Texas Democrats Menefee and Edwards advance to runoff for vacant US House seat representing Houston

HOUSTON (AP) — Democrats Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards advanced to a runoff Tuesday night in a special election for a U.S. House seat that has been vacant since March and will narrow the GOP’s slim majority once a winner is sworn in.

Neither Menefee, Harris County’s top civil attorney, nor Edwards, a former Houston City Council member, got more than 50% of the vote in a crowded field of 16 candidates, sending the race to a runoff expected early next year.

The winner is to serve out the remaining term of Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died two months after taking office representing the deep-blue 18th Congressional District.

Following Turner’s death, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott defended not holding a special election until November by arguing that Houston election officials needed time to prepare. Democrats criticized the long wait and accused Abbott of trying to give his party’s House majority more cushion.

Confusion has lingered over the election in the 18th Congressional District, where many residents will vote in a different district next year under a redrawn map demanded by President Donald Trump in an effort to increase the number of GOP seats.

Republicans currently hold a seven-seat majority in the House, 219-212, with four vacancies, including the Houston seat. Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva won a special election in September in a heavily Democratic district along the Mexico border, but she has not been sworn in yet. A narrower majority gives Republican leaders less room to maneuver.

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 Trump’s executive orders on immigration.

Edwards served four years on the 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.

Among other candidates was George Foreman IV, the son and namesake of the late heavyweight boxing champion.

The current 18th District is solidly Democratic and spirals from northeast Houston through downtown, back up to northwest Houston and east again, until its two ends come close to forming a doughnut. Non-Hispanic whites make up about 23% of its voting-age citizens, though no single group has a majority.

The redrawn 18th stretches from suburbs southwest of Houston diagonally through the city and past its northeast limits. A little more than 50% of voting-age citizens are Black, which critics say is not a big enough majority for them to determine who gets elected.

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Hanna reported from Topeka, Kansas.