For Kristian Carranza, Texas House District 118 is a memorial of her Grandma Angelita, who died the summer before Carranza started high school.
Carranza remembers Angelita’s favorite ranchera songs, growing up in her house by the Mayan Palace Theatre and her preference for unsweet tea when patronizing their local Bill Miller BBQ. A teenage mom, Angelita got a GED later in life and a master’s degree in social work.
She’s why Carranza has never wanted to leave the South Side, she said, and why she’s running to represent HD118 as the Democratic nominee for the second time.
“My grandma is all over the South Side,” Carranza said during an hourlong interview from her campaign office on Pleasanton Road, a framed portrait of Angelita hanging on the wall behind her.
A diabetic, Angelita died after developing an infection and falling into a sepsis-induced coma. Carranza said her grandma was waiting for her next paycheck to come in before going to a doctor.
Carranza was the one who found her. Now, expanding healthcare access is a big part of her campaign, along with support for public education and lowering household costs.
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This piece is part of a two-story series on the candidates in Texas House District 118. Read our companion profile of Republican candidate Jorge Borrego here.
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She shares her grandmother’s story when talking with voters and knocking on doors.
“It’s a story that I share because it’s common, especially in this part of town where we don’t have as many healthcare spaces,” Carranza said.
It’s also why she says she’s always been a Democrat, joking that her family was “too poor” to politically align themselves elsewhere. Carranza remembers the first time she voted in 2008 for President Barack Obama and asking her mom who she should vote for on the down-ballot races.
Her mother told Carranza they were “straight-ticket Democrats,” and that was that.
In November’s midterm elections, with several high-profile races up and down the ballot, Carranza will be facing off against Republican candidate Jorge Borrego, a political newcomer with roots in conservative public policy and one of the architects of Texas’ new school voucher program.
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Whoever wins the HD118 race would be the youngest member of the state’s Bexar County delegation, though Carranza is quick to point out that several of the male representatives were elected younger than she is and have served for several years. Carranza is 36 and Borrego is 30.
HD118 almost perfectly overlaps with TX35, a South Texas congressional district redrawn last year to favor Republicans, attracting national dollars on both sides of the race.
Carranza’s campaign office neighbors that of Johnny Garcia’s, the Democratic candidate in the TX35 race. She also said she’s become good friends with Katy Padilla Stout, who’s running as a Democrat in neighboring TX23.
“I see my race as like an engine for those top of the ticket races or federal races,” said Carranza. “I’m excited to see how many national groups are coming in for those federal races, but I’m keeping my head down and focused on my race and my issues.”
Unafraid of the spotlight
Carranza’s childhood and family started shaping her ambitions long before she first decided to run in 2023 for purple HD118 against then-incumbent John Lujan, a Republican who flipped the seat in 2016.
Maira Espinoza-Kelly, Carranza’s aunt, said her niece has never been afraid of the spotlight.
Only five years apart in age, Espinoza-Kelly remembers when Carranza signed up to be a cheerleader at McCollum High School in Harlandale Independent School District.
“The purpose of the cheerleader was to stand there and be seen, and that for me was just like overwhelming,” she recalled. “To see her just take that on and have such confidence in being in a spotlight like that, it was admirable.”
Even now, when Espinoza-Kelly sees Carranza give campaign speeches on stages and podiums, she still feels “baffled” at her niece’s confidence.
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During her time at McCollum, Carranza joined the student council, got a job at Bill Miller BBQ and landed an internship on Congressman Henry Cuellar’s reelection campaing before turning 16.
“I remember her explaining MySpace to me,” said Cliff Walker, the campaing’s office manager. “I clearly see her coming into my office and just rattling off at super speed what she’s done for the day. Always very inquisitive.”
Walker, a political strategist and cofounder of a progressive communications firm, has been Carranza’s mentor since. He even hosted her first fundraiser when she first ran during the 2024 general election.
“This district will benefit from the fact that she is a joyful warrior,” he said.
From behind to in front of the curtain
After graduating high school, Carranza enrolled at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi to study communications, but dropped out at 20 and moved back home to help her mom through a health crisis.
She started working as a healthcare navigator, helping families sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. She would also start working as a community organizer, helping Texans register to vote.
At 24, she worked on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaing in Florida, and later she was named regional director of the Democratic National Committee. It’s where Carranza said she learned to be “scrappy.”
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Despite a lengthy resume at a young age, the desire to finish college never left Carranza, and in August she graduated from A&M-Corpus Christi under a program for returning students who were a few credits shy of graduating.
Her degree is in University Studies, a flexible degree path where students can design a course of study that fits their career goals.
“I was trying to think of classes that could really set me up as a state representative, and it was a very humbling experience,” Carranza said. “I actually learned a lot, and I think when you’re an older student, you don’t realize how much you can still change from education.”
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Since her first election in 2024, Carranza hasn’t worked full-time. She said she’s picking up part-time political consulting gigs when she can and volunteering. During last year’s city elections, she volunteered for the elections campaigns of Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’, councilman Ed Mungia (D4) and council hopeful Kelly Anne Gonzalez.
She’s has been leaning on her long-time partner — also a political strategist— to get her through campaigning.
“He understands that when you run for state, you have to do it right,” Carranza said, who never really stopped campaigning after her 2024 loss, a highly competitive race where she took 48% of the vote to Lujan’s 52%.
If there were lessons learned from that first race, Carranza said it would be to stick to the issues her community cares about the most. Her current campaing has tempered a bit compared to her 2024 run, focusing less on culture issues that take the oxygen out of the room at the national level but don’t resonate with HD118’s largely working class and Hispanic residents.
“The biggest difference between that cycle and now is that things have only gotten worse for people,” Carranza said. “I want to make sure that it’s the people, that it’s working-class families, that have the seat at the table.”
That race also set her up to be a more recognizable.
“She ran a positive race in a way that didn’t tarnish her brand by losing,” said Walker. “She only improved her position, her brand, the affection that people have for her in this district.”
While the heart of the district is on the South Side of San Antonio, HD118 is a C-shaped district, stretching from the far West Side of Bexar County, down to Von Army and up toward the North East, near the towns of Converse and Schertz.
While door-knocking and block walking, Carranza said she’s been chased from everything to chihuahuas off of Pleasanton Rd. to donkeys in the town of Elmendorf.
A public school advocate
No one in Carranza’s life was surprised when she decided to fun for office.
“When she told us we were like, ‘Great, why haven’t you done it?’” recalled her aunt Espinoza-Kelly. “It was almost like, ‘What were you waiting for?’”
Carranza said she’d never considered crossing to the “other side of the curtain,” but then, in 2023, Harlandale ISD went through a round of school closures, shuttering four elementary schools to address financial issues and declining enrollment.
Vestal Elementary, Carranza’s alma mater, was on the chopping block but was saved with a close school board vote. Viewing the closures as a failure of the way public education is funded in Texas, she decided it was time to throw her name in the hat.
“It’s an issue that’s really personal for me,” said Carranza, who joked that the first thing San Antonio natives usually do when meeting is asking which high school they went to.
A part of Carranza’s current campaing that’s remained nearly identical to her 2024 race is support for public education and scrutiny of the state’s $1 billion education savings accounts program.
When she was running in 2024, Carranza was campaigning against the passage of such a program, which allows families to use public dollars to pay for private school tuition and education services. In 2025, Republican lawmakers pushed the voucher-like program through, which went into effect this school year.
Since 2023, San Antonio has seen several school closures across the city as school districts deal with budget deficits and having fewer students, an issue that school office and public education advocates say is compounded by the rollout of school vouchers, known as Texas Education Freedom Accounts.
HD118 touches smaller school districts, some with falling enrollments and some with growing enrollment as developments moves outside the urban core. But most are dealing with deficits or making cuts every year to keep up with rising costs and no significant increase to base public school funding since 2019.
If elected, Carranza said the first thing she would do is call for an audit of the TEFA program, a program that her opponent Borrego helped design while working with a conservative think tank out of Austin.
Southside through and through
“There’s this thing on the South Side. It’s called the North Side Dream, and it’s where you graduate from high school and you get a job at USAA or with the city, and then you move to Stone Oak, and it’s like you’ve made it,” Carranza said, remembering several people she grew up with that took this path.
It’s not a dream that ever resonated with Carranza.
Carranza said she wants to make the historically underserved South Side a place where families want to stay, instead of dreaming of moving to the North Side.
“This may be a lesson we took from my mom,” pointed out Espinoza-Kelly. “My mom — her grandma — would be beyond proud of Kristian right now. Being able to be back in your community and be successful means so much more than leaving.”
In an increasing polarizing political atmosphere, Espinoza-Kelly says her family isn’t worried about Carranza. “She has her conviction. She know’s herself, and she has us,” she said.
Raised by a single mother, Carranza’s official last name was Thompson until January of 2023, but she went by Carranza — her mother’s maiden name — for several years before that. Local Republican leaders publicly accused her of changing her last name to appeal more to Hispanic voters, but Carranza says it acknowledges her mom’s sacrifices and the place she comes from.
Despite the whirlwind of back-to-back political campaigns, Carranza is still a regular at her local Bill Miller BBQ, most of her family still lives in the area, and she went honking on SW Military Dr. during the Spurs’ finals run in the 2026 NBA Championship.
She says she wants to start through to herself, whatever election night brings.
“If for some reason I don’t win this election, at least I’ve done it like being the most authentic version of myself.”
Election Day is Nov. 3 and early voting goes Oct. 19 through Oct. 30.
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