 100 days as San Antonio mayor were anything but ordinary

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