Politics

Texas

Conservatives mount efforts to recall San Antonio City Officials who voted for anti-discrimination ordinance

SAN ANTONIO -- As LGBTQ groups and community continue to celebrate the enactment of the city ordinance which protects the LGBT community from discrimination in the workplace and in public accommodations based on sexual orientation or gender identity, a group of top Texas Republicans and religious conservatives are pushing efforts to recall city council members who voted in favour of the law.

"The mistake was made by the public to let them in office, the council members made the mistake by voting for this ordinance, we’re correcting the matter,” said Weston Martinez, the president of the Bexar County Conservative Coalition and Texas Freedom PAC.

Last week, Martinez and about dozen people demonstrated for several hours in front of the office of councilman Diego Bernal, the principal author of the ordinance. The conservative coalition's recall push, targeting the mayor and those council members who supported the new law, already claim that their grassroots effort to collect the 6,000 signatures needed to trigger a recall election process for council members and 75,000 for the mayor has garnered half that amount.

Mayor Castro said that he’s not worried about a recall campaign adding that the ordinance was long overdue in the nation’s seventh-largest city, where there are stronger ideals of traditionalism and conservatism than other major Texas cities that already have similar gay rights protections.

“It’s people’s prerogative to do what they will. The voters of San Antonio elected me to represent everybody and this city that I love will be a city where nobody is a second class citizen, a city that belongs to everyone,” said Castro.

The recall effort's organisers said they don’t have a total count on signatures, but plan to get more than required since the city clerk would have to validate them.