For the first time in over 30 years, voters in Southeastern Travis County will decide on a new commissioner for their precinct.
The Travis County Precinct 4 Commissioner spot has been held by Margaret Gómez since 1995. Gómez, 81, announced last year that she would retire at the end of her term.
Now, four local Democrats are vying to oversee the precinct, which covers most of South and Southeast Austin to the borders of Hays, Caldwell and Bastrop counties. Precinct 4 has among the highest concentrations of Black and Hispanic residents and some of the lowest median household incomes in the county, according to the U.S. Census.
The promise of new leadership has energized residents in Far East Austin, who have long pushed for road improvements, water quality upgrades and more grocery stores and health clinics.
Residents are also pressuring candidates to take a stand against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the area, and to keep a more watchful eye on Tesla’s Gigafactory in Del Valle. Residents argue Tesla doesn’t deserve a tax rebate deal with the county after receiving several environmental and workplace safety violations.
The four candidates are Susanna Ledesma-Woody, Ofelia Maldonado Zapata, George Morales and Gavino Fernandez. No Republicans are running, which means whoever wins the March 3 primary will run unopposed in November.
KUT News asked each candidate about their personal background, why they are running and what their top priority in office would be. They are presented here in the order they appear on the ballot.
Susanna Ledesma-Woody
Ledesma-Woody grew up near Del Valle, which she said meant growing up with a “lack of resources and a lack of urgency.”
She got involved in community organizing about 15 years ago when her oldest son started school in the Del Valle Independent School District. Ledesma-Woody said she was frustrated there wasn’t a parent-teachers association at his school, so she helped start one. Soon after, she ran for a school board seat, which she won and has held since 2011.
This is Ledesma-Woody’s third time running for the Precinct 4 Commissioner seat.
She said she launched her first campaign in 2018 after her calls to the commissioners court to bring grocery stores and hospitals to the area went unanswered.
“We weren't making any movement. And so we were like, 'what's the next step? How can we really push this needle? … Run for the position, right?,'” she said. “If you really want to make a difference, you have to scare these politicians that this seat is not theirs.”
Ledesma-Woody lost in 2018 by more than 70 percentage points, which she attributed to not understanding the “political playground.” Her 2022 campaign was a tight race against Gómez, which she lost by only 248 votes.
This go-around, Ledesma-Woody said her top priority is investing in “equitable infrastructure” for the area.
“Once we get the infrastructure in place, we can tackle a lot of the other issues that plague the community, especially when it comes to economic growth and development and housing,” she said. “But we have to get utilities. We have to get the roads fixed.”
Ledesma-Woody said equitable infrastructure means starting with the people in the precinct who have been neglected for decades.
“We have … small trailer park communities that don't have running water or electricity, and they're having to go to H-E-B, that's 15-20 minutes away, to fill up their jugs of water so they have water in their homes,” she said. “Those are the folks that we should be focusing on.”
Ofelia Maldonado Zapata
Maldonado Zapata grew up in public housing in East Austin.
Due to her visual impairment, Maldonado Zapata retired on disability in 1995. But over the past three decades, she’s served in leadership roles at religious and educational nonprofit organizations, including the Texas Anti-Poverty Project and the International School Parent-Teacher-Student Association.
In 2020, she was elected to the Austin Independent School District board of trustees, where she said she advocated for boosting pay and retaining athletic coaching positions that were at risk of being cut.
Maldonado Zapata said she doesn’t call herself a politician and does not like campaigning. She calls herself a community organizer.
“I graduated from high school being visually impaired and nobody ever knew, and I felt like I didn't get a good education. I just went to class. I never participated,” Maldonado Zapata said. “So that's how I began my work, and I've started learning how to organize. Because one thing I learned is that we can be angry about the injustices that we're living in, or we can do something about it.”
If elected to the Travis County Commissioners Court, Maldonado Zapata said her top priority is improving water quality in Austin Colony, an East Austin neighborhood that she said gets water at a high price from a for-profit utility.
“People are not drinking that water,” she said. “What have we been doing for 30 years that we could not come together and make sure that the families in that community would get water?”
George Morales
Morales grew up in Dove Springs in a low-income family with nine siblings. At 16 years old, Morales found out he and his girlfriend (now his wife) were going to be parents. Morales graduated high school and got a job as a garbage man to support his family.
“At the time, you're looking at two kids who were destined to just say, you know, 'life is going to give up on y’all. Y'all became teen parents,'” he said.
At the urging of his parents, Morales started a career in law enforcement in the mid- ‘90s. In 2016, he was elected the Travis County Precinct 4 Constable and has held that office since.
During the pandemic, Morales took charge of the county’s vaccine distribution program after seeing how few vaccine locations were open in eastern Travis County compared to the west side. Morales said he helped distribute 380,000 vaccines and offered free funeral escorts for community members who died of COVID.
“I would tell people, 'don't pay for a funeral escort,'” he said. “I will do it. You're a Travis County taxpayer. I will do that for you.”
Morales said he’s running for Precinct 4 Commissioner to be a source of education and transparency for the community on what county services are available and how they can help residents.
“I feel like I can understand how Travis County government works, but do the people in Precinct 4 understand it? On what they actually do? Do they just set the tax rate?” he said. “Travis County government has to make sure that the people are at the forefront of what's going on. That's where transparency comes in.”
Morales said his top priority in office is working with the county’s Transportation and Natural Resources department to fix roads and pushing the Texas Department of Transportation to finish construction projects in the area.
Gavino Fernandez Jr.
Fernandez was born and raised in Austin.
He served on the Travis County Commissioner Precinct 4 staff from 1991-94. He’s also involved in the East Austin Lions Club and he’s the Austin coordinator for National Voter Registration Day.
Fernandez said his experience mentoring a man in his early 20s who was struggling with substance abuse inspired him to run for Precinct 4 Commissioner.
“I would take him to different mental health resources, but he couldn't get help because he was uninsured. So those are the kind of things that I saw out there that were not available to people that have mental health issues, drug addiction issues, if you're not insured,” he said. “That's something that I want to work on... providing funds to [community] members, especially the homeless, that are not able to attract those resources.”
Fernandez said his top priority in office would be keeping the precinct affordable. He said he would oppose tax increases and audit the county’s existing contracts to see if they are worth the cost.
“How much funds are being made [available] to address those issues in Precinct 4?” he said. “If they're not equitable, then I would, again, in collaboration and discussion with other commissioners, stress the importance of providing resources to this precinct that has been neglected for over 20 years.”
Early voting for the primary election begins Feb. 17. Election Day is March 3. Find a polling place here.
