CM Letitia Plummer
Wednesday was the filing deadline for both CD18 and Houston City Council At Large #4. There are fourteen filed candidates plus one write-in. I will offer a bit of commentary on each.
– Alejandra Salinas, Dwight Boykins, and Al Lloyd were in the opening lineup for this seat. So was Obes Nwabara, but he posted to Instagram on Wednesday that he was withdrawing from the race. Jordan Thomas had a July campaign finance report, so he was an early entrant as well.
– Brad Batteau is a constant presence in City Council elections by now. Sonia Rivera ran for At Large #5 in 2019, receiving 11.1% of the vote, and District H in 2019, receiving 11.8% of the vote, neither of which got her into the runoff. Martina Dixon has run for various things including District E in 2023, losing to Fred Flickinger. Kathy Tatum was a candidate for Mayor in 2023. She got 515 votes.
– Angie (Angeanette) Thibodeaux was a candidate for HD139 in the Democratic primary in 2024. She led the field in March but lost in the runoff to now-Rep. Charlene Ward Johnson. I sent her emails to ask for an interview but they weren’t delivered, so I didn’t pursue it any further. Ethan Hale is an HCC student and is listed as the “Research, Polling, Outreach, Community Coordinator” for Recall Houston.
– Adrian Rogers appears to be an attorney. Miguel Herrera appears to a a student at UH-Downtown and the Vice President of its student body. Cris Wright appears to have a TED talk about intellectual capital. Sheraz Siddiqui appears to be on the IT Service staff for the HCDE. He is the only one in this group who has a campaign page of some kind. (*) I say “appears to be” for all of these folks because while a Google search for their name plus “Houston City Council” led me to these links, I can’t swear that they are also the City Council candidates.
– Kristal Mtaza-Lyons is the write-in candidate. Maybe she didn’t want to pay the filing fee? I dunno.
So that’s what I know. I will do some number of interviews for this race, probably four or five. Note that while both this and CD18 are sure to go to runoffs, they will have those runoffs on different dates – Council in December, CD18 in January. Yeah, get ready for “voter fatigue” again.
(*) After finishing the first draft, I noticed that it’s “Shiraz” on the HCDE page and “Sheraz” on the Facebook page, and also on the City Secretary page. That Google search still took me to that HCDE page, but then it also gave me a bunch of results for “Chris” (not “Cris”) Wright. Sheraz Siddiqui’s Facebook page did not have anything on its About tab. Insert shrug emoji here.