By Jim Ellis — Friday, March 7, 2025
House
Texas Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston)
Rep. Turner’s predecessor, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D), won 14 consecutive US House elections from this center city district until she succumbed to cancer in July 2024. Therefore, this will be the second time in seven months that the 18th District will be vacant due to an incumbent’s death.
Rep. Turner had earlier been diagnosed with bone cancer but declared himself cancer-free before the 2024 election. Prior to winning the US House seat, Turner served two four-year terms as mayor of Houston and for 27 years in the Texas House of Representatives.
Gov. Greg Abbott (R) will schedule a special election to replace the late Congressman. Candidates will compete in an initial vote. If no one receives majority support, the top two finishers, regardless of political party affiliation, will advance to a runoff election that the Governor would subsequently schedule.
The Y-shaped 18th District is fully contained within Harris County and lies within the confines of the city of Houston, encompassing the downtown area. The seat is strongly Democratic.
The FiveThirtyEight data organization rates the seat as D+43. The Dave’s Redistricting App statisticians calculate a 73.6D – 24.4R partisan lean, and the Down Ballot political blog prognosticators rank TX-18 as the 46th-safest seat in the House Democratic Conference. Therefore, the battle to replace the late Congressman will largely be conducted with Democratic candidates.
After Rep. Jackson Lee passed away, the local politicians yielded to her daughter, Erica Lee Carter (D), to fill the balance of her mother’s term. Carter did not compete for the full term, but questions will now arise as to whether she will run for the seat in what will be a new special election likely within two to three months.
Another probable candidate is former Houston City Councilwoman and US Senate candidate Amanda Edwards. In 2024, Edwards challenged then-Rep. Jackson Lee but failed to force her into a runoff election. Approximately 10 state House districts and two state Senate seats overlap Congressional District 18, not to mention various Houston City Councilmembers, and Harris County officials who also share constituents at least to a small degree. Therefore, we could see a number of candidates emerge from different sectors.
The 18th CD has over 576,000 eligible voters, and a voting age population comprised of over 80 percent minority residents (39.8 percent Hispanic; 34.4 percent Black; and 6.2 percent Asian). A total of 19.4 percent are White, with less than one percent mixed or multiple race.
The Turner vacancy causes the Democratic Conference to recede to 214 members as compared to the Republicans’ 218. The two vacant Florida House seats from which resigned Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) left to join the OAN news network, and which Rep. Mike Waltz (R) did likewise to become President Trump’s National Security Advisor, will remain unoccupied until the April 1 special general elections. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) will be confirmed soon as US Ambassador to the United Nations, thus dropping the GOP to 217 members.