Latina leader Carmen Llanes Pulido enters Austin’s 2024 mayoral race

Native Austinite, community organizer and nonprofit executive Carmen Llanes Pulido on Tuesday launched her 2024 Austin mayoral campaign. 

Llanes Pulido, who currently leads the nonprofit Go Austin/Vamos Austin (GAVA) as its executive director, earned the newspaper La Voz’s Person of the Year award in 2022 for her contributions to the Austin community. 

For more than a decade, Llanes Pulido has worked with neighborhoods and community organizations in Austin’s Eastern Crescent. She’s worked as an environmental justice researcher and organizer for People Organized in Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER) in East Austin. Later at the nonprofit Marathon Kids, Llanes Pulido led a program focused on boosting fitness and nutrition across 18 elementary schools throughout the Eastern Crescent. 

“I am running for mayor because I have been asked to do this by a diverse community of citizens and city leaders from all corners of Austin who value good governance, equity, and climate sustainability,” she said on her campaign website, which also highlights policies such as climate resiliency, reinvesting in communities, affordable housing solutions, among others. “I know how to bring together change-makers, fixers, content experts, creatives, and professionals, to develop solutions and leverage limited resources to deliver big wins.”

Llanes Pulido has chaired the City of Austin’s Hispanic/Latino Quality of Life Commission and later served on the City’s Planning Commission. Among other leadership posts, she was an inaugural member of Austin’s first Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission, which created single-member city council districts in 2014.

She graduated from the University of Chicago, where she focused on Environmental Studies, before returning to work in her hometown of Austin. 

Earlier this month, longtime city council member Kathie Tovo announced her run for mayor. No re-election announcement has been made yet by current Mayor Kirk Watson.

Last year, a proposition passed to align the city’s mayoral elections to be held on presidential election years. Austin voters will head to the polls on Nov. 5.

Llanes Pulido’s mayoral campaign kick-off event will be held Feb. 18 from 4:30-6:30 p.m. at Tamale House East on E. Sixth Street.