A special election for Texas' 18th Congressional District has been called for Nov. 4 – which will be nearly eight months after the death of U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner left the Houston seat vacant.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who was criticized by Houston-area Democrats for not putting the election on the May 3 ballot, issued a Monday afternoon proclamation scheduling the special election for the fall.
Acting Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, a Democrat who has announced his candidacy for the vacant seat, called Abbott's delay "a slap in the face to every person who's ever relied on their member of Congress to fight for them."
"It is unconscionable to leave nearly 800,000 people in this district without representation in Congress for most of the year," Menefee also said in a Monday statement. "We'll go through hurricane season, budget battles, and attacks on Social Security and Medicaid with no one at the table fighting for us. Governor Abbott knows how to move quickly — he's done it for other districts. He just chose not to for us."
The Texas Election Code requires the governor to call a special election to fill a vacant office. After the July 2024 death of U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Abbott called a special election to coincide with the general election in November 2024 – when Jackson Lee's daughter, Erica Lee Carter, won the special election to complete her mother's term and Turner won the general election for a full two-year term beginning at the start of this year.
In a statement accompanying his Monday proclamation, Abbott said he didn't set an earlier date for the election to succeed Turner, who died March 5 at age 70, because he wanted to give Harris County "sufficient time to prepare for such an important election."
"No county in Texas does a worse job of conducting elections than Harris County," Abbott said. "They repeatedly fail to conduct elections consistent with state law. Safe and secure elections are critical to the foundation of our state. Forcing Harris County to rush this special election on weeks' notice would harm the interests of voters."
Texas' Republican-controlled legislature in 2023 passed a law that abolished the Harris County Elections Administrator's Office, handing its duties back to the elected Harris County Clerk. Twenty-one Republicans from Harris County sued over their losses in the 2022 general election, when multiple polling locations ran out of ballot paper and voting was extended for a period of one hour. A judge ordered one of those races to be re-contested, while in the other court cases the winning Democrats prevailed or the losing Republicans dropped their challenges.
Menefee and former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards are among those who have announced their candidacies for the 18th Congressional District, a seat that has been held by Black Democrats since late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan was first elected in 1972.
Last week, a group of Democrats from Houston accused Abbott of delaying a special election in order to help his fellow Republicans, who control the U.S. House of Representatives by a margin of five seats. That's with four vacancies, two of them left by the deaths of Turner and U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona.
Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a Democrat whose precinct includes some of the same geographical areas as the 18th Congressional District, referred to the delay in calling the special election as "unnecessary, unjust, and deeply harmful to a district whose constituents deserve better."
"Our democracy only works when every voice is heard," Ellis said in a Monday statement. "The delay in calling this election was a disservice to the principles of representative government."
According to Abbott, candidates for the vacant seat must file applications with the Texas Secretary of State no later than 5 p.m. Sept. 3. Early voting for the special election will begin Oct. 20.
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