Gov. Greg Abbott has set Jan. 31 as the date of the special election runoff for Texas’ 18th Congressional District, meaning the Houston-based seat will remain vacant for over two more months.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Councilmember Amanda Edwards, both Democrats, were the top two finishers in the Nov. 4 special election, running ahead of the 16-candidate field but both falling well short of the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
Menefee finished first with 28.9% of the vote, with Edwards in a close second at 25.6%.
The January winner will go to Washington to serve out the remainder of former Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner’s term.
Turner died in March, two months after taking office — and less than a year after the district’s longtime congresswoman, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, died in 2024. Since Turner’s death, the seat will have been vacant for about 11 months by the time the runoff takes place.
Democrats in the district, including the top two finishers, have criticized Abbott for setting the first round of the special election 8 months after Turner’s death. And in the wake of the Nov. 4 election, they had called on Abbott to move quickly to announce a date.
The Jan. 31 date also leaves little time for the winner to pivot to the March 3 primary, which will effectively decide the district’s representative for the term beginning in 2027. That election — the real contest in this heavily Democratic district — will take place under new lines, unless a federal court strikes down Republicans’ redrawn congressional map. The 18th Congressional District is poised to change significantly, with nearly three-quarters of the district’s current eligible voting population being drawn into different districts.
We’ve discussed the implications of the runoff and its proximity to the primary before. I will add one point that I didn’t see addressed here or in the Chron story but which I noted in a comment to that second post:
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/EL/htm/EL.2.htm#2.025
“A runoff election for a special election to fill a vacancy in Congress or a special election to fill a vacancy in the legislature, except an election ordered as an emergency election under Section 41.0011 or an election held as an expedited election under Section 203.013, shall be held not earlier than the 70th day or later than the 77th day after the date the final canvass of the main election is completed.”
By my calculations, January 31 is 77 days (11 weeks) after November 15. So, accounting for boundary questions and when exactly the canvass was completed (my guess is Friday the 14th, but if the Harris County Clerk was working on the weekend that wouldn’t surprise me), then January 31 is the latest Abbott could have set for the runoff. That is 100% consistent with everything he’s done up to this point. Please feel free to add this to your “reasons to work hard to dump the bastard and his cronies next year” list. The Chron has more.
UPDATE: January 31 is also the date for the SD09 special election runoff. That’s gonna be a busy weekend.
If it were up to me, all you people in TX18 would get a federal tax cut for your time without representation in the House.