San Antonio – A San Antonio City Council candidate says she caught her opponent’s father, who is also an Alamo Colleges District trustee, trying to steal one of her campaign signs.
While driving with her husband near the intersection of Bandera Road and Broadview Drive on Tuesday, District 7 council candidate Sandragrace Martinez says she saw a man pull out one of her signs and put it in the bed of a pickup truck. Martinez said the sign was near a restaurant that had given her permission to place it.
Having had issues with defaced and stolen signs before, Martinez said she and her husband drove over to confront the man.
“Usually, this happens in the middle of the night. But in broad daylight, I thought that was pretty arrogant of them,” she said.
Martinez recorded part of the ensuing confrontation and later posted it to Facebook. The background noise makes it hard to follow the conversation, though the man seems to say at one point he had planned to take Martinez’s sign into the restaurant.
It wasn’t until after Martinez posted the video that she realized the man she had and her husband had confronted was Joe Alderete, Jr., District 1 trustee for the Alamo Colleges District, former San Antonio councilman, and the father of one of the other four candidates running for the northwest council district, Marina Alderete Gavito.
Joe Alderete Jr. emailed KSAT a statement Wednesday afternoon.
“Yesterday there was a misunderstanding on who was allowed to put campaign signs up on a property at the intersection of Bandera and Broadview. My understanding was that the property owner gave Marina’s Campaign exclusive rights for that corner, but a business leasing a portion of the property was allowing another campaign to put up a sign. I believe we have worked through the confusion and now signs for both campaigns are located there. I will continue to act ethically and support my daughters campaign with integrity.”
Gavito said another one of her family members had been the one to secure permission to put up their signs, but she did not have the person’s name.
Alderete did not name the property owner in his statement, either, but he can be heard in Martinez’s recording saying the first name of the owner of the store next to the restaurant. Though the two businesses share a building, they are separately owned.
The store owner, who did not want to be named, told KSAT that nobody from any campaign had spoken about putting up signs.
A worker at the restaurant, which has a Martinez sign in the window, indicated both campaigns had permission to put up signs but was not clear on the details.
The company that actually owns the property, Delamaar Properties, did not return a phone call Wednesday afternoon.
Gavito told KSAT her campaign’s policy was not to touch other political signs.
Asked why her father was touching signs in this instance, then, Gavito said she hadn’t been there.
“I think there’s a back and forth on what happened. Again, I wasn’t there. It’s a he-said, she-said, and nothing good comes out of that.”
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