Andrew Schneider/Houston Public Media
Acting Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council Member Amanda Edwards are leading the field in the latest poll of candidates for the special election to fill Texas’ 18th Congressional District.
Acting Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee leads the special election for Texas’ 18th Congressional District with 32.44% of the vote, according to early voting totals released Tuesday night by the Harris County Clerk’s Office. Former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards is running second with 25.15%, while Jolanda Jones is in third place with 32.44%.
If none of the 16 registered candidates pull in the minimum required 50% of the vote plus one for a first-round victory once the Election Day results are finalized, the contest will proceed to a runoff election between the top two vote-getters. A runoff date has yet to be scheduled, but it would likely take place sometime in late January or February, under a federal law to accommodate serving military personnel and other citizens living overseas.
The 18th Congressional District has remained vacant for much of the past 16 months. Longtime U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee died in July 2024 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Gov. Greg Abbott called a special election to finish her term in November 2024, on the same ballot as which voters were to pick her successor for a full term. Jackson Lee’s daughter won the special election, while former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner won the general election contest.
Turner died in March 2025 after barely two months in office. Abbott then waited a month before announcing in April that the special election to fill Turner’s seat would not come until this November. Abbott cited Harris County’s previous difficulties conducting elections as the reason for the lengthy delay. Democratic critics accused Abbott of holding the seat open, and leaving district residents without a voice in Congress, in order to preserve Republicans’ thin majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.
In July, Abbott directed state lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries, largely under pressure from President Donald Trump, who said he wanted Texas Republicans to flip five Democratic seats to GOP control. Texas’ 18th Congressional District stood at the heart of the fight, after the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division alleged in a letter to Abbott that the district, drawn to represent a majority coalition of nonwhite voters, was an “unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”
The Texas Legislature took two special sessions to accomplish that goal, succeeding only after Democratic representatives fled the state for weeks, denying Republicans a quorum and pushing the issue of redistricting into the national spotlight. A slew of other states, led by both Democrats and Republicans, subsequently moved to redraw their legislative boundaries as part of the effort to decide control of Congress.
Immediately after the Texas Legislature passed its redistricting plan, a coalition of civil rights groups challenged the plan in court.
A federal district court in El Paso will determine whether the existing congressional map or the new one will be used for the 2026 midterm elections.