Former Mayor Ron Nirenberg could run against County Judge Peter Sakai in 2026 primary

Earlier this summer, speculation swirled that former Mayor Ron Nirenberg was eyeing a run for governor. Now it centers around a run for County Judge. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Eric Dietrich

After recent speculation that former San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg might run for governor or another state-level office, local political observers say he instead could be mulling a run against Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai in the 2026 Democratic primary.

What’s more, the odds are in Nirenberg’s favor, according to new polling data.

A survey by San Antonio-based Democratic strategist Christian Archer shows Nirenberg winning by a 52%-26% landslide in a theoretical primary matchup against Sakai, who’s approaching the end of his first term.

“That’s a stunning number,” Archer told the Current.

“I don’t know if Ron’s going to get in [the race], but I would also say that if he decided to run for county judge, he is obviously well positioned to run and win a Democratic primary,” Archer added. “I think that running for county judge is probably […] the most likely scenario for Ron.”

The Current reached out to both Nirenberg and Sakai for comment but got no response by press time Tuesday afternoon.

Though speculation has swirled that Nirenberg might mount a bid for governor, the former mayor would face long odds against incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott and his $86.1 million war chest. Indeed, no Democrat has won a statewide office in Texas since 1994.

“When you kind of look at the field and you look at what’s going on statewide, to me it makes a lot of sense that if [Nirenberg] was serious about running for county judge, the proof is in the numbers,” Archer said about the former mayor’s double-digit lead.

“That’s not just a lead — that’s a statement,” said San Antonio attorney Louis Escareno said in a Tuesday Facebook post in which he shared the poll numbers.

Archer said that since Escareno’s Facebook post, he’s received a slew of emails about the survey, which he hasn’t even shared with Nirenberg yet.

Archer, who worked on campaigns for former mayors Phil Hardberger and Nelson Wolff, says he obtained the data by polling 300 likely Democratic primary voters with a margin of error of 5.66%.

“We were in the field for five days to get the sample size,” Archer said.

Pollsters collected approval ratings for both Nirenberg and Sakai as well as Sheriff Javier Salazar to make the survey appear less skewed toward one candidate or another, he added.

Democratic voters gave Nirenberg an approval rating of 87% following his four terms as mayor of San Antonio, an absolutely unheard of level of popularity, according to Archer.

By contrast, Sakai’s approval rating in his first term as County Judge stands at 51%.

“For the incumbent judge in the Democratic primary, that’s pretty soft,” Archer said. However, only 6% of respondents said they disapproved of Sakai’s performance.

“Christian Archer’s latest poll confirms what a lot of folks have been saying quietly across San Antonio: the current Bexar County Judge’s tenure has been … underwhelming,” Escareno said in his Facebook post.

“Look, we’ve got a lot of things facing the city and the county right now, obviously with Project Marvel, with a big budget deficit for the city,” Archer said. “I think that you really want to hear from your leaders, you really want them actively engaged in Project Marvel and out there really swinging the bat.”

Archer shared the poll as Bexar County grapples with a backlog of 52,000 unprocessed voter registrations under Sakai’s watch. Sakai and Bexar County Commissioners Court oversee the county Elections Department.

Sakai was in Japan for two weeks on a tour to gin up investment in Bexar County while the current voter registration backlog at the county reached crisis levels, his social media posts show. Sakai made a similar trip in the summer of 2024, per his newsletter.

“For those of us who follow the ‘word on the street,’ this [poll result] lines up with what we’ve been hearing: frustration with lackluster leadership, slow decision-making, and poor negotiating outcomes — particularly on high-stakes issues like the proposed Spurs arena deal and the uncertain future of the county facilities the team would abandon,” Escareno added in his post.

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Former Mayor Ron Nirenberg could run against County Judge Peter Sakai in 2026 primary

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