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Gary Bledsoe
Gary Bledsoe ran for election to the Austin City Council to represent District 7 in Texas. He lost in the general runoff election on December 14, 2024.
Bledsoe completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Gary Bledsoe was born in Odessa, Texas. He earned a high school diploma from Ector High School, a bachelor's degree from the University of Texas, Austin in 1973, and a law degree from the University of Texas, Austin in 1976. His career experience includes working as a lawyer. He previously served as the acting dean of Thurgood Marshall School of Law. Bledsoe has been affiliated with the NAACP, ACLU, AAJ, and NBA.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: City elections in Austin, Texas (2024)
General runoff election
General runoff election for Austin City Council District 7
Mike Siegel defeated Gary Bledsoe in the general runoff election for Austin City Council District 7 on December 14, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Mike Siegel (Nonpartisan)  | 51.2 | 4,420 |
 | Gary Bledsoe (Nonpartisan) | 48.8 | 4,211 | |
| Total votes: 8,631 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
General election
General election for Austin City Council District 7
The following candidates ran in the general election for Austin City Council District 7 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Mike Siegel (Nonpartisan) | 39.8 | 13,681 |
| ✔ | | Gary Bledsoe (Nonpartisan) | 19.3 | 6,624 |
 | Pierre Nguyen (Nonpartisan) | 14.9 | 5,110 | |
 | Adam Powell (Nonpartisan) | 11.1 | 3,828 | |
 | Todd Shaw (Nonpartisan) | 8.7 | 2,973 | |
 | Edwin Bautista (Nonpartisan) | 6.2 | 2,135 | |
| Total votes: 34,351 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Daniel Dominguez (Nonpartisan)
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Bledsoe in this election.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Gary Bledsoe completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Bledsoe's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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- i. We must Keep Austin Special, Green and Weird. The City has adopted a new land use policy that will provide for market driven building throughout the City that will not provide affordable housing. In addition it will cause major displacement of citizens and even more gentrification. Green spaces will be eliminated as a result of this new policy and many trees will be lost. Austin will become expensive like San Francisco and the exodus of racial and ethnic minorities, musicians, artists, teachers and other government workers will continue. The risk of flooding is now greatly enhanced in communities where the new policy is implemented as well as the potential for overburdening infrastructure.
- ii. We must restore integrity to the operations of the City Council since they have been found to have violated the Open Meetings Law 3 times this year and have adopted a major land use policy where the citizens seemingly had no input. The Council adopted land use policies sought by exploitative real estate interests and a group of billionaires who do not share Austin's values. Austin needs someone to standup to the steam roller. Since it is now well known that the new policy will not provide for affordable housing, we must ensure that we are intentional about providing affordable housing for those at 50 to 80% of our MFI. We must ensure that our musicians, artists, teachers, government workers and homeowners can live n Austin..
- Criminal justice is another major issue. We must do a better job of ensuring police investigate more crimes timely and that they have more appearances and contacts with neighborhoods. Over 65% of Austin's police live outside the City. We need to change that in order to ensure the officers share Austin's values and are more likely to be able to address crime in their communities when it occurs.
Law
Housing
Environmental
Criminal Justice
Costs of Government
Fight to try and ensure that common sense seen through an equity lense is employed in making important decisions.
Prepare for the future and future events.
Cuban Missile Crisis
Kennedy Assassination
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
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Candidate Austin City Council District 7 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on October 8, 2024
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