“Sharp contrasts” is a good description of this race. “Clear choice” also works.
Raj Salhotra
A runoff between a conservative incumbent and liberal challenger for one of Houston’s citywide council seats presents arguably the sharpest contrast of any race on Houston’s December ballot.
Councilman Mike Knox, an Air Force veteran and former police officer, is seeking his second four-year term but faces stiff competition from Raj Salhotra, a 29-year-old attorney and former high school math teacher making his first run for elected office.
Last month, Knox secured 36.5 percent of the vote in the five-person race, far ahead of Salhotra’s 22 percent but not enough to win the race outright.
In his bid to retain the At-Large, Position 1 seat, Knox is pitching himself as a persistent check on Mayor Sylvester Turner and a leading advocate of reining in city spending. He also has framed Salhotra as a “Beto socialist” and alleged his challenger would distract city council by pushing partisan issues.
“This is a race where we have a young person who’s aspiring to become a career politician, who believes that political agendas are the most important thing for Houstonians,” said Knox, 61. “And I disagree with that.”
Salhotra, meanwhile, is casting Knox as a tea party Republican, contending that the incumbent has served as an antagonist on council and taken positions that threaten to hinder progress on key issues. He rattles off Knox’s dissenting votes by memory: opposing Turner’s pension overhaul, voting against stricter floodplain regulations, voting not to join a lawsuit opposing Texas’ so-called sanctuary cities law, Senate Bill 4.
“This is a nonpartisan race, but I do think there are real philosophical differences between Councilmember Knox and myself, and we’re making that clear to voters through knocking on doors, phone banking, texting, mail, Facebook ads,” Salhotra said Sunday while block walking through a high-turnout precinct in the Heights. “The thinking goes, if we can explain his record to voters and my vision and core values, we feel confident they will make the choice to support me.”
My interview with Raj Salhotra is here, and my analysis of the precinct data from Round One is here. Salhotra has had the fundraising advantage, and he will need to use it to make sure people know who he is and what he stands for. As we’ve discussed before, all of the At Large runoffs are Republican versus Democrat, though some of the candidates in those races lean into that more than others. Mike Knox is all in on it, and that by itself would be enough to want to vote him out, even before you look at his record. Raj has a lot of votes to make up, but he will have a favorable environment in December. The rest is up to him.