Texas Democrat Menefee Wins Election Trimming House GOP Edge

Texas Democrat Christian Menefee won a special election Saturday to fill a long-vacant Houston district that will temporarily shrink the House Republican majority.

Menefee, the former elected Harris County Attorney, had 67% of the vote compared with 33% for fellow Democrat Amanda Edwards, a former Houston councilwoman, in a runoff election in Texas’ 18th District, according to unofficial returns.

Menefee, 37, will complete the term of the late Sylvester Turner (D), who died last March 5 — 332 days ago and just two months into his House term. Menefee and Edwards advanced from a 16-candidate first-round balloting last November in which no one secured a majority of votes.

The House will have 218 Republicans and 214 Democrats once Menefee is sworn in to office. That means Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could afford to lose only one defector to Democrats on otherwise party-line votes in which all House members participate.

Some Democrats preemptively called on House Republican leaders to promptly seat the election winner. Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) took her House seat 50 days after her Sept. 23 election, which was held the week before the start of a 43-day government shutdown. The newest House member, Rep. Matt Van Epps (R-Tenn.), was seated two days after winning a Dec. 2 special election.

“I think that point has been made explicitly clear to Speaker Johnson and to Republicans that we can never have another Adelita Grijalva situation again, beginning with the victor of the special election connected to Texas’s 18th congressional district,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told reporters Jan. 29.

Menefee, who was backed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, described himself as a “scrappy” fighter who won lawsuits against the Trump administration and Gov. Greg Abbott (R) as Harris County Attorney, the official responsible for representing the state’s most populous county in civil lawsuits. Menefee has campaigned on abolishing the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and establishing a “Medicare for All” single-payer health-insurance system.

“What people in this country want is a fighter who delivers results,” Menefee said in an interview during the campaign. “If you talk to Democrats across the country, that’s what people are crying out for.”

Speaking to supporters Saturday night, Menefee said he would “fight each and every day to impeach Kristi Noem, to tear ICE up from the roots, and to fix this country’s broken immigration system.”

A Menefee and Edwards rematch is coming soon. Both filed to seek a full two-year term in the March 3 Democratic primary and will have to pivot to a much different race against 11-term Rep. Al Green (D) in a district Texas Republican lawmakers revamped last summer. The new 18th District includes most of Green’s current 9th District constituents and just more than one-fourth of people in the district that Menefee won on Saturday.

Texas’ 18th District accounts for one of four vacancies in the House. Republicans probably won’t get a 219th seat until April 7, the date of a likely runoff to fill the northwestern Georgia district formerly held by ex-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R). A March 10 election is unlikely to yield a majority-vote victor because 22 candidates are on the ballot.

Democrats are favored to win an April 16 election in a New Jersey district vacated by now-Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D). The other vacant district, in a conservative rural northern California district formerly held by the late Doug LaMalfa (R), may not be filled until August.