It’s the 12 Days of Ballotpedia! Your gift powers the trusted, unbiased information voters need heading into 2026. Donate now!
Jonathan Salinas (Mayor of Edinburg, Texas, candidate 2025)
From Ballotpedia
Do you have a photo that could go here? Click here to submit it for this profile!
Jonathan Salinas ran for election to the Mayor of Edinburg in Texas. He was on the ballot in the general election on November 4, 2025.[source]
Salinas completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. Click here to read the survey answers.
[1]Biography
Jonathan Salinas provided the following biographical information via Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey on November 3, 2025:
- Birth date: March 20, 1991
- Birth place: McAllen, Texas
- High school: PSJA North High School
- Associate: South Texas College., 2013
- Bachelor's: University of Texas Pan American, 2015
- Gender: Male
- Religion: Atheist
- Profession: Journalism
- Incumbent officeholder: No
- Campaign slogan: Working people must become the ruling class!
Elections
General election
General election for Mayor of Edinburg
Johnny Garcia, Richard Molina, Omar Ochoa, and Jonathan Salinas ran in the general election for Mayor of Edinburg on November 4, 2025.
Candidate | ||
| Johnny Garcia (Nonpartisan) | ||
| Richard Molina (Nonpartisan) | ||
| Omar Ochoa (Nonpartisan) | ||
Jonathan Salinas (Nonpartisan)  | ||
| ||||
| = 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. | ||||
Election results
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Salinas in this election.
Campaign themes
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Jonathan Salinas completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2025. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Salinas' responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
| Collapse all
Greetings. I’m a 34 year old industry worker. I’ve worked at factories, restaurants, retail and call centers. I was raised in a middle-class family in Pharr and studied psychology and philosophy at university, where I was active in several students organizations and associations. After graduation in 2015, I began working as a journalist, writing for local magazines newspapers and even starting some of my own with likeminded friends. During this time I also worked as a full-time community organizer for advocacy organizations, in addition to my writing. I’ve spoken at and organized protests for social justice and have citizen-lobbied in Washington D.C. I’ve also taken part in many community art and music projects and contributed to local and international literary anthologies. Since the pandemic, I consciously went back to working industry jobs, as I moved away from the middle-class leftist politics of my youth. I looked to the U.S. Socialist Workers Party for political guidance and continue to, to this day. I am not a member of their party, but I am a loyal subscriber to their newspaper and book publications. I take my political cues from them, and try to do my part to express those views and sentiments, wherever and however I can. I’m running for mayor to express the view that working-people need to take political power worldwide, to avert a third imperialist-world-war. Working-people are the only political force that can disarm the capitalists of their nuclear weapons.
- My first key message is that working people not only can become but must become the new ruling-class in society. Not by winning capitalist elections, but by using our unions and workers organizations to push back against employer and government assaults against our lives. Capitalism leads to imperialism and imperialism leads to fascism and war. The global capitalist powers have no choice but to take us to war and make workers die as cannon fodder for their wars of plunder. We need to take state and economic power away from the capitalists, with our own government, a transitional workers regime whose purpose will be to liberate the means of production and wither away the need for a state and its oppressive system of class rule.
- The main question facing the labor and workers movement today is the question of amnesty for undocumented workers. The bosses use immigration status to intimidate immigrant workers and discourage them away from joining or starting a union. It’s also used as a way to drive divisions between workers. The fight for Amnesty, for undocumented workers, would unite workers across national linguistic and religious lines. And it would undercut an effective tool of the bosses against our solidarity for each other. It would strengthen the U.S. working-class. This is the key question facing the labor movement today.
- Another key part of the problems facing working people today is fighting against the scourge of antisemitism we are seeing worldwide. Centuries of class-struggle has shown us that Jew-hatred arises among those hit hardest by capitalism’s crises as a scapegoat mechanism, something then fanned and flamed by the ruling-classes to divert attention away from the true cause of the crises wreaking havoc on us—capitalism. Today, pushing back against antisemitic demagogy and violence means supporting Israel’s fight against the Hamas death-squad regime in Gaza City. It means standing with our local Jewish communities in solidarity when the time presents itself. It means politically answering those who espouse the hysterical “world Jewish plot” myth.
All political questions are class questions, just as all class questions are political questions.
I look up to the great revolutionary leaders in history, not just American. John Milton, Oliver Cromwell, the American Founders, the French and Black Jacobins, leading up to the leaders of more recent eras like Eugene Debss, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotstky, Farrel Fobbs, James Cannon, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, César Chávez.
Being part of the working-class, class-conscious, and holding as well as exercising a Marxist framework.
To be a voice for the oppressed and use the institutions of power to advance the class-interests of working-people.
One that advances the struggle for socialism in the United States and Mexico.
September 11, 2001. I was about 10.
Barnes and Noble book seller for roughly a year.
I don’t have a favorite book. I constantly try to read and acquire new books. My favorite books is whatever book I just bought or am reading for the first time.
Certainly somebody in a Shakespeare play. Perhaps Socrates, although we aren’t sure entirely whether he truly existed or not.
Being a leader of by and for the working class.
To be a voice for working-people.
It’s working-class.
I don’t take positions on how the capitalist state should operate.
Same answer.
If elected mayor, I will not meet or in any way affiliate with law enforcement, other than inform them of the wishes of a community council composed of workers installed to oversee police violations.
No major organizations or famous individuals. I seek and receive endorsements from working-class people and working-class fighters.
A former packaging worker telling me how his coworkers took over their factory under worker’s control, until the boss fixed their air conditioner.
Running for Mayor of Edinburg.
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
2025 Elections
External links
Footnotes
