A bus tour of Generation Z influencers seeking to rally young Democrats in San Antonio this weekend was still gung-ho about President Joe Biden, but local activists who turned out to their event said they’re worried about the party’s chances this November with Biden at the top of the ticket.
Organizers of the Rally to Save Democracy, who come from all across the U.S., spent months planning their national campaign tour, starting with an event at San Antonio’s Backyard on Broadway Friday night.
But in the weeks leading up to the inaugural event, Democrats started fracturing in their support for the party’s presidential nominee after Biden’s rocky performance at a CNN debate and subsequent live appearances.
San Antonio political organizer Cristian Núñez, who attended the event, said he’d watched both the debate and the president’s NATO speech, which took place the day before Friday’s rally, in which Biden referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.”
“It’s a little awkward, and personally it raises concerns for me,” he said.
Núñez, 27, said he expected the gathering — which featured roughly 100 local Democratic candidates, office holders and activists — to foster conversation about some of those concerns.
But the event’s organizers told the San Antonio Report they’d discussed it privately and decided to go ahead with their speeches defending Biden as a successful president who has delivered on gun safety and lowering insulin costs.
“We feel good. We’re going to continue to hammer the point that it’s a lot more than just the two candidates, it’s the idea of the direction of the country,” said Chris Mowrey, a 22-year-old TikTok influencer from Georgia whose T-shirt featured Biden in his signature aviator sunglasses.
“Objectively, we, all of us, as a group, know that people have concerns and those concerns should be addressed,” he continued. “But right now, we’re just really focused on people understanding the stakes, past the candidate.”
Local young Democrats in attendance, meanwhile, weren’t having it.
“This is the most important election of our life and we should be putting our best foot forward to defend democracy,” Joshua Garcia, a 32-year-old political organizer in San Antonio who attended the event. “This is not our best foot forward.”
“[Biden] is no longer able to communicate effectively the needs and the policy positions that the Democratic Party,” he added.
Kelly Ann Gonzalez, a 33-year-old labor organizer for AFSCME who spoke at the event, said in an interview after that she worries the lack of enthusiasm for Biden could hurt local Democrats on the ballot this November.
She pointed to Texas House District 118, where Democrats are trying to win back a seat that typically votes their way in a presidential election, as an example.
“Whenever I get overwhelmed with national elections, I like to focus on local elections — elections that I have the most impact on,” she told the San Antonio Report. “But I strongly understand how much the top of the ballot brings people out to vote, and so that’s really my biggest concern.”
To her point, Núñez said the turnout at Friday’s event, which didn’t include many of the new young voters it had sought to appeal to, should be concerning. He’d brought his little sister, who he said noted that the crowd was predominantly white.
“There needs to be more engagement here,” he said. “I see a lot of already politically engaged people here, but not necessarily a diverse crowd.”
Local elected officials and candidates at the event varied in their approach to a sticky issue.
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-San Antonio) gave the most full-throated defense of Biden, saying it’s the GOP “messaging machine” that wants people to believe Biden is too old, “which is just bulls—.”
“There’s a little too much talk about our president right now,” Gutierrez said. “I want to be very clear here, this is the most successful president of the last five.”
But Michelle Vallejo, who at 33 is the youngest Democrat running in one of her party’s targeted U.S. House races this year, steered clear of mentioning Biden altogether.
Instead, she suggested her party’s nominee for U.S. Senate, Colin Allred, would help carry her over the line in Texas’ 15th Congressional District.
“When we have a champion like Congressman Colin Allred on the ballot with me, we can beat [U.S. Rep.] Monica [De La Cruz], and we could get rid of her primo, [U.S. Sen.] Ted Cruz, while we’re at it,” she said.
