Second in the series, focusing on now-former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards.
Amanda Edwards
On the day of her last Houston City Council meeting, outgoing at-large member Amanda Edwards wasn’t in the mood for goodbyes.
“In my mind it’s not really closing a door,” Edwards said as she drove a reporter past homes damaged by 2017’s Hurricane Harvey. “It’s kind of remodeling and expanding. I’m completely ready to turn my next position on its head in terms of what people have grown accustomed to thinking it is.”
After just one term on the council, Edwards is running for Senate against incumbent Republican John Cornyn, a bodacious move that reflects her considerable confidence and the changing perceptions of what it takes to win a high-profile post.
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Edwards, 37, was born in Houston to Isabella and Eugene Edwards.
Her parents were health care providers; Eugene was a pharmacist and Isabella is a retired physical therapist.
Eugene Edwards was diagnosed with cancer when Amanda was 10 years old, and he died when she was 17.
The questions Edwards had about his treatment helped shaped her views on health care.
From her father “skunking” her in table tennis and both parents stressing education, Edwards developed a competitive spirit.
She boasts about her skills in basketball, ping-pong and volleyball.
“Just ask the mayor,” she said, alluding to a basketball game between the council and staff and the mayor’s staff, in which she starred.
Edwards has degrees from Emory University and Harvard Law School. At Emory in Atlanta, she worked in six neighborhood community development corporations.
After college, she served as board president of Project Row Houses in Houston, where she helped redevelop homes as living art pieces.
She said she ran for council in 2015 to promote servant leadership. She won easily.
“I knew that a lot of things I felt strongly about were issues of leadership, like how to appropriately invest in under-resourced areas alongside the will of the community,” she said.
Edwards touts her work in bringing venture capital to Houston, as well as her push to develop neighborhoods without harmful gentrification.
She’s campaigned heavily on her work to help neighborhoods mend after Hurricane Harvey. Edwards and her community partners canvassed affected homes to determine what victims needed and how to improve the allocation of aid.
Here’s the interview I did with Amanda Edwards in 2015, when she first ran for Council. I included the bits from this story about her time on Council because I would not have known it off the top of my head. That’s partly because this was behind-the-scenes stuff, and partly because in our system here in Houston, Council members usually only make news if they’ve done something dumb or they’ve gotten into a fight with the Mayor. It’s good to be reminded that they do a lot of things we don’t easily see.
As for her candidacy, I guess I’ve been a skeptic. I doubted the reports that she was thinking about running, and I have my doubts she can break out in this field. I’ve long believed that she had a path to being Mayor in 2023, which may be affecting my perception. Edwards says in this story that people have underestimated her for her whole life, and I may be doing exactly that. I look forward to seeing her Q4 finance report, that’s for sure. Having said all this, I do think she’ll be a compelling candidate in November if she makes it through the primary, and whatever happens in March I fully expect we’ll be hearing plenty from Amanda Edwards.
(Previously: Chris Bell.)