SAN ANTONIO – Two controversial, proposed San Antonio charter amendments could face an uphill climb, judging by a recent poll.
The UTSA Center for Public Opinion Research (COPR) surveyed 692 registered Bexar County voters on a variety of issues between Sep. 11-16, including downtown sports stadiums, federal elections, and the upcoming San Antonio charter amendment campaign. For questions about the San Antonio charter changes, only the 620 San Antonio voters’ responses were included.
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The weighted poll found that the vast majority of San Antonio voters—80.6%—were unaware of the six proposed changes to the city charter that will be on their Nov. 5 ballots.
Once the polling considered whether people would actually vote for the proposals, only two amendments received a majority in support: changes to the ethics code and updating charter language.
However, raising city council salaries from $45,722 to $70,200 and the mayor’s salary from $61,725 to $87,800 had a majority of voters opposed to the measure — 50.7%.
An effort to roll back the 2018 voter-imposed caps to the city manager’s salary and tenure in the top administrative role fared even worse, with nearly 69% of voters saying they would vote against it.
Erik Walsh is the first city manager to face the current salary and tenure caps, which were implemented in what was widely seen as a referendum on Walsh’s predecessor, Sheryl Sculley.
At last check, Walsh’s base salary was capped at $374,400, and he will need to leave the city’s top non-elected job by March 2027. Walsh gets an additional $16,200 from various incentives and allowances but is not eligible for bonus pay.
The recently approved FY 2025 city budget includes 3% pay raises for city employees, which would presumably raise the ceiling on Walsh’s pay cap.
Amendments to allow non-uniformed city employees to participate in local political campaigns and to extend council terms from two to four years while keeping an eight-year total term limit had mixed results, with neither supporters nor opponents taking a majority.
However, a pro-charter amendment PAC challenged the poll’s methodology and the accuracy of its data.
‘FLAWED METHODOLOGY’
Kelton Morgan, manager of the “Renew San Antonio” campaign, said the poll was a “flawed instrument” with “flawed methodology.”
Morgan pointed to the poll’s use of “registered” voters instead of “likely” voters as its primary shortcoming. The Nov. 5 election is predicted to have between a 65% and 70% voter turnout, he said.
“So right off the bat, a third of your sample is already flawed. Not looking at likely voters, looking at registered voters instead is a mistake,” Morgan said.
He also said the questions pollsters used were an issue, as they did not use the exact ballot language.
“It’s kind of like polling the presidential race and saying ‘if the election were held today, would you vote for Joe Biden or Batman?’ Well, Joe Biden and Batman aren’t on the ballot. So what’s the purpose of asking that question?” Morgan said.
Morgan said the campaign had also done its own internal polling, which had a “significant gap” to the COPR poll. Though he did not provide the polling data, Morgan said “there is pretty broad base support for these amendments.”
CPOR Director Bryan Gervais, an associate professor of political science, defended the center’s methodology, telling KSAT that they had weighted the samples to mirror the expected turnout of consistent, occasional, and first-time voters.
“There is no standard, great way of measuring the likelihood of voting. Anyone that thinks they have a perfect method for doing so is not being intellectually honest, if you ask me,” Gervais said.
He also defended the polling questions’ verbiage as a “tradeoff,” saying “no one” would complete a survey with “super long questions.”
The CPOR plans to conduct another survey in October.