{"id":824983,"date":"2026-05-27T06:57:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T06:57:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/824983\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T06:57:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T06:57:14","slug":"bexar-county-voters-toss-another-district-clerk-swap-in-castillo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/824983\/","title":{"rendered":"Bexar County voters toss another District Clerk, swap in Castillo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democrats dumped their incumbent District Clerk to swap in longtime staffer Gloria Martinez<\/a> as their party\u2019s nominee four years ago, and in her first reelection race, Martinez was also tossed out by Democratic primary voters, who chose Christine \u201cChris\u201d Castillo<\/a> in Tuesday\u2019s primary runoff election.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Castillo and Martinez were both career staffers before former District Clerk Mary Angie Garcia pushed them out of their roles during her tenure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Though they didn\u2019t know one another well at the time, they each launched campaigns against Garcia in 2022, and ultimately advanced to a runoff without her.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Castillo fell short in that year\u2019s primary runoff, but ran again this year, saying she had \u201cunfinished business.\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

With all vote centers counted, Castillo was leading Martinez by about 900 votes Tuesday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are just completely thrilled, over the moon,\u201d Castillo said in an interview. \u201cI\u2019m ready to get going and get moving in this office, which in reality, hasn\u2019t had much movement for the past probably five or six years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bexar County Clerk Lucy Adame-Clark<\/a> was also pushed to a runoff in her Democratic primary, but defeated her challenger Cynthia Castro<\/a> easily with 60% of the vote.<\/p>\n

\"\"Bexar County Clerk Lucy Adame-Clark speaks to the graduating students of TX Fast Track\u2019s cohort class 25-C during a ceremony at Community Bible Church in September 2025. Credit: Amber Esparza \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n

The district clerk is in charge of maintaining records and filings for the county\u2019s roughly two dozen district courts \u2014 something that offices across the state have started offering online to varying degrees.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also been a place where employees once stuck around for decades.<\/p>\n

Castillo, a Brackenridge High School alumnus, started working there just after high school and rose through the ranks as a supervisor and division chief.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my mind, I felt like \u2018Well, I\u2019ll stay a few years, just get some experience and then maybe move on. But I came to love my job,\u201d Castillo told the San Antonio Report in March.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Castillo retired in 2019 after being shifted around to several roles by Mary Angie Garcia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But she takes credit for overseeing some of the office\u2019s digital transformation while serving as Division Chief of Records and Finance, and has long wanted to return and restore the office to its former glory.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt one time, Bexar County was the ideal District Clerk\u2019s office, a lot of counties in Texas would look to us as far as our processes and the way we handle things,\u201d Castillo said in March. \u201cNow other counties are not looking at Bexar County anymore, because we don\u2019t have answers. It\u2019s kind of embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castillo lives on the South Side with her wife, Debi.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her campaign was backed by the former Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, the North East Bexar County Democrats, the Bexar County Young Democrats, the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and the Stonewall Democrats of San Antonio.<\/p>\n

While Martinez will remain in office through the end of her term, Castillo will be Democrats\u2019 nominee on the ballot in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the Democrats\u2019 turmoil, Republicans didn\u2019t field a candidate for the role this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They put up a strong contender four years ago in now-Councilwoman Misty Spears, but the party lost big in countywide races, and has since struggled to recruit candidates<\/a> for countywide races.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democrats dumped their incumbent District Clerk to swap in longtime staffer Gloria Martinez as their party\u2019s nominee four…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":824984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5133],"tags":[17032,5229,202633,281386,74394,338855,7202,7203,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-824983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-2026-election","tag-america","tag-bexar-county-clerk","tag-christine-chris-castillo","tag-district-clerk","tag-gloria-a-martinez","tag-san-antonio","tag-sanantonio","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116645243401739213","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824983","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=824983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/824984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}