Houstonians in Texas’ 18th Congressional District will begin heading to the polls Monday to elect a new representative, more than seven months after the seat’s previous occupant, Sylvester Turner, died in office.
Sixteen candidates are vying to serve the remainder of Turner’s term representing the heavily Democratic district, all but ensuring the Nov. 4 special election will be decided in a runoff early next year between the top two finishers. By March, three-quarters of those voters will be participating in an entirely different primary, having been moved out of the 18th District by Texas Republicans’ mid-decade redistricting effort.
It’s been a confusing time for voters in the historic district, which has sent towering Black politicians to Washington such as Reps. Barbara Jordan, Sheila Jackson Lee and Turner, a former Houston mayor and longtime state lawmaker. About four-fifths of the district’s eligible voting population is comprised of voters of color, and in the special election, a cadre of mostly Black, relatively young candidates has emerged at the front of the pack after months of campaigning since Turner’s death in early March.
The eventual winner will need to quickly turn around and begin campaigning for a different set of Houstonians’ votes next year, when voters will elect a representative to take office at the start of 2027.
While each candidate has their own pitch for why they should be the one to represent these voters, everyone seems to agree there is a high degree of uncertainty on the ground about who can vote and why there is a special election occurring at all.
“Every time we’re out, every time we knock, every time we have calls, there are groups of people — who are in the cohort of people who typically vote — who are confused,” said Amanda Edwards, a candidate for the seat and a former Houston City Council member. “It is deeply disturbing and problematic.”
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, one of Edwards’ main rivals for the seat, said he too is “seeing a ton of confusion.”
“Part of it is, hey, vote for me, but part of it is also an education campaign to let folks know that there’s an election in November, and exactly what is on the ballot,” he said.
On the campaign trail, candidates have leaned into their records of service and promised to fulfill Democratic voters’ hunger for fighters who will forcefully take on the Trump administration. The special election will offer a clue toward what kinds of candidates Texas Democrats choose to boost in a moment of deep frustration within the party nationally, even as the specters of redistricting and age weigh over the race.
“That’s what I hear the most — we want a fighter,” said state Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston, another candidate for the 18th Congressional District. “They say that everybody lays down to Trump, and they are really angry about it.”
But as early voting begins, candidates want to be sure that people in the existing 18th Congressional District know that they can participate. And part of taking the fight to Republicans, on the campaign trail, has been laying the blame at their feet for the lack of clarity surrounding the election — and the length of time the seat has been empty.
“All of this was intentional,” said Isaiah Martin, another Democratic candidate. “Republicans knew that when they did this sham process, and they’re trying to depress our turnout. And so it’s up to us to make sure that we don’t let them succeed.”
How we got here
Jackson Lee, who had served the district since 1995, announced her intent to retire from Congress to run for Houston mayor in 2023. When she lost the election, she filed to run once again for her seat — against Edwards, who was already in the race and decided not to withdraw. Jackson Lee won the March primary, then announced in June that she had pancreatic cancer. She died less than seven weeks later, at age 74, leaving the seat vacant.
Following her death, the Harris County Democratic Party’s executive committee met to choose a replacement nominee. Turner, 70, narrowly won the nod over Edwards and cruised to victory in the November election. After Turner died two months into his term, Gov. Greg Abbott waited another month to set the special election date, choosing to hold it on the November uniform election date in defiance of calls to schedule it earlier. Abbott said at the time that Harris County does a poor job of administering elections and needed months, rather than weeks, to prepare.
Age has not been the top issue in the race, but party figures said it has to be on voters’ minds.
“I think anybody who’s looking at the race is obviously legitimately concerned about … we can’t go through this again,” said Mike Doyle, the Harris County Democratic Party chair.
In another twist, Republicans redrew several Houston-area seats as part of their congressional redistricting effort over the summer, including the district of Rep. Al Green, D-Houston. While Green’s 9th District is now solidly Republican and covers almost none of the same territory, the majority of his current constituents — and his home — will be in the new 18th District, and the longtime congressman has heavily hinted that he plans to run in Congressional District 18 in the March primary.
The prospect of the special election winner facing off against the 78-year-old Green would bring simmering tensions over age to the forefront of that primary, in a district where the issue already weighs heavily after the last two representatives died in office.
All of the Democratic candidates running are below the retirement age — Jones, at 59, is the oldest.
“I think that voters want to know about health, because of what happened,” said Jones, a former heptathlete who noted she works out daily and eats well. “Because I’ve heard it.”
Green could pose a formidable challenge to any would-be primary opponent, with his national profile and his popularity among Houston Democratic voters through his 11 times being reelected.
“It would be very interesting to see how the internal politics of African Americans in Harris County and Fort Bend react to potentially having a dynamic, young elected official and then an old guard [congressman] that has done so much for the community squaring off in a primary,” said Jaime Mercado, a Houston Democratic strategist not involved in the race. “It’s another consequence of this redistricting. And I think it was all very intentional.”
Of the candidates interviewed for this story, none explicitly committed to running for reelection against Green, saying their attention is on the special election — and that a federal court could still temporarily block the state from implementing the new map. But Edwards, Martin and Menefee all said their intention is to serve the district in the long term. Jones insisted she is focused on one election at a time.
The candidates
Menefee, Edwards and Jones — all former or current local elected officials — have led most public polling of the race. A University of Houston Hobby School poll from early October found Menefee at 27%, Edwards at 23% and Jones at 15% among likely voters, with no other candidate in double digits.
Though the district is heavily Democratic, Republicans have the opportunity to advance one of their candidates to the runoff if they coalesce behind a single contender. Carmen Maria Montiel, who ran in the district as a Republican in 2022, polls the highest of the GOP candidates.
Democratic candidates said health care, cost-of-living concerns and a desire for improved flood infrastructure have been top-of-mind for voters — but no policy issue looms so large as the more nebulous desire to elect a representative who will fight back, loudly and effectively, against Trump.
Menefee, as the top civil lawyer in Texas’ largest county, has led a number of legal battles against the Trump administration, Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, winning notable fights against the state and corporations over voter rights and pollution. Having twice been elected to countywide office, he has relatively high name recognition and the endorsement of a number of influential Democratic groups, unions and elected officials, including Reps. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, and Lizzie Fletcher, D-Houston, along with Erica Lee Carter, the daughter of Jackson Lee and former temporary representative of the district for the final weeks of her mother’s term.
Menefee’s argument to voters is that he speaks about taking on Republicans and corporate interests from a place of experience.
“Folks across our party, across this country, are looking for fighters — and not just people who fight cosmetically, for cosmetic reasons, but folks who are going to do the work necessary to win those fights to protect people’s rights,” Menefee said. “And I have the track record. I’ve done it time and time again, and I’ll be the exact same person in Congress.”
Edwards is also well-known to Houstonians, as a former at-large City Council member and a past candidate for the seat. Her messaging has been focused on health care and her accomplishments in Houston, especially regarding housing and small businesses. But she’s also emphasized an attitude of resilience — including her longstanding interest in the seat — and pledged to engage with voters beyond campaign season.
“Sylvester Turner, he ran for mayor three times before he became mayor,” Edwards said. “Congresswoman Jackson Lee also lost several times before she became a congresswoman. So it seems as though those that are best suited in the seat are those that have had the grit, had the persistence to keep punching and pushing forward, despite whatever obstacles are put in their path.”
Jones came to the race at an apparent disadvantage, having been barred from fundraising during the legislative session — she announced her candidacy after it wrapped up in June — and tied up with a summer of overtime special sessions. In August, while the other Democrats were attending events and raising money, she joined most of her House Democratic colleagues in fleeing the state to delay the GOP’s congressional gerrymander.
But being away from Houston may have been a blessing in disguise — Jones went viral on the first day of the quorum break when she had colorful words for Abbott during a press conference in Albany and quickly became a media fixture in the fight against redistricting. The enthusiasm she generated during the quorum break dovetails with what voters in Congressional District 18 are looking for, she said.
“I have a track record, both literally and figuratively, of being unapologetic and being unafraid,” Jones, who has also served on Houston’s City Council and on the Houston Independent School District board, said. “I fight — if they don’t know anything else about me.”
Jones, whose state House district includes key areas of the congressional district, like Third Ward and the University of Houston, said her path to victory relies on some of the most reliable voters in the district: Black voters over 50. She said that group has always been her base of political support, and though she trails the other candidates in fundraising, she has a robust ground operation working to turn out her supporters.
Martin, a former aide to Jackson Lee, faces steeper odds, having not previously held elected office. But he raised enough money to air a TV ad — standing next to a plastic skeleton admonishing other politicians for not having enough of a spine to stand up to Trump — and has been a fixture at local events and online through frequent livestreams on TikTok.
Martin said his lack of support from traditional Democratic interest groups or officials is an asset.
“I’m not a puppet of the establishment,” he said. “I think what people understand is that the same old, same old, is not working — that the same politicians who got us into this mess are not going to be the ones that get us out.”
With 16 candidates in the race, the special election appears destined to result in a runoff between the top two candidates, adding on to the district’s time without a representative.
“It can’t happen until January, unfortunately, which is part of the bad behavior in the delay,” said Doyle, the Harris County Democratic Party chair. “It truly will be almost a year that Abbott has deprived these folks.”
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