At a state GOP convention where the LGBTQ+ community has long been under attack, San Antonians bucked the trend this weekend.
Read more When new information changes a commercial real estate deal
Delegates from Texas’ 26th state Senate District, which encompasses much of the blue city’s urban core, elected attorney Justin Nichols to serve as one of their two representatives body that governs the Republican Party of Texas.
Nichols filed some of the earliest complaints under the city’s 2013 nondiscrimination ordinance — earning him the designation of one of San Antonio’s most influential gay leaders by Out in SA magazine.
In the past, his law firm has advertised services to help transgender clients obtain a legal name change and gender marker correction.
More recently, Nichols represented The Texas Conservative Liberty Forum — a GOP group that wants the party to be more inclusive of different races, religions and sexuality — on a joint lawsuit with LGBTQ+ advocacy groups suing to stop the removal of a rainbow crosswalk and installation of a rainbow sidewalk without a public vote.
The 64-member State Republican Executive Committee (SREC) is tasked with holding elected officials accountable to the party’s policy platform, which includes condemning homosexuality and opposing “all efforts to validate transgender identity and ideology.”
Delegates from each of Texas’ 31 state Senate districts get to elect one man and one woman to the SREC.
Nichols earned 39 votes — beating out longtime conservative activist and City Hall gadfly Jack M. Finger, who took 17.
Asked about the historic nature of his candidacy, Nichols said Monday that he didn’t think his sexuality factored into delegates’ calculus.
“I think that they selected me because of what I’ve done, not necessarily some factor of who I am,” he said.
He’s been a GOP precinct chair for 16 years, and currently serves as the general counsel and parliamentarian for the Republican Party of Bexar County.
At 42-years old, he’s also relatively young compared to the rest of the SREC, if not the youngest.
“For me this isn’t a story of ‘a first,’” Nichols told the Report. “I think this is a story about new blood and the new voice coming into a party that I think needs it.”
The ‘dog whistle’ of family values
Party leadership elections are often among some of the nastiest campaigns, and Nichols’ race was no exception.
He’d already been filling the SREC position on a temporary basis since February, after former U.S. Rep. Quico Canseco stepped down to wage an unsuccessful comeback in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District.
Leading up to the convention in Houston, however, he faced critics who said his campaign was an affront to the party’s family values.
Longtime conservative activist Patty Gibbons and her daughter, GOP precinct chair Emily Garcia, distributed flyers highlighting Nichols’ legal work for LGBTQ+ causes and accusing him of operating a gay bathhouse without the appropriate permits — a business Nichols says he has no financial stake in.
“Having come from the 1990s, when the Christian Coalition ushered in the change to the platform of family values … it’s really jarring for us to see an attack on something we built many, many years ago,” Gibbons said of her concerns.
Read more As budget pressures mount, Bexar County rejects revenue-generating motorcycle proposal
Nichols fought back against the “dog whistle” of family values by posting annotated copies of Garcia’s old criminal records online, indicating she’d lost custody of two of her children and worked as a performer at an all-nude strip club in the late 2000s.
“The reality is there’s a whole bunch of different types of families in this world,” said Nichols, who raised his two young siblings after his mother died suddenly of a brain tumor. “The fact that I’m being chastised by somebody who has a felony conviction for harming her children — who wants to lecture me on family values — is a joke.”
In response to the attacks, Nichols also secured a new party rule prohibiting people from holding a leadership position in the party within 20 years of serving out their sentence for a felony conviction.
As a result, Garcia, whose conviction occurred 16 years ago, said she will no longer be able to serve as a precinct chair.
A pattern of exclusion
Elsewhere at the convention, Republicans were less forgiving of party faithful operating outside their strict conservative values.
Two years ago, party officials ramped up their fights with moderates by making it easier to keep censured officials off the ballot.
This time around, party leaders tried to remove several delegates with ties to a Muslim civil rights group, amid an energetic campaign to stop the “Islamification” of Texas.
When they were unsuccessful, the outgoing party chair advised the delegates to leave the country — or join the Democrats’ convention instead.
Though Republicans continue to dominate statewide offices in Texas, they’ve been on the verge of extinction in blue Bexar County.
Bexar County Republican Party Chair Kris Coons appointed Nichols as her parliamentarian, and said Monday that he’s a rising star with a bright future in the party.
“This is this talented man who has taken care of his sisters, he takes care of his grandmother, he put himself through law school, runs a successful law firm — and he happens to be gay,” Koons said. “I’m not pushing away any conservative Republicans ever, and that’s what he is. He’s a really good guy.”
Electoral challenges have not stopped conservatives from trying to push San Antonio’s few remaining Republicans to the right, which was on full display in last month’s primary runoffs.
This year none of Bexar County’s elected Republicans were given major speaking slots at the state party convention — and very few attended the event at all.
The county also lost representation on the SREC, Coons said. Four state Senate districts represent Bexar County with two representatives each. Only three of those eight seats are filled with members who live here.
“We’re the fourth largest county in the state, and we have no representation in the state party,” Coons said. “It’s infuriating.”
One exception was former MLB player Mark Teixeira, the party’s nominee to replace U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-San Antonio), who had a booth at the event.
Democrats will host their own convention in Corpus Christi next week.
So far, the only San Antonian to score a major speaking gig is Sheriff Javier Salazar, who also spoke at the DNC in Chicago in 2024.
Read more Heavy rain hits San Antonio area as Flood Watch remains in effect through Tuesday evening
