If you subscribe to the notion that police, fire, and EMS workers are heroes, then there’s a hero running for City Council this year. And if you think that members of the U.S. Armed Forces are also heroes, then we’ve got two running. Selena Xie, a commander with Austin-Travis County EMS, and Jeffery Bowen, a veteran and local fiscal hawk, are hoping to replace Paige Ellis as the representative of Southwest Austin’s District 8.
Xie has served with EMS since 2012 and has also been an ICU nurse for nearly a decade. She was one of the first responders who rushed to the mass shooting at Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden on March 1, a tragedy that resulted in the deaths of four people. She said that paramedics got to the scene less than a minute after being dispatched, thanks in part to a new rescue training task force she helped implement that allows EMS to begin treating patients before the crime scene has been cleared by police. “I can tell you, a lot more people would have died if we didn’t have that rescue task force,” Xie said.
The candidate told us that her six years as the president of the EMS union got her interested in city politics and gave her a firm understanding of public safety issues, housing, and budgeting. She pointed out that public safety makes up about 65% of the city’s General Fund budget, and yet there are no public safety experts on Council. She said she wants to make D8 more affordable, safe, and resilient, especially in terms of the threat of wildfires and a dwindling water supply. Housing affordability is a priority, and she pledged, if elected, to closely monitor the implementation of the HOME initiatives. She also supports the city’s new rolling audit program but not the separate Proposition I audit plan that Save Austin Now got on the November ballot through a citizen petition.
Xie’s opponent, Jeffery Bowen, spent 20 years in the Air Force, primarily as a construction manager. He is a 37-year resident of D8 and continues to work in construction, while also serving as the chair of the city’s Board of Adjustment and president of Austin Neighborhoods Council.
Bowen is a frequent commenter at City Council meetings, urging the city’s elected leaders to lower taxes and prioritize efficiency. He was an early opponent of Proposition Q, the proposal to increase property taxes that crashed and burned at the election last fall. This year, he is championing Prop I. And, unlike Xie, he opposes the bond proposals supporting parks and libraries that are on the November ballot.
“I can’t support it,” Bowen said, speaking of the parks bond in particular. “Because I have no way of knowing whether or not they’re going to be able to spend that money wisely … because they haven’t proven to me that they’re capable of managing the system as it is.”
Bowen said he also wants to fill the open positions at APD, Fire, and EMS. He wants to ensure that the city’s efforts to reduce homelessness yield measurable results. He does not believe that HOME is working. He wants to make it easier for homeowners to construct ADUs on their properties. And he was against Council’s votes to push forward the controversial Dog’s Head development east of Downtown.
“They’ve been working on this for seven years,” Bowen said of the developers and city staff involved in the deal, “and now the city just magically comes up and goes, ‘Oh, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’ You cannot tell me that you were working in a vacuum on this. There were too many issues in this entire process, too many questions that nobody was willing to answer. Let me just say: There’s more questions than there’s answers.”
Xie said she was also against Council’s votes on Dog’s Head. “I think that it was terrible,” Xie said. “And we know that the developers really wanted to be included in the city, so there should have been a better deal that was struck. Any deal should have had much stronger environmental protections and also some housing assurances.”
This article appears in October 9 • 2026.
