Hope it doesn’t have to come to that, but there’s no reason to trust Greg Abbott.
Christian Menefee
Acting Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee on Monday demanded that Gov. Greg Abbott call a special election to fill the region’s open congressional seat, even going as far as threatening legal action as the governor continues to hold off.
Houston’s 18th Congressional District, which has traditionally been a Democratic stronghold, has been without representation since March 5 after U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner died following health complications.
Menefee was the first to file to replace Turner, doing so just hours after Turner’s west Houston funeral on March 15.
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Abbott’s office on Monday did not respond to questions surrounding the possible litigation, nor did it provide a special election date.
“An announcement on a special election will be made at a later date,” Abbott’s press secretary Andrew Mahaleris wrote in an email.
Well, we know it won’t be in May. My expectation once that deadline passed was that we would have to wait until November, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be earlier. Menefee, who unlike me is an actual lawyer, has presumably read the statute that governs the timing of these special elections more or less as I did, with an eye on the phrase “the election shall be ordered as soon as practicable after the vacancy occurs”. The combination of “shall” and “as soon as practicable” says to me, and I presume to Menefee, who again is an actual lawyer unlike myself, that this means that while Abbott has some discretion – no specific deadline to call it, yadda yadda yadda – he can’t not call it, and he can’t wait forever to call it.
What “practicable” means in the real world is something that the courts would decide, if and when Menefee and likely a couple of CD18 voters as co-plaintiffs sue to force the matter. I have no idea how that may go because we’ve never really faced this before – these elections have been delayed sometimes – the HD143 election in 2005 is the most prominent example in my mind – but having to wait nearly eight months until November is unprecedented as far as I know. Who knows what logical knots will get tied as the state tries to defend that, if it comes to it.
The simple solution is to call the election sooner than that. We had the chance to do that in May, but here we are. Given the deadline situation, if Menefee is to make good on his threat, he’ll be suing in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned. This Landing story from Friday is about the state of CD18 and the possible long wait to resolve it, so not about this new development but worth your time anyway.