At just 24 years old, Ric Galvan acknowledges he was an unlikely choice to represent San Antonio\u2019s West Side on the City Council.<\/p>\n
The politically swingy District 6 seat has long preferred moderates, yet this year picked Galvan<\/a>, an unabashed progressive who knocked on more than 2,000 doors and raised more money than a number of candidates with longer political resumes.<\/p>\n Galvan is now among a host of new faces on a City Council that\u2019s grown younger and more partisan<\/a>. <\/p>\n He joined producer Cory Ames on this week\u2019s episode of the bigcitysmalltown podcast<\/a> to talk about his path to politics, pitching progressivism to skeptics, and his recent criticism<\/a> of the downtown redevelopment project known as Project Marvel.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Galvan grew up thinking he\u2019d become teacher, but caught the political bug while observing education policy battles play out in the Texas Legislature.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I went to [the University of Texas at] Austin, I knew it was the place I wanted to go to, because the capital was so close,\u201d Galvan said.<\/p>\n Over the years he volunteered for various progressive candidates and causes, but said it was still a surreal experience campaigning for himself.<\/p>\n \u201cIt didn\u2019t ever feel natural to talk about myself instead of another candidate, like, \u2018Oh, I support this person for this reason,’\u201d Galvan said. \u201cNow it\u2019s, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s me. I\u2019m the one I\u2019m talking about.’\u201d<\/p>\n Galvan\u2019s connections from working in the District 5 office at City Hall gave him some early insight that longtime Councilwoman Melissa Cabello Havrda (D6) might run for mayor instead of reelection this year, he told Ames. <\/p>\n And while he wasn\u2019t sure he was ready to run, he flagged interest in the race and was overwhelmed by the encouragement from former high school teachers, college professors and even his pediatrician.<\/p>\n \u201cThey all said, \u2018Go for it. Why not give it a shot? We need energy in politics right now,’\u201d Galvan said.<\/p>\n Galvan finished a close second<\/a> in a seven-way race, then went on to defeat labor organizer\u00a0Kelly Ann Gonzalez<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>in a runoff by just 25 votes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At just 24 years old, Ric Galvan acknowledges he was an unlikely choice to represent San Antonio\u2019s West…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":139397,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5133],"tags":[5229,11884,83338,13123,83339,7202,40658,7203,358,3187,7815,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,11887,83340],"class_list":{"0":"post-139396","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-bigcitysmalltown","10":"tag-district-6","11":"tag-project-marvel","12":"tag-ric-galvan","13":"tag-san-antonio","14":"tag-san-antonio-city-council","15":"tag-sanantonio","16":"tag-texas","17":"tag-tx","18":"tag-typedaily","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa","25":"tag-wc-less-than-500","26":"tag-youngest-councilman"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115015267500122330","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139396\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}