Campaigning is grueling by definition, but the past few days were especially so for Mayor Ivy Taylor, who is running to keep her seat in the May 9 election.

On Saturday, she was involved in a car crash that sent two people to the hospital. That wasn’t the mayor’s fault; an officer driving her in a city vehicle slammed into another car that ran a red light, according to a police report.

Another collision this week — between her rhetoric to the LGBT community and her rhetoric to social conservatives — was Taylor’s fault. On Wednesday, she issued an apology.

“It was never my intent to insult or demean you and I am sorry for the pain and confusion my words have caused,” Taylor said to the LGBT community in a statement. “To my (LGBT) advisory committee members … I hope that you will accept my apology. You are models for every resident of San Antonio.”

When the mayor attended a forum at Cornerstone Church on Sunday, she already had scheduled a meeting on Tuesday with the committee formed last year to advise her on issues affecting the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

At the forum, she told the crowd that a City Council action in 2013 that added nondiscrimination protections for the LGBT community was a “waste of time” because “we should have been focusing on those critical issues that you’re concerned about — streets and roads, and police and fire, libraries and parks.

“There was no way that we in those council chambers could change hearts of men,” she continued, “and what I felt I was being asked to do was provide tacit approval to something I didn’t feel comfortable with, and to also demand that people who do business with the city do that same thing. And so I voted 'no.’ I voted my conscience and I stand behind my vote.”

The committee members already were frustrated with the mayor. Previous requests to meet with her had been ignored, and they felt that a process to implement the updated ordinance was moving too slowly.

The mayor disarmed them at the meeting nonetheless.

“We got there, and she was warm and welcoming to us,” said Robert Salcido, a committee member. “She basically said, 'I’m a big girl. Go ahead and give it to me.’”

Salcido and the others gave it to her, albeit respectfully. They told her that her recent comments were upsetting.

Among them: Taylor’s characterization of the nondiscrimination ordinance as a “political stunt” and her insinuation that no one in the LGBT community was focused on how to implement it. Taylor clarified to the panel that she was referring not to grass-roots activists, but to elected officials: former Mayor Julián Castro and former Councilman Diego Bernal, Salcido said.

The mayor defended her “waste of time” comment by claiming that she wasn’t referring to the nondiscrimination ordinance itself, but rather a recent council debate over whether to mention the law in a resolution in support of local control.

The mayor’s full quote, however, belies that defense. Nonetheless, Salcido called the meeting “encouraging” and said it ended amicably. Taylor promised to schedule regular meetings with the panel and seek its input on a proposal to open an Office of Diversity and Inclusion to investigate complaints and enforce the ordinance.

“What’s done is done,” Salcido said. “Let’s move forward.”

That will only happen when the mayor stops pandering to both sides and takes a stand. Her apology is a step in the right direction.

bchasnoff@express-news.net