Young Democrats vie for Texas congressional seat left empty by deaths

HOUSTON (CN) — Texas’s 18th Congressional District will finally have a representative again next month, with voters deciding who that will be in the Jan. 31 runoff.

But with another primary just around the corner, the upcoming special election won’t settle much of the tension facing the district.

Voters will choose between two Democrats with many years of local office experience: Christian Menefee, who served a very public term as Harris County’s chief civil attorney from 2021 to 2025, and Amanda Edwards, a former Houston city councilor and nonprofit leader who has run for the seat several times.

The 18th District, comprising both the core of Houston and some northern suburbs in Harris County, has been a Democratic stronghold for decades in a state dominated by Republicans. Its residents favored Democrats in 2024 by 20 points higher than the national average, according to the Cook Partisan Voter Index.

This election is no different: Two Democrats are headed to the runoff, while the highest-performing Republican in last November’s first round picked up just 6% of the votes.

And yet, as both Menefee and Edwards seek to be the face of the district’s future, its immediate past still haunts this January election. That’s not surprising, given who represented the district before them.

Former U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee held the seat for almost 30 years until she died in the summer of 2024 of complications from pancreatic cancer. She spent much of her time in Congress pressing hard and loud for progressive causes and for her constituents.

Jackson Lee’s death kicked off a swift internal primary that saw former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner named as the Democratic candidate.

Turner had spent three decades in the Texas Legislature before his eight-year tenure as mayor, and his name recognition earned him the nomination by party precinct chairs in August 2024.

But Turner, too, died in office just two months into his term, leaving the congressional seat open once again, where it has now sat empty for a combined 13 months.

Menefee, the youngest and first Black Harris County attorney, earned the largest single share of votes last November, taking 28.9% of the votes in a field of 16 candidates.

Menefee maintained a very active role in his five years as Harris County attorney, especially with voting-related lawsuits against the state government. But he has also used the office to push prominent environmental lawsuits over damage in the Fifth Ward and other impoverished areas of Houston.

“I’m grateful that voters placed their trust in me in November, and I’m ready to earn that confidence again in this runoff election,” Menefee and his campaign told Courthouse News in a statement. “The people of the 18th District have gone without a representative in Congress for too long, and they deserve a strong voice fighting for them in Washington. I’m asking everyone to vote early and to reach out to their friends, family and neighbors to make sure they vote too. Together, we can ensure our community finally has the representation it deserves.”

Edwards, a former Houston city councilor making her third campaign for the seat, earned 25.6% of the vote last November.

Edwards first ran for Congress in 2020, coming in fifth in the Democratic primary for John Cornyn’s U.S. Senate seat. In 2024, she lost to Jackson Lee in the House primary and fell just short to Turner later that year by a handful of votes.

Edwards has spent much of her time both in and out of city council advocating for women-owned businesses in Houston. She now leads the nonprofit Business Ecosystem Alliance for Minorities & Women in the area.

In a statement to Courthouse News, Edwards vowed to address health care, economic opportunity and education as her top issues.

“For far too long the people of the 18th Congressional District have been without their voice, their vote and their advocate for federal funding,” Edwards wrote. “The special election runoff will mark the moment that the people get their voice back so it is time to vote early to ensure that your voice is heard. I have the experience, vision and community commitment to deliver the results that the community deserves. Health care, economic opportunity and education are my priorities.”

A ‘refreshing’ race

With few policy differences between the two candidates, the district has instead become a litmus test for many national issues, especially health care.

Both Menefee and Edwards have repeatedly called out the recent battle over the Affordable Care Act tax credits and subsidies that the Republican-led Congress let expire as part of the shutdown deal last fall. And both have vowed to get those credits restored and extended.

Menefee frequently cites his brother’s cancer treatment and the military insurance coverage he received from their parents’ service as a key inspiration for his drive for Medicare for All and for Medicaid expansion.

And Edwards, too, speaks of her parents’ cancer diagnoses as a driving force behind her health care policies and her support for the ACA tax credits. Though, unlike Menefee, Edwards does not go as far as calling for universal or single-payer health care.

“It’s refreshing to see a race focusing on the issues rather than personalities,” Calvin Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, told Courthouse News.

“These are two relatively young political figures in Houston that have some history for voters to analyze, Menefee as county attorney and Edwards as county commissioner,” Jillson continued. “Voters either know these two candidates or can get to know them easily. I see this as a fairly positive choice. This is one election where it’s hard to make a big mistake as a voter.”

Jillson also emphasized that 2026 will likely be a major year of generational turnover, both nationally and here in the 18th District, and that the aging Congress is on many voters’ minds.

“Some election cycles have more turnover than others,” Jillson continued. “That’s already happening on the Republican side as well, with half a dozen senior Republicans, including some committee chairs, opting not to run for reelection. Powerful older Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are also leaving Congress after this year.”

Both Menefee and Edwards are 30 years younger than Lee and Turner at 37 and 44, respectively. This also puts them both well below the average age of House representatives, which Pew Research found to be 57.5 years.

Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, pointed out that Menefee and Edwards are campaigning on being the new generation of leadership in an area with many older voters.

“This is a big moment of demographic change in Houston,” Rottinghaus told Courthouse News. “You’re seeing the tension between generations in the party and in politics in general. But this area has a lot of older voters, so we’ll see exactly how these demographic shifts affect voters.”

Even as the November 2025 election left the district undecided, a lot of attention is already on the next election in November 2026, with primaries for that seat beginning in March.

The abrupt redistricting efforts in the Texas Legislature last fall directly affected the 18th District in multiple ways. The Supreme Court upheld the redistricting map last month, meaning that while this January runoff will be for districts using the old map, the election right on its heels will follow the new map. Both Menefee and Edwards have sharply criticized the new maps.

But the redistricting also pushed the home of Representative Al Green, another vocal progressive Democrat who has been the 9th District representative for 10 terms, into the 18th District.

With Green running for an 11th term in Congress in his new district, the three-way primary in March between Green, Menefee and Edwards will bring all those questions about age, generational turnover and redistricting to the top of voters’ minds.

Abbott’s secret weapon

The turnover within the Democratic Party, however, is far from the only specter haunting the January runoff and March primary.

Texas governor Greg Abbott, who is running for his fourth term as governor, entered 2026 with a reported $106 million “war chest” at his campaign’s disposal. And he has vowed not just to use it for his own campaign.

Abbott told supporters at an October 2025 event that besides getting reelected, his next priority is getting Republican victories in Harris County.

“So I got $90 million in my bank account, and I’m going to spend most of it in Harris County, Texas to make sure, precinct by precinct, we turn out voters who voted in the presidential election, turn out voters who never voted before. We got to win Harris County and make Harris County dark red.”

Abbott has also threatened to use the official resources of his office and the Legislature to take control of Harris County elections. He delayed the district’s special election until November of last year, despite lawsuit threats from Menefee that March.

But it remains to be seen whether Abbott will follow through or what real impact that would have.

“If Abbott’s takeover does come into play, it’ll be for show, not substance,” Jillson told Courthouse News. “The Texas secretary of state just shared the voter rolls with the U.S. Department of Justice, and initial analysis of those rolls shows a very small portion of voters having any eligibility questions. That makes it more difficult to claim fraud or credibility issues.

Even if he doesn’t bring the resources of his office to bear, Abbott’s own campaign finances will no doubt have major implications for the 18th District.

Whoever wins on Jan. 31, Menefee or Edwards, will have a leg up in their campaign in the months to follow. But they will also have to back up their campaign promises and serve in Congress. And they’ll be campaigning first against a veteran Democrat in the March primary, then against whomever Abbott’s war chest funds in November.

All told, this election will only make a dent in the turmoil facing Texas’s 18th Congressional District.