San Antonio, TX Mayor: San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, a progressive independent, outpaced conservative City Councilor Greg Brockhouse by a narrow 49-46 margin in the city’s nonpartisan primary earlier this month, so now the two are facing off in a June 8 general election, and the race has taken a dark turn.
Brockhouse has begun attracting renewed scrutiny over past allegations of domestic violence over an incident in 2009, when Brockhouse's wife, Annalisa, called the police and alleged that he had thrown her to the ground. No charges were filed, and Brockhouse said in March he didn't recall the incident, later insisting it “never happened.” Brockhouse’s wife also recanted her allegations and said she stands "proudly with Greg."
Though the story first broke during the primary, Brockhouse largely managed to avoid addressing it. During one forum, he even told a moderator he would leave if any questions were asked about the incident, and none were.
Things have been different in the second round, though. In recent weeks, a newly formed group of women called Mētú (the name is a riff on #MeToo) has called on Brockhouse to address both the 2009 police report as well as earlier accusations from 2006 brought by Christine Rivera, who was married to Brockhouse at the time but was separated from him.
In that 2006 episode, River called the police and told them Brockhouse had pushed her after she and her boyfriend ran into him when Brockhouse showed up at the home he had shared with Rivera to retrieve some possessions. Brockhouse also called the police and accused Rivera's boyfriend of punching him. No charges were filed then either, and Brockhouse has denied any wrongdoing.
Brockhouse and his allies have repeatedly claimed the 2009 police report is a forgery, but on Thursday, when Texas Public Radio asked Brockhouse whether or not the police showed up at his home, he evaded. Instead, when reporter David Martin Davies asked him if the police had been called to his house that night, Brockhouse replied, “100% the situation did not happen.” As columnist Gilbert Garcia writes at the San Antonio Express-News, that’s well short of a denial.
Davies went on to explicitly ask Brockhouse if “someone created this report out of whole cloth,” to which the candidate responded, “No, I don’t know what that means.” When Davies later asked him if he was “saying that piece of paper was manufactured by somebody as a campaign hit job on you,” Brockhouse cut him off and declared, “No, I’m not saying that. You’re drawing this out. I’m telling you the report is false.”
However, Garcia points out Brockhouse’s explanations don't make much sense. Garcia notes that, among other things, anyone who wanted to fabricate a police report would need to “know Brockhouse’s 2009 address”; “have to hope that he and his wife were at their home on the night in question and in town for the holidays”; and also know “the name and badge number of the officer named on the report.” Perhaps most seriously, anyone who wanted to forge a police report would need to be willing to risk getting caught and punished.
Meanwhile, Nirenberg recently picked up endorsements from the Texas Democratic Party as well as from former Mayor Julian Castro and Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro.