The Press dives right in.
Rep. Sylvester Turner
Shortly after the news broke Wednesday morning of former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s death, speculation began about a special election for his U.S. Congressional seat — a post he’d held for just two months.
Political experts say an election is likely to happen in May and could represent a generational change.
“We’re going to see a group of younger people running and more than likely one of them is going to win,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political science professor.
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott will call a special election to fill Turner’s congressional seat but the law doesn’t specify a deadline. Once he does call an election, it has to be held within about two months of the announcement, Rottinghaus said. The seat will remain vacant until the special election is held.
“The law also suggests that it should line up with the next uniform election, so that probably puts it in May,” he said. “This is a seat that has been contested very recently so there are several people who are primed and are likely thinking about running again. I suspect that’ll heat up after the funeral.”
Funeral arrangements had not been announced at press time.
Turner defeated Republican Lana Centonze with 69 percent of the vote in November. Rottinghaus said Gov. Abbott, a Republican, could “play a game” with the timing of the election but he doesn’t think it’s likely.
“I don’t think the governor would do that,” he said. “He’s generally been pretty consistent about calling these elections in a pretty straightforward way. I don’t think there’s going to be any shenanigans. The other thing is this is a very Democratic district. There’s a very low likelihood this would be an opportunity for Republicans to pick up the seat even with unusual voting circumstances.”
When Lee announced that she was running for mayor of Houston, several people announced their candidacies for her congressional seat.
“They ultimately got out of the race once she got back in,” Rottinghaus said, explaining that Lee was defeated in a mayoral runoff by John Whitmire in 2023 and returned to Congress before her death. “There are candidates who have toyed with the idea of running for the seat and have even gone so far as to formally announce and raise money for it. There is a cadre of people in that position.”
Former Houston City Councilwoman and Senate hopeful Amanda Edwards and City Controller Chris Hollins may be among those possible candidates, Rottinghaus said.
I discussed the timing question yesterday, so let’s leave it at that and hope that May is indeed when the special election occurs. Since it came up in the comments on that post, let me emphasize that this will be an open field special election. The CD18 Democratic precinct chairs will have no role other than endorsing their preferred candidates as they see fit. Our role last year was to replace the already-nominated-in-the-primary Rep. Jackson Lee following her death. There’s no nominee to replace, we’re in a completely different part of the calendar, it’s a straight up special election.
There had been only two announced candidacies for CD18 at the time that Rep. Jackson Lee got back in following her runoff loss in the 2023 Mayoral race, Amanda Edwards and Isaiah Martin, with the former staying in and the latter dropping out. There may have been others who ruminated on it, but none who went as far as filing. There were lots of people who considered running in the precinct chair election, with a smaller number actually doing so. I would not be surprised to see some State Reps have a go at this, as it’s a free shot for them, but City of Houston elected officials would likely trigger the resign-to-run requirement, so I’ll be more surprised to see any of them on the ballot. For all of the obvious reasons, no one has put their name out there just yet.
I’m not going to speculate ahead of candidate announcements, which will begin soon enough assuming that Greg Abbott does his part. I fully anticipate doing interviews for the special election – Lord knows, there are some questions I’d like to hear answers to. As far as the shenanigans that Prof. Rottinghaus mentions, it’s not about when this race might be more amenable for a Republican candidate – there’s no chance of that – it’s about keeping the Dems a member short while the Republicans in Congress work to pass the monstrous tax cuts plus Medicaid cuts plan. We’ll know soon enough if Abbott is playing around or not.
Because this open seat is a once in a political career opportunity, I would expect some city council members to take the gamble and join the contest, perhaps Leticia Plummer, perhaps one of the several city council members whose districts overlap significantly with the boundaries of CD 18.