Democrats Menefee and Edwards compete for a House seat that will narrow GOP’s slim majority

Democrats Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards are competing Saturday for a vacant U.S. House seat from Houston, a special election that will narrow the GOP’s already slim House majority.

Voters are deciding a runoff between Menefee, the Harris County attorney, and Edwards, a former Houston City Council member. The winner will replace the late Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner for the rest of his term, which ends when a new Congress is sworn in to office in January 2027.

Turner died in March 2025, but the first, all-parties primary for the special election didn’t occur until November under a schedule set by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. Because no candidate won more than 50% of the vote, the contest moved to Saturday’s runoff between the top two vote-getters.

Abbott argued that Houston officials needed the six months between Turner’s death and the first round of voting to prepare for the special election, but Democrats criticized the long wait as a move designed to give the GOP a slightly bigger cushion in the House for difficult votes. The 18th District is safely Democratic with minority residents making up most of the voters.

Menefee ousted an incumbent in 2020 to become Harris County’s first Black county attorney, representing it in civil cases, and he has joined legal challenges of President Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration.

Edwards served four years on the Houston City Council starting in 2016. She ran for U.S. Senate in 2020 but finished fifth in a 12-person primary. She unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in the 2024 primary, and when Lee died that July, local Democrats narrowly nominated Turner over Edwards as Lee’s replacement.

Menefee finished ahead of Edwards in the primary, but Edwards picked up the endorsement of the third-place finisher, state Rep. Jolanda Jones, who said Edwards had skills “best suited to go against Trump.”

Menefee was endorsed by several prominent Texas Democrats including former congressman Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

After Saturday, yet another election lies ahead in little over a month. Both Menefee and Edwards are on the ballot again on March 3, when they will face Democratic Rep. Al Green in another election — this one a Democratic primary in a newly drawn 18th congressional district, for the full term that starts in 2027.

GOP lawmakers who control Texas state government drew a new map last summer for this year’s midterms, pushed by Trump to create five more winnable seats for Republicans to help preserve their majority.

Winter weather added to voters’ confusion, forcing local officials to cancel two days of advance voting this week, prompting civil rights group to go to court to win a two-day extension, into Thursday. Polls were set to stay open Saturday for 12 hours, until 7 p.m. Central.