{"id":190654,"date":"2026-03-04T21:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/190654\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T21:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T21:01:09","slug":"bexar-county-clerk-district-clerk-primaries-head-to-runoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/190654\/","title":{"rendered":"Bexar County Clerk, District Clerk primaries head to runoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two incumbent Democrats were pushed to primary runoffs on Tuesday night: Bexar County Clerk Lucy Adame-Clark<\/a> and District Clerk Gloria Martinez<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the Bexar County Clerk primary, Adame-Clark took 46.46% of the vote, but fell short of the 50% threshold needed to win her party\u2019s nomination outright. <\/p>\n

She now must face a May 26 runoff with Cynthia Castro<\/a>, a senior litigation manager for an insurance and financial services company, who took 38.71%.<\/p>\n

The county clerk maintains public records such as marriage licenses and death certificates for the county. <\/p>\n

Adame-Clark unseated a Republican for the job in 2018, but this year faced criticism from two Democratic opponents in a race that grew ugly.<\/p>\n

An Express-News editorial board endorsement meeting<\/a> for the race went off the rails with Adame-Clark accusing another candidate, Mari Sanchez Belew<\/a>, of being \u201ctatted up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Adame-Clark has been the subject of attack ads from Castro<\/a>, after a disagreement about a case<\/a> in Castro\u2019s husband\u2019s courtroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adame-Clark said Wednesday that Castro\u2019s ads accused her of having \u201ca personal relationship\u201d with an indicted child abuser. <\/p>\n

They refer to her friendship with a mother that Adame-Clark met years ago while working as a waitress, who came before Judge Frank Castro\u2019s court. But Adame-Clark said that when people read abuser, they assume it\u2019s a man, and the mailers made it sound like she was having an affair.<\/p>\n

\u201cCastro was very strategic, the way she wrote it made me sound like a loose woman, and that\u2019s very disheartening,\u201d Adame-Clark said. \u201cEven my husband was upset.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adame-Clark said she was headed to the Election Department on Wednesday morning to verify the election results in a close race.
\u201cI just want to make sure every vote was counted,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I\u2019m excited about this runoff, and I\u2019m ready to get going and get it over with, because we have a lot of work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castro also expressed optimism about the runoff on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cNearly 54% of the voters said they were not happy with the incumbent by not voting for her,\u201d Castro said. \u201cI am very pleased with the voter turnout and excited\u00a0to participate in the runoff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Citizens arrive at the Bexar County Elections Department on election day of the Texas Primary on Tuesday. Credit: Amber Esparza \/ San Antonio Report<\/p>\n

A tight race for district clerk<\/p>\n

In the District Clerk race, Martinez won her seat by defeating an incumbent Democrat<\/a> in 2022, but faced four Democratic primaries of her own in her first reelection race.<\/p>\n

The position oversees records for the district courts, and Martinez finished first with 33.4% of the vote.<\/p>\n

With all vote centers counted, challenger Christine \u201cChris\u201d Castillo<\/a> was the closest, with 23.99% of the vote. Former Bexar Democratic Party Chair Monica Ramirez Alc\u00e1ntara<\/a> was right behind her with 23.55% of the vote \u2014 a 686 vote gap.<\/p>\n

Castillo spent 33 years working in the District Clerk\u2019s office and retired in 2019. She said in her Voter Guide questionnaire<\/a> that she narrowly missed the runoff in 2022, and was running again because \u201cthis office remains close to my heart, because experience matters, service matters and Bexar County deserves a District Clerk who knows the job and is ready to lead on day one.\u201d <\/p>\n

Alc\u00e1ntara\u2019s campaign manager, Robert Vargas, said Wednesday morning that he believed there\u2019s still a chance she could make the runoff instead of Castillo.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy understanding is that there are still a slew of mail ballots that need to be counted, as well as provisional ballots,\u201d Vargas said. \u201cThe race is still extremely close, and so we\u2019re going to hang on and watch until those ballots are counted.\u201d<\/p>\n

No Republicans signed up for either race, so the winner of the Democratic primary runoff is likely to be unopposed in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two incumbent Democrats were pushed to primary runoffs on Tuesday night: Bexar County Clerk Lucy Adame-Clark and District…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190655,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8519,75675,75676,75677,75678,75679,46682,75680,75681,7837,82,84,83,5600,3028,3219],"class_list":["post-190654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-2026-election","tag-bexar-county-clerk","tag-christine-chris-castillo","tag-cynthia-castro","tag-district-clerk","tag-gloria-martinez","tag-lucy-adame-clark","tag-monica-ramirez-alcantara","tag-provisional-ballots","tag-runoff-election","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news","tag-texas-democrats","tag-typedaily","tag-wc-less-than-500"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190654\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}