Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee became the first official candidate to register to run for the 18th District Congressional seat that became available after Sylvester Turner’s sudden death on March 5.
Menefee, a Democrat, filed his intent to run on Saturday just hours after Turner’s funeral. Menefee certainly will not be the only candidate making a bid with more expected to come forth in the coming days.
Texas’s 18th Congressional District is left without leadership after Turner’s passing, prompting discussions about potential candidates for the upcoming special election. Gov. Greg Abbott has the responsibility to call for a special election. But with no state law mandating a deadline to call for one, more than 780,000 constituents of the district now lack representation. Because of the slim majority in the House of Representatives, many think the governor will wait to call the election in November 2025.
Once the governor calls for the election, candidates are given a filing period to declare their candidacy. The special election will be held in a nonpartisan format, with all contenders appearing on the same ballot. If a candidate does not secure more than 50% of the vote, the top two will proceed to a runoff election.
In Texas, certain officeholders are subject to the state’s “resign-to-run” law outlined in Article 16, Section 65 of the Texas Constitution. This law mandates automatic resignation when they announce or become candidates for another office if their current term has more than one year and 30 days remaining.
The provision does not extend to all public officials, such as members of the Texas Legislature and other state-level officials, and they can run for congressional seats without vacating their current positions regardless of the time remaining in their terms. The provision applies to specific county and district officials, including:
- District Clerks
- County Clerks
- County Judges
- Judges of the County Courts at Law, County Criminal Courts, County Probate Courts and County Domestic Relations Courts
- County Treasurers
- Criminal District Attorneys
- County Surveyors
- County Commissioners
- Justices of the Peace
- Sheriffs
- Assessors and Collectors of Taxes
- District Attorneys
- County Attorneys
- Public Weighers
- Constables
For generations, the 18th Congressional District has long been a Black Democrat stronghold, represented by legends of Houston politics: Barbara Jordan, Mickey Leland, Craig Washington and Sheila Jackson Lee. The seat was most recently held by Turner, an Acres Home native who served in the Texas House of Representatives (House District 139), from 1989 to 2016 and as the 62nd mayor of Houston from 2016 to 2024.
The question remains—who will be the next candidate to represent the historic district? While Christian D. Menefee is the first to file his official candidacy, a few prominent figures have been rumored to vie for the seat.
Potential candidates
Christian D. Menefee
Menefee is the first official Democrat candidate whose campaign filed a Federal Election Commission statement of candidacy to replace Turner in the 18th Congressional District.
Menefee is the Harris County Attorney and manages an office of more than 250 attorneys and staff across the county, its 60 elected officials, and over 18,000 employees in civil matters and lawsuits. He was elected at the age of 32 and is the youngest person and the first African-American to serve in this role.
Before taking office in January 2021, Menefee practiced at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, with a focus on complex commercial litigation and bankruptcy matters in federal court, and represented clients in matters involving the US Department of Justice, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other government agencies.
He vows to advocate for Harris County residents and has filed lawsuits against companies that pollute underserved neighborhoods, Gov. Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton to combat “restrictive voting laws,” and other state agencies “whose actions have resulted in harm to people living in Harris County.”
In 2022, Menefee launched an inaugural program called Summer Legal Academy, a two-week program to inform local high school students on how to become an attorney, navigate law school and the practices an attorney can pursue. He has also advised the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and provided free legal advice to veterans, volunteered at MD Anderson Cancer Center and Leukemia Lymphoma Society, served on Houston’s Independent Police Oversight Board, and the boards of the Houston Young Lawyers Association and the State Bar of Texas’s Minority Counsel Program.
Amanda Edwards
Edwards previously ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020 and the 18th Congressional District seat twice, once in the district’s original primary last year when she finished second and again after Jackson Lee’s death.
The native Houstonian attorney is a former At-Large City Council Member (2016-2020), during which she served as the Vice Chair of the Budget & Fiscal Affairs Committee and focused on efforts to cultivate technology, public transit and more accountability of the city’s limited resources. Edwards helped lead budgetary sessions analyzing the city’s $5.1 billion budget. She now leads the Business Ecosystem Alliance for Minorities & Women (BEAMW) to provide support like one-on-one financial counseling services for small business owners.
Edwards also served on the Transportation, Technology, and Infrastructure Committee and led the High Capacity Transit Task Force for the eight-county region through her service on the Houston-Galveston Area Council Transportation Policy Council.
Bishop James Dixon II
Dixon, NAACP Houston President and pastor, announced his intention to run for the interim 18th Congressional District seat in August 2024. However, he dropped out of the race and endorsed Jackson Lee’s daughter, Erica Lee Carter.
“If…the Congresswoman’s daughter, my little sister Erica Lee Carter, decided to enter that race to fill her mother’s term, I would immediately acquiesce and put 1,000% of our support behind Erica Lee Carter… I would never find myself running against my family, friends, and certainly not the daughter of the beloved, our precious one, Congresswoman Lee,” he said then.
Dixon is a civil rights advocate, who aims to uplift the underserved. He delivered his first sermon at 15 at the Community of Faith Church to grow the ministry’s members. Dixon centers his advocacy on social justice, civic engagement, and economic empowerment.
Championing for racial equity, Dixon aims to uplift Black voices, confront systemic barriers that marginalize Black communities, particularly anti-DEI sentiments, and equip younger generations with the tools to navigate economic and political disparities.
Corisha Rogers
Rogers is the organizing director at the Harris County Democratic Party and has worked at the social justice organization Texas Freedom Network before joining the party. Since graduating in 2012, she has worked on local and statewide causes like accessible voting rights, advocated for the Third Ward area community and strategized campaigns for Sen. Molly Cook in 2022 and Michael Bloomberg’s presidential bid in 2020.
Erica Lee Carter
A Democratic Party member, who briefly held the 18th Congressional District seat in 2024 following her mother Sheila Jackson Lee’s passing, Lee Carter’s background in education and familial ties to the district could bolster her candidacy.
During her candidacy to finish Jackson Lee’s term, Lee Carter vowed to champion health care, women’s rights, immigration, and economic development. She served as an elected trustee for the Harris County Department of Education from 2013 until 2019 and has been a Senior Policy Advisor at the Harris County Precinct One policy division, advocating for economic equity, voting rights, and budget management.
Jarvis Johnson
Johnson, a product of Houston’s Fifth Ward, served the 139th district as a State Representative since 2016 until he ran for a State Senate seat last year and lost narrowly to Molly Cook. He is a former District B Houston City Council member, a council seat within the 18th Congressional District.
In 2010, Johnson announced his candidacy for the 18th Congressional District seat, which then belonged to Congresswoman Jackson Lee. He was among the declared and potential Democratic candidates to fill Jackson Lee’s seat after her death.
Johnson has advocated for education funding reform for HBCUs in Texas, spoke against laws codifying protections for police and peace officers, and filed bills to end Confederate Heroes Day as a state holiday. He also proposed legislation to apply pollution limits for concrete plants, which affect the air quality of districts like his.
Letitia Plummer
As an at-large Position 4 council member since 2020, Plummer was among the potential Democratic candidates to run for the 18th Congressional District seat in 2024. However, she was eliminated during the nomination process held by the Harris County Democratic Party on Aug. 13, 2024. The Democratic Party chose Lee Carter as their nominee instead. Subsequently, Plummer did not appear on the final ballot for the special election.
The native Houstonian dentist now serves as the chair of the Government Operations Committee. She reformed how the City of Houston works with Minority/Women Business Enterprise (MWBEs) through cooperative contracts, which allow MWBE vendors to conduct direct business with the city. She also advocates for resiliency resources in vulnerable areas, criminal justice reform, tenant education and rights, environmental justice and equity.
Plummer’s initiatives include the ‘Feed the Need Program,’ which addressed food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
