Four elections. Seven months. One congressional seat. That is the reality for the team behind U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee as his campaign sprints toward a May 26 Democratic primary runoff against U.S. Rep. Al Green in Texas’s redrawn 18th Congressional District.
Early voting for the May 26 runoff starts on May 19, featuring a competitive race between two Houston Democrats: Menefee, 37, a former Harris County attorney, and Green, 79, a long-standing congressman of Texas’s 9th congressional district. Menefee secured 46% of the vote in the March 3 primary, narrowly surpassing Green’s 44.2%, triggering a runoff election.
Behind every congressional campaign are the strategists, organizers, and advisors who rarely make the headlines but carry the weight of every decision made throughout this entire election process. This Defender set out to spotlight those faces on both sides of the District 18 race.
Building the machine
For Campaign Manager Jamie Stewart-Aday, a Rice University graduate who spent five years running campaigns across Texas before joining Menefee’s team roughly a year ago, the job is more relentless than most people imagine. He oversees three full-time organizers and 15 interns, coordinates consultants for direct mail and digital advertising, and manages every dollar the campaign spends.
“A campaign doesn’t happen on your laptop,” Stewart-Aday said. “It happens in the real world. Your job as staff is to represent your campaign well with all of the people who need to interact with it at every level.”
That philosophy extends to budgeting. Stewart-Aday said a campaign manager’s obligation is to “spend to zero”, any money left in the bank at the end of the race represents voters who were not reached.
Senior Advisor Delilah Agho-Otoghile, a nationally recognized Democratic strategist who has worked with Stacey Abrams, former Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, and former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, brings a decade of organizing experience to the role. She first met Menefee while serving as chair of the African American Council at the Harris County Democratic Party, long before his congressional ambitions materialized.
“I think of my role as a utility player,” Agho-Otoghile said. “Whether that means helping with donor outreach and fundraising or narrowing our targets for who we’re talking to on the ground, we are involved in a little bit of all of that.”
An unprecedented timeline
After former Rep. Sylvester Turner died in March 2025, Abbott waited 334 days before the district was represented again, a delay Democrats accused him of engineering to protect the Republican House majority when he redrew the district maps across the state. Menefee won the Jan. 31 special runoff and was sworn in Feb. 2, 2026. Republican redistricting then forced him into the newly drawn 18th District, where Green also landed after being pushed out of his longstanding district.
“Governor Abbott refused to call this election for a year and then insisted on a mid-decade redistricting that forced the congressman to run in four elections in seven months,” Stewart-Aday said. “Each of those elections is a brand new race with a brand new strategy.”
Agho-Otoghile added that post-election debriefs have been critical to staying sharp.
“If your strategy is the same every time, that is not a strategy,” she said. “You need to be adjusting to new conditions as they come.”
Winning senior voters
One of the more nuanced challenges in this race has been earning the trust of older voters with deep loyalty to the district’s history, a lineage that runs through the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who represented the district for nearly 30 years, and Turner, who died just two months into his first term.
“We are never asking anyone to change their values,” Stewart-Aday said. “Our job is to show them that the best way to live out those values is to elect a fighter like Congressman Menefee.”
Agho-Otoghile pushed back on the assumption that older voters are uniformly resistant to change.
“It is a misnomer that older voters are all okay with the status quo,” said Agho-Otoghile, noting that many have watched the current administration’s moves closely and understand the fight ahead will be long. “There is a trend happening of folks looking for new ideas, new tactics, and new leaders, while still being able to respect those who came before.”
Both advisors said the campaign’s philosophy mirrors broader voter frustration with the Democratic Party nationwide, and that Menefee foresaw it years before it became a talking point.
“A campaign doesn’t happen on your laptop. “It happens in the real world. Your job as staff is to represent your campaign well with all of the people who need to interact with it at every level.”
Jamie Stewart-Aday, Menefee Campaign Manager
“What people are asking for is Democrats who are willing to fight,” Stewart-Aday said. “What we are seeing is that the national Democratic Party is finally catching up to what Congressman Menefee was doing four years ago when he was one of the only voices saying we cannot just turn the other cheek.”
Agho-Otoghile said the key is meeting voters where they are rather than telling them their frustrations are misplaced.
“Our job is to show them that you are right about all of these things,” she said, “and that Congressman Menefee has been saying and living them out, and is ready to continue doing that.”
Both Stewart-Aday and Agho-Otoghile were clear that whatever happens on May 26, the infrastructure being built is designed to outlast the race. Hundreds of volunteers who have knocked doors, made calls, and sent texts throughout this campaign are being viewed as a long-term civic asset, one the team hopes to plug into other Democratic efforts across Harris County and Texas ahead of November’s general election.
“We have created an environment where community leaders can work with the congressman’s office to deliver for the community,” Agho-Otoghile said. “We want that relationship to remain open, transparent, and collaborative well past this election.”
The Green campaign looks ahead
Green, who first won election to Congress in 2004, has represented Houston’s communities for over two decades. His team, equally hard at work ahead of the runoff, offered the following email statement to the Defender:
“Our campaign is implementing a strategy that will lead to victory, and we’ll be more than pleased to discuss this strategy after we have won. Thank you for the request. We look forward to a lengthy discussion after the election.”
