Senator Leticia van de Putte to run for San Antonio Mayor

With mother, Belle Ortiz 

She has made it official & speculation is now over

After months of speculation from local political observers that state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte would run for mayor here, she declared Wednesday her candidacy to San Antonio’s top elected office.

Van de Putte’s decision to run for mayor disrupts the bid of state Rep. Mike Villarreal, D-San Antonio, who has been mounting a mayoral campaign for months and might otherwise have easily sailed into the seat next year.

“I think any leader has to have a basis of a character and of that makeup that makes them strong — and not strong physically, and maybe not strong emotionally, but strong in the sense of commitment — and for me, that strength comes from a faith and family,” Van de Putte told the San Antonio Express-News on Wednesday.

“And so the decision that our family has made and that I want is to be the next mayor of San Antonio,” Van de Putte said in an interview with the newspaper.

Van de Putte, a Democrat from the West Side, is positioned to hit the ground running, having just wrapped up a year-long, unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor. 

She lost the statewide race to Lt. Gov.-elect Dan Patrick, who garnered about 58 percent of the vote to her 40 percent. Van de Putte, however, won Bexar County with 50.6 percent of the local vote.

Van de Putte served in the Texas House of Representatives from 1990 until 1999, when she was elected to Senate District 26, the seat she still holds.
Known as an even-keeled voice for her West Side district, the 59-year-old pharmacist has a track record of working both within her party and across the aisle at the Capitol.

Such ability is beneficial for presiding over the City Council. Though it’s a nonpartisan body, the members that comprise it wear on their sleeves their political affiliations, which span the partisan spectrum.

Van de Putte’s decision to run will likely dissuade some candidates from joining the mayoral fracas.

The election is May 9, 2015.
jbaugh@express-news.net