Sylvester Turner
Several dozen precinct chairs Tuesday night elected former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner to be the Democratic nominee for Congressional District 18, replacing the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The vote means Turner is likely to be the district’s representative for at least one two-year term beginning in Jan. 2025. Turner will face Republican Lana Centonze in the Nov. 5 general election for the heavily Democratic district.
Turner narrowly defeated former At-Large City Council Member Amanda Edwards in a runoff election with 41 votes to Edwards’ 37.
Acknowledging his age of 69 and previous battle with a form of bone cancer, Turner promised to be a bridge candidate to a younger generation and said he would serve only one term.
“I don’t intend to be there forever, but this is a critical moment and it demands experience and relationships right now,” he told the precinct chairs and audience at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church.
Edwards is 42 and had pitched herself as part of a new generation of younger leaders.
It took only two rounds of voting to select Turner from a field of seven nominees.
The final vote by just 78 precinct chairs from the congressional district ends an uncommon, but not unheard of, process to replace a political party nominee on the ballot after they had won the primary election.
[…]
At least 12 local Democrats threw their name in to the contest, including Turner, Edwards, state Rep. Christina Morales, state Rep. Jarvis Johnson and At-Large City Council Member Letitia Plummer.
Those five, along with Houston chef and businessman Robert Slater, were the only six candidates officially nominated during the meeting.
Slater briefly ran in this year’s Democratic primary against Jackson Lee, along with Edwards, but he dropped out before Election Day and endorsed Jackson Lee.
The candidates participated in individual interviews with a small committee of precinct chairs last week, and the precinct chairs’ top 7 candidates participated in a forum Saturday leading up to Tuesday’s meeting.
Turner was selected after two rounds of voting.
Following a roll call vote, Turner narrowly won the first round with 35 votes. Edwards finished in second with 34 votes.
Ten other precinct chairs voted for other candidates, and one precinct chair, the meeting’s secretary, abstained.
Just a minor correction, the meeting secretary was not a precinct chair and was not eligible to vote. She announced that she was abstaining at the end of the roll call vote, and then Chair Linda Bell-Robinson (who did an outstanding job leading this convention) clarified that she couldn’t vote and had been mistaken to say that she was abstaining. Wouldn’t have mattered in the end anyway.
As this vote is a matter of public record, I’ll state that I supported Amanda Edwards. I thought she had the best combination of vision and experience and I had been excited about her candidacy in this last primary. I think Mayor Turner will do a fine job – he does have the connections, I believe he will hit the ground running, and I congratulated him after the race was over. He says he will serve two terms, which would mean an open primary in 2028. I suspect he will draw a primary challenger in 2026, because someone will either be sufficiently dissatisfied with this result or strategic enough to think that they might have better odds in that scenario than a 2028 feeding frenzy. That’s all for the future, and who knows what will happen. For now, Turner is poised to be the next member of Congress from CD18. I wish him all the best. The Trib and the Chron have more.
Once a lying sack of crap, always a lying sack of crap. I was hoping Amanda Edwards would get the spot. No one needs any more experience in corruption.
I would not expect less from a Maga supporter; that would be Whitmire.
Very disappointed in this outcome. No way he leaves by 2028, he will claim his constituents want him to stay etc.
Charles- I see the vote was 41-37. So did 10 people not show up? You just needed a majority of the people voting/in attendance?
John, we were told that there were 80 precinct chairs in attendance. One did not participate in either round of voting (round one was 35-34 for Turner with ten votes cast for three other candidates), and a second abstained in the runoff. No, I don’t understand why a precinct chair would bother to show up and then not vote at all either.
I wonder why so many white progressives have problems with strong black male elected officials. But have no qualms supporting a clear MAGA white male for mayor.
Doesn’t Turner have his own health concerns over a cancer diagnosis?
What was the count for each of the lesser candidates on the first ballot?
They should have left SJL on the ballot, have her win, she can’t serve, a special election gets called, and the people actually get to exercise their voting rights rather than having them denied. That’s what a true believer in Democracy would do. Sadly, the precinct chairs don’t seem to care. They virtually dictated who gets to be the new Congreeeman and effectively handed him a powerful position that effectively is his for as long as he wants it. So much for the party that claims they want to protect Democracy. Ha!
“I think Mayor Turner will do a fine job – he does have the connections,”
Sly Turner’s connections are exactly what DISQUALIFY him.
Kris, that is what I kept saying about our MAGA mayor; people don’t listen, do they?
Under Texas law you can’t do that. If the person dies before the deadline, they are automatically removed from the ballot so there would be no Democrat on the ballot if they didn’t nominated anyone. I guess they could have nominated someone who promises to not take office or resign right after swearing in, but that is no likely to happen.
Sly’s back. God help us.
John, Texas law is explicit on this:
“Sec. 145.035. WITHDRAWN, DECEASED, OR INELIGIBLE CANDIDATE’S NAME OMITTED FROM BALLOT. A candidate’s name shall be omitted from the ballot if the candidate withdraws, dies, or is declared ineligible on or before the 74th day before election day.”
SJL died on July 19, which was something like 109 days before Election Day. By law, she was to be replaced on the ballot. That 74-day period is when the deadline for overseas and mail ballots to be finalized, which is why we were working under an August 26 deadline to finish this up. Had she died in September or later, she would have been on the ballot and we would have had the subsequent special election if she had won. This is what happened with State Sen. Mario Gallegos in 2o12 and State Rep. Glenda Dawson in 2006.
Corey – I believe it was 5 for Letitia Plummer, 3 for Christina Morales, and 2 for Jarvis Johnson. I may have the first two mixed up, I was just tracking the Edwards/Turner numbers, but it was definitely 5-3-2 for the others who received votes.
Flypusher – Yes, that was a subject of conversation. Turner himself addressed it directly, at the candidate forum last Saturday and in the time he was allotted to speak on Tuesday. I know that gave people pause, but he was able to overcome those doubts.
Kris – I’m speaking about Turner’s existing relationships with current members of Congress and the Biden administration. The legislative process often depends on these relationships. As such, and as an Edwards supporter, I respectfully disagree with you.
Seems like I was misinformed by a media article. And the response is to hide by behind a statute technicality rather than act in service of the far higher principles at issue. So if SJL had lived another approx 35 more days, her constituents’ voting rights would have been preserved and they would have been able to vote without interference later in November-December. But instead, the precinct chairs got to take those rights away rather than put, say, a Kuffner on the ballot who resigns on Nov 6. How hard would that have been? Did any precinct chair propose that? A huge Dem argument against Trump is his threat to democracy; but he’s never succeeded in denying voting rights like the Harris Country Dem party did. Congrats on out-Trumping the would-be dictator!
John, we followed the law. I’m so sorry we didn’t provide you with your preferred outcome. Did you attend the candidate forum or the convention at which the election was held, or contact any of the candidates or precinct chairs ahead of time, or announce for the position yourself with that stated promise, to communicate what you wanted? Or are you just expressing it now?
I will point out that what you advocate for would leave CD18 without representation in the next Congress for at least two months as we conducted the special election and its inevitable runoff; there may then be the need for more special elections if an incumbent officeholder ended up winning. Harris County would be on the hook for all of those extra elections.
I will also point out that the position of Precinct Chair is itself elected. If you reside in CD18 and feel that your Democratic Precinct Chair did not properly serve your wishes in this manner, you are free to file for that position in the 2026 primary.
Representative government, precinct chairs are elected. They have to run every two years.
Total BS. It would have been easy to let the full electorate exercise the most valuable right there is. You denied them that and justify it with weak arguments that fade to insignificance in the face of the principle of voting rights. Voting rights! Maybe Turner will resist the temptation to stay in power and this denial of voting rights will only have a 2 or 4 year life span.
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