Edwards, Menefee make their cases to Houston’s 18th Congressional District voters ahead of runoff

From Houston Public Media:

Early voting in the runoff for the special election in Houston’s 18^th Congressional District will run from Jan. 21-27, with Election Day set for Saturday, January 31. The final contenders are acting Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards, both Democrats.

The 18^th Congressional District has long been a Democratic stronghold, but the runoff comes amid uncertainty over which congressional map Texas will use for the primaries in March.

If the U.S. Supreme Court rules Texas must use the state’s 2021 congressional map, based on the 2020 census, the winner of the runoff is all but assured of winning the March 2026 Democratic primary and the midterm general election that follows next November.

Edwards contends that, as both a former intern to Jackson Lee and as a former Houston City Council member, she is in a better position to function as a congresswoman on day one.

“You’ve got to be someone who can be clever about how to maneuver in difficult-to-maneuver environments. You’ve got to be somebody also who knows how to bring home the bacon. That’s a huge part of your congressional role, and I’m the only one in this race that has ever walked and worked in the 18th Congressional District office,” Edwards said.

For Edwards, the top issue has long been access to affordable health care.

“We have now gone through a record-breaking government shutdown where a lot has been sacrificed,” Edwards said. “A lot of changes and challenges have been presented as a result of it, but now we’re walking away from this situation without the affordable access to healthcare, and that’s what people want.”

For Edwards, the issue of making sure her constituents have health care they can afford is intensely personal. Her father was diagnosed with multiple myeloma when she was 10 years old and died when she was a teenager.

“Back then, I remember asking my dad questions like, well, what would happen if the insurance, what if they said no, because I’m learning about all this stuff as a young teen, and I remember my dad just saying to me, well, we just have to figure something else out,” Edwards said. “I knew then, just like I know right now, that that actually was the wrong answer, and the right answer should have been that we had systems in place that help save lives and help provide access and help provide and keep families together.”

Apart from health care, Edwards said her focus is on kitchen-table issues – fighting economic instability, increasing job security, and improving affordability.

“We’ve got to be focused on those economic opportunities that we can provide instead of take away,” Edwards said. “And that’s going to be critical. Keeping costs low or making sure that they’re lowered and it’s affordable for people to live every day.”

Christian Menefee

On that front, there’s little daylight between Edwards and her opponent Menefee. He, too, is arguing for making life more affordable for working families, among other ways by raising the minimum wage.

“There used to be a time in this country where you could work 40 hours a week. You could get the house, the two cars, send your kids off to do better than you did, and retire at a reasonable age,” Menefee said. “But now, so many people in our communities are working multiple jobs. They don’t have savings. If something happens on the health care front, it could set them back financially decades.”

Menefee, too, pointed to his early life experiences as formative to his priorities.

“When I was growing up, there were many nights I would not have eaten were it not for the WIC program,” Menefee said of the USDA’s supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children. “I would have never graduated college without a Pell Grant. I would have never went to law school without my dad’s post-9/11 GI Bill. And my brother almost certainly would have died from cancer, were it not for my parents’ military health benefits that fully funded his bone marrow transplant at MD Anderson.”

That last point is one of the reasons Menefee also names affordable health care as his top priority.

“I’m the only candidate in this race,” Menefee said, “who’s come out for Medicare for All, because I believe that no family in this country should have to choose between putting food on the table and ensuring that they’re able to get lifesaving treatment.”

Unlike Edwards, Menefee comes to the contest with no legislative experience. What he does have is more than four years’ experience as elected Harris County attorney. He officially resigned from the office, as required by state law, when he declared himself a candidate for Congress, but has continued to serve in that role as county commissioners have yet to replace him.

Menefee stresses that, in that role, he has repeatedly fought President Donald Trump, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and state Attorney General Ken Paxton in court and won. He pointed specifically to cases he won ensuring the county would retain millions of dollars for local health care programs and blocking state the licensing of concrete batch plants.

“People want fighters,” Menefee said. “And they don’t want lip service. They don’t want people who are fighting just so they can win an election. They want people who have a track record of fighting and delivering results, and I’m the only candidate in this race who has that.”

The potential Al Green challenge

Turner was 70 years old when he died last March. Jackson Lee was 74 when she died in July 2024. By contrast, Menefee is 37, and Edwards is 43. So much of the focus of the special election has been on a moment of generational change for the 18^th Congressional District.

But it’s no longer clear that moment has arrived — not since Green threw his hat in the ring for the March Democratic primary for the next full term, in the wake of Texas’ mid-decade congressional redistricting.

“The lines were moved such that my home was no longer in the 9th Congressional District,” Green said last week. “I didn’t move. The people that I’ve been representing have not moved.”

Green, who is 78, says he will wait until the U.S. Supreme Court decides a legal challenge to the redistricting map before making a final decision whether he’ll run in the 18^th or his current 9th congressional district.

Edwards says she’s concentrating on her current race. But that doesn’t mean she’s ignoring the potential threat from Green.

“We’ve had a situation where, if you do the math, from when Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee got sick and passed away, Congressman Turner passing away, the delay in the special election, the delay in the runoff election, we’re talking about a period of 18 months with no representation, no vote, no voice, nobody to advocate for federal funding for this region,” Edwards said. “It is time for us to pass this torch forward. I think, with this election, this special election runoff, this is the opportunity to do that.”

Menefee said he’s cautiously optimistic that the courts will ultimately block the 2025 redistricting map. But he signaled that he, too, is willing to fight a contested primary if need be.

“When I set out this process of seeking to serve people in Congress in the 18^th, I didn’t do it just to serve them for 10 months or 11 months,” Menefee said. “People want folks in this business who are going to be committed to serving them long term, and I’m committed to doing that.”

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