{"id":836555,"date":"2026-06-01T10:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T10:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/836555\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T10:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T10:05:12","slug":"how-did-letitia-plummer-pull-off-the-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/836555\/","title":{"rendered":"How Did Letitia Plummer Pull Off the Win?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

The tweet said simply, \u201cHoly guacamole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beneath the social media post was a screenshot of early voting numbers that showed underdog Letitia Plummer, a dentist and two-term at-large city council member, in the lead in the Democratic primary runoff for Harris County judge over former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, an LGBTQ trailblazer with 18 years of elected public service under her belt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the evening went on and results trickled in, the text messages, phone conversations and comments became more pronounced: \u201cI think Plummer might actually win this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

And she did, albeit by the skin of her teeth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So how\u2019d she do it? Parker outraised Plummer 10 to 1, adding more than $1 million to her war chest. Parker has more years of experience and more name ID. A University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs picked Parker to win last week\u2019s runoff by a whopping 18 points.\u00a0But Plummer had a tribe of progressives who were genuinely fearful that Parker wouldn\u2019t stand up to Republican state leadership.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plummer supporters took note when Parker almost won the three-candidate March primary outright, missing the 50 percent threshold by just 1 percentage point. <\/p>\n

Karthik Soora, co-founder of the Houston Progressive Caucus<\/a>, says there\u2019s merit to the assertion that Plummer won because Black voters turned out to cast ballots in the heated Congressional District 18 race between Al Green and Christian Menefee. But not all Harris County voters live in CD 18. Plummer says she didn\u2019t even campaign in CD 18 because she already had relationships with those voters. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t surprised [by the win],\u201d Plummer says. \u201cWe saw what was happening on the ground. We saw the people that were filling our rooms. They were not coming to learn about me. They already knew me. They were coming to get their marching orders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Soora says it came down to aggressive information distribution from bloggers<\/a> and influencers posting reels about Plummer and Parker. A video interview with Plummer shared by Houston resident Sim Kern outlining Plummer\u2019s voting record and priority issues, while criticizing Parker\u2019s public comments, got more than 91,000 views but was ignored by mainstream media, Soora says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that video was the only exposure some people had to this race outside of mailers,\u201d Soora says. \u201cPeople should stop pretending, like the old school, that you can just send out a mailer and ignore the stuff that matters. People are tired of baby boomer politicians.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Menefee, who won the nomination for Congressional District 18 last week, held a press conference on May 27 with Plummer and Dexter McCoy, the Democratic nominee for Fort Bend County judge. Menefee offered his endorsement to the pair and vowed to \u201ccampaign as hard as hell\u201d to elect Democrats across the state in November.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are united in ensuring that Democrats win every single countywide race in Harris County and Fort Bend County and do all we can to flip the state of Texas and make sure that flows to Harris and Fort Bend counties,\u201d Menefee said. \u201cDemocrats right now are united.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the press conference, Plummer said she won her race \u201cbecause we heard people and met them where they were. We did not do politics as usual. We created hope for them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When pressed for how she pulled off what\u2019s being referred to as the biggest Harris County upset in recent history, Plummer said, \u201cI honestly believe people are speaking up and showing up. They\u2019re tired of old leadership and dated ideas. They understand that people who have served, have served their time and our problems are still exactly the same. They want to give someone else an opportunity to come up with new ideas and be able to deliver.\u201d <\/p>\n

Soora says that while Plummer was a council member \u2014 the first Muslim woman to be elected to the Houston City Council \u2014 she worked on an apartment inspection ordinance and an immigration ordinance that involved many diverse constituent groups. She developed relationships with those voters that turned out to be more valuable than endorsements or yard signs. <\/p>\n

Both measures passed after Plummer left office last year but those who watch city politics closely credit her for initiating the conversations and doing the legal research to get the ordinances drafted. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard to find left-leaning progressive or activist groups or nonprofits to say, Plummer never showed up for us,\u201d Soora says. \u201cPeople like Letitia Plummer and they\u2019re passionate about her. It\u2019s easy to say that Plummer wasn\u2019t able to pass all these things but she was one of the few people standing up to powerful special interests in a corporate-dominated city.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Caucus, whose entire slate of endorsed local candidates won runoffs last week, targeted voters in the 18-45 age range with mass text messages and reminded them that Parker once spoke out in support of the Houston ISD state takeover. She later walked it back, but Soora says the purpose of the messaging was to let Democratic primary voters know there was actual evidence to support that Parker has a history of unpopular opinions or \u201ccentrist ideology at best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Parker, who led the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund following six years as a council member, six years as city controller and six years as mayor, didn\u2019t denounce HPD\u2019s cooperation with federal immigration authorities and she endorsed Mayor John Whitmire, who was admonished by the Harris County Democratic Party last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plummer\u2019s Muslim Faith<\/p>\n

Plummer\u2019s mother is Yemeni-Persian and her father is Black. The pair met in Africa while her father was serving in the Peace Corps. Dr. Matthew Plummer Jr., a Harvard-educated dentist, converted to Islam, and Plummer and her siblings were raised in Houston, worshipping in a mosque but also visiting a Baptist church in Edna a couple of times a month with their paternal grandparents.<\/p>\n

\u201cGrowing up, I saw people speaking Arabic and Swahili in my home,\u201d she says, noting that she\u2019s not in any way trying to distance herself from her Muslim faith while campaigning for judge. \u201cI learned to pray in Arabic. This is who I am. I own that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plummer is a divorced single mom and does not wear a hijab to cover her hair. She was raised to have no alcohol or pork in the home. She admits she doesn\u2019t know a whole lot about Sharia law, the religious principles derived from the Quran, or why it\u2019s become so controversial. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was never really super religious. I would say I am spiritual,\u201d she says. \u201cI don\u2019t pray five times a day. I probably get three prayers in. I am very clear who I am from a spiritual perspective.\u201d <\/p>\n

Cameron \u201cCoach Cam\u201d Campbell, a Harris County Democratic Party precinct chair who led the Whitmire admonishment effort, says it\u2019s up to the men in the party to step in and protect Plummer when she is attacked for her faith or for any other reason. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we know about the anti-Black-woman playbook is that they\u2019re going to insult her intelligence,\u201d Campbell says. They\u2019re going to say she\u2019s incompetent. They\u2019re going to bring up Sharia law. Every fear tactic they can play, they\u2019re going to play. It\u2019s not her job to be on defense. It\u2019s our job to call BS when we see BS and step up to challenge these narratives. Part of building a winning culture is not only doing your job but advocating for your teammates.\u201d<\/p>\n

The attacks on Plummer\u2019s Muslim faith began soon after she won the nomination, as critics recycled a six-year-old congratulatory tweet from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group Gov. Greg Abbott has deemed<\/a> a terrorist organization. <\/p>\n

Plummer says she\u2019s aware there have been rumblings about her faith, but as a female Black Muslim, she\u2019s faced prejudice her entire life. \u201cIn middle school I was teased because people said I didn\u2019t have a mom, that I was motherless. They thought my mom was my nanny. They said this woman who picked me up from school wore costumes.\u201d <\/p>\n

She adds that Muslims, Christians and Jews are all children of the same Abraham. \u201cIslam accepts the Bible and the Torah,\u201d she says. \u201cWe share the same foundational covenant of just being a good human being. My grounding and my culture and my religion are going to allow me to govern Harris County and recognize every faith, every background and every family from a very personal perspective.\u201d <\/p>\n

Plummer says she anticipated that the attacks on her faith would become an issue on the campaign trail but acknowledges that she\u2019s \u201creally protected\u201d by people who support her and see the culture wars and Islamophobia for the fear-mongering that it is. \u201cI\u2019ve gone through this already,\u201d she says, referencing her first run for city council that began in 2018. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf all they\u2019re going to attack me with is my religion, then we\u2019ve got this,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n

Low Turnout?<\/p>\n

In last week\u2019s election, Parker dominated the older, white, 65-and-up voters and did \u201cdecently well with Latinos\u201d but failed to reach Black voters of all ages, Soora says. \u201cNo one was excited about Annise Parker,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

Campbell says people also grew weary of the back-and-forth between current County Judge Lina Hidalgo, who didn\u2019t seek a third term, and Parker. Hidalgo criticized Parker for being too close to Whitmire and former Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, speculating that Parker would \u201cgovern like a Republican.\u201d Parker referred to the current Harris County government as dysfunctional.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Letitia Plummer, center, pictured at a No Kings rally in October 2025, will face Orlando Sanchez in November for Harris County judge. Credit: April Towery<\/p>\n

The age gap between Plummer and Parker has also been referenced as a possible reason why Plummer emerged with the nomination. Plummer is 55; Parker is 70. Some have suggested voter fatigue. Parker chalked it up to low turnout. \u201cWhile I didn\u2019t think my opponent could beat me, low turnout absolutely could,\u201d Parker told reporters at a watch party on the night of the election.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the March primary, 333,926 Democrats cast ballots for Harris County judge. On May 26, with only runoffs on the ballot, 112.968 people voted in the Parker-Plummer race.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plummer acknowledges that while the turnout wasn\u2019t great, it was clear that those who went to the polls chose her because of the relationships she built as a city council member.<\/p>\n

Parker conceded the election to Plummer late on election night and sent an email the next morning thanking voters and volunteers for their support. \u201cThis campaign is over and our job now is to defeat the Republicans in November,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Plummer will face the GOP nominee, former Harris County Treasurer Orlando Sanchez on November 3. If elected, Soora says Plummer will be the most powerful Black woman in Texas in terms of the budget she\u2019ll oversee and the authority she\u2019ll have. But both Soora and Campbell say Plummer and her supporters shouldn\u2019t count out Sanchez.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be a hell of a fight,\u201d Campbell said. \u201cI\u2019m interested to see how Sanchez can bandage what Trump has damaged with the Hispanic men in the Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n

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