I was beginning to wonder if this would even happen.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee
Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday set a special election to fill former U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s seat for the remainder of the term on Nov. 5, the same day as the general election.
The special election will select an official to represent Texas’ 18th Congressional District for the two months remaining in the Congress after the election.
The general election, on the other hand, will determine who represents the district for the full two-year term beginning in 2025. Houston-area voters will decide on both at the same time.
Early voting for both the special and general elections will begin concurrently on Oct. 21.
[…]
Meanwhile, any eligible Texan may file with the Secretary of State by Aug. 22 to place their name on the special election ballot — except for the full-term nominee Democrats select in August and Lana Centonze, the Republican running for the seat. Those candidates cannot appear on the same ballot twice.
Mike Doyle, chair of the Harris County Democrats, called the special election “an attempt to confuse and create havoc in voting in November.”
Abbott was not required to set a special election to fill the seat for two months, Doyle said, and doing so means that voters will see two ballots for the same office.
“This is gamesmanship — nothing more, nothing less,” he said.
Note that this is the election to fill out the remainder of Rep. Jackson Lee’s current term. The winner of this race gets to serve from November through January 2, or whenever the next Congress is sworn in. We could have had this election in September, and thus allowed the future Congressperson to get a running start as well as some extra seniority, but the law gives the Governor the discretion to set the date, and that’s what he did. I’m a little confused by the condition that the November nominees can’t appear on the ballot twice, because that was not the case in 2006 when Shelley Sekula Gibbs did so for CD22. Remember “vote twice for Shelley”? I assume the law has since been changed, but if so I was not aware of it.
In any event, there’s not much at stake now. Not much happens in the two months at the end of a term, as ol’ shelley should know by now, so I don’t think that the runners-up for the nomination will bother to go for this small consolation prize. That means we’re likely to get a bunch of non-A list types filing for it, none of whom are likely to make much of an impression in the short time they’ll have to run and the lack of anything substantive they can promise. Maybe Shelley ought to give it another try. She at least has some experience in these matters.
UPDATE: As Heath in the comments reminds me, Shelley was a write-in for the full term election in 2006. So that mystery is solved.
You should file Charles!
It looks like in 2006 Sekula-Gibbs’s name was only printed for the special election (which she won) and she ran a write-in campaign for the full term (which she lost.) (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Texas%27s_22nd_congressional_district_elections)
The proscription on the same name appearing twice appears unchanged since its inception:
Sec. 52.034. NAME ON BALLOT MORE THAN ONCE. A candidate’s name may not appear more than once on the ballot except as a candidate for:
(1) two or more offices that are permitted by law to be held by the same person; or
(2) the office of president or vice-president of the United States and another office.
Acts 1985, 69th Leg., ch. 211, Sec. 1, eff. Jan. 1, 1986.
Heath, you are quite right. I had forgotten that part of the Shelley story. I’ve added an update to the post. Thanks!
Karen, not if I want to stay married. 🙂