Her Daughter Was Killed in Uvalde. Now She’s Running for Mayor.
Texas Monthly – Kimberly Mata-Rubio says after the tragedy, Uvalde remains a divided community—she wants to change that.
This past May, after the news media had completed their stories on the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and began to pack up and leave town, Kimberly Mata-Rubio, a mom who had lost her ten-year-old daughter Lexi in the massacre, wondered what she would do next with her life.
I had followed Kim since the shooting, watching her transform herself from a quiet young woman into a fierce advocate for gun control, culminating in a dramatic confrontation with Senator Ted Cruz in his Washington office. She told me she was thinking about going to law school, or perhaps writing a memoir. She said she might get into the politics.
But she kept her plans to herself—until this week, when she announced she would be running for mayor of Uvalde in a special election in November. Mata-Rubio will be facing off against Cody Smith, a former Uvalde city council member (1994–2008) and mayor (2008–12) who works as a senior vice president at First State Bank of Uvalde. Smith says the reason he is running is because “I want to do whatever I can to make this community heal and grow and prosper. And I have experience doing that.”
Mata-Rubio admits she is an underdog in the race. But she says her passion to improve Uvalde and bring the town’s diverse citizens together far outweighs her political inexperience.
