Van de Putte was born in Tacoma, Washington, the oldest of five children of Daniel and Isabel San Miguel, a sixth-generation Tejano family. Her father was stationed at Fort Lewis when she was born. The family returned to San Antonio, where she was subsequently reared. Van de Putte has six children and six grandchildren with her husband, Pete.
Van de Putte is a 1973 graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio. She was accepted to the University of Houston pharmacy program, following in the footsteps of her grandfather, who was a practicing pharmacist. After meeting her husband and getting married while in pharmacy school, she transferred to the University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy, from which she graduated in 1979. Upon graduation, she worked for her grandfather's pharmacy before buying her own business in the Loma Park area of San Antonio. She currently works part-time at the Davila Pharmacy on San Antonio's West Side. Van de Putte became a Kellogg Fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government in 1993.
Van de Putte began her legislative career with her 1990 election to the Texas House of Representatives.
Texas Senate
Van de Putte represented Texas Senate District 26, which consists of a large portion of San Antonio and Bexar County, from 1999–2015. She has represented the district ever since she won a special election to the Senate in 1999. In 2003, she was appointed Chair of the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus, a position she held until 2011. Van de Putte was appointed chair of the Veteran Affairs and Military Installations Committee in 2003, and was a member of the Senate Committees on Education, State Affairs, and Business and Commerce. She was also co-chair of the Joint Committee on Human Trafficking. She considered running in the 2010 race for governor against Republican Rick Perry, but instead decided to run for re-election in the Texas Senate in June 2009. On 25 June 2013, Wendy Davis gave an 11-hour filibuster in an attempt to run out a special legislative session so that a vote could not be held on Texas Senate Bill 5. At about 15 minutes to midnight, Van de Putte confronted the Presiding Officer, State Senator Robert L. Duncan, a Republican from Lubbock, who she said had ignored her repeated motions earlier. Van de Putte asked him, "at what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?" Her question was immediately met with cheers and applause by the spectators in the gallery. The applause delayed the legislative session past the midnight deadline, effectively ending the legislative session without a vote on the bill. This bill was ultimately passed in a special session ordered by then Governor Rick Perry. On 8 January 2013, Van de Putte was elected President Pro Tempore of the Texas Senate's 83rd Regular Session. Coinciding with her announcement to run for Mayor of San Antonio, Van de Putte resigned from the Senate once her successor Jose Menendez was elected, ending nearly 24 years of work at the Texas Capitol.
In November 2013, Van de Putte announced that she would be running for lieutenant governor in the 2014 elections. She ran unopposed in the Democratic primary but lost to Republican Dan Patrick in the general election.
2015 mayoral campaign
On 19 November 2014, Van de Putte announced her candidacy for Mayor of San Antonio in the 2015 mayoral election. After finishing first with 30% of the vote in the general election, Van de Putte qualified for the runoff election on 13 June 2015. Despite running a hard campaign, Van de Putte lost the runoff election 52-48 percent to Ivy Taylor.
Election history
Uncontested primary elections are not shown.
2015
* Vote percentage include all of Bexar County, with a total of 12,316 either voting in another municipal election or casting no ballot for San Antonio mayor.
