Several dozen precinct chairs Tuesday night elected former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner to be the Democratic nominee for Congressional District 18, replacing the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The vote means Turner is likely to be the district’s representative for at least one two-year term beginning in Jan. 2025. Turner will face Republican Lana Centonze in the Nov. 5 general election for the heavily Democratic district.
Turner narrowly defeated former At-Large City Council Member Amanda Edwards in a runoff election with 41 votes to Edwards’ 37.
Acknowledging his age of 69 and previous battle with a form of bone cancer, Turner promised to be a bridge candidate to a younger generation and said he “would serve one, maximum two terms.”
“I don’t intend to be there forever, but this is a critical moment and it demands experience and relationships right now,” he told the precinct chairs and audience at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church.
Edwards is 42 and had pitched herself as part of a new generation of younger leaders.
It took only two rounds of voting to select Turner from a field of seven nominees.
The final vote by just 78 precinct chairs from the congressional district ends an uncommon, but not unheard of, process to replace a political party nominee on the ballot after they had won the primary election.
Jackson Lee died July 19 after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. She already had defeated former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards in the March Democratic Primary.
Texas election law allows political parties to gather an “executive committee” — in this case all the Democratic precinct chairs from Congressional District 18 — to vote for a new nominee.
Harris County is heavily Democratic, making the act of precinct chairs essentially coronating a successor not uncommon. Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis, state Sen. Borris Miles and state Rep. Shawn Thierry were all nominated by precinct chairs in recent years.
At least 12 local Democrats threw their name in to the contest, including Turner, Edwards, state Rep. Christina Morales, state Rep. Jarvis Johnson and At-Large City Council Member Letitia Plummer.
Those five, along with Houston chef and businessman Robert Slater, were the only six candidates officially nominated during the meeting.
Slater briefly ran in this year’s Democratic primary against Jackson Lee, along with Edwards, but he dropped out before Election Day and endorsed Jackson Lee.
The candidates participated in individual interviews with a small committee of precinct chairs last week, and the precinct chairs’ top 7 candidates participated in a forum Saturday leading up to Tuesday’s meeting.
Turner was selected after two rounds of voting.
Following a roll call vote, Turner narrowly won the first round with 35 votes. Edwards finished in second with 34 votes.
Ten other precinct chairs voted for other candidates, and one precinct chair, the meeting’s secretary, abstained.
Because neither Edwards or Turner received a majority of the vote, the pair advanced to a runoff. For the runoff vote, precinct chairs were physically divided at the front of the meeting room, then counted.
A loud cheer erupted from dozens of Turners’ supporters who attended the meeting when the vote count was announced after a brief wait.
There were 88 precinct chairs that could have voted in the election, although not all attended the meeting. The election could have had more than 100 more voters, but more than half of the Democratic precincts in the congressional district are vacant, Harris Democratic Party Chair Mike Doyle said.
Heading in to Tuesday’s election, candidates and precinct chairs described an intimate campaign where the chairs heard personally from each of the candidates.
“We’ve heard all the speeches, we’ve answered all the telephone calls, we’ve read all the emails (and) text messages, and we’re ready to get this show on the road,” said Linda Bell-Robinson, a precinct chair and chair of the CD18 executive committee.
Fred Woods, president of the Northwood Manor Civic Club and a precinct chair, said he heard from many candidates but only considered those who he has seen in his neighborhood prior to the campaign. Woods said he supported Edwards because of her previous run for the nomination this spring and her frequent presence in his area.
“She is the only candidate that ran for the job, going through the front door while others choose … to go through the back door,” Woods said.
Turner worked to consolidate support in advance of the meeting, announcing Monday that 30 of the voting precinct chairs had endorsed him. That announcement left the former mayor heading needing only to receive the support of an additional 14 precinct chairs to secure the nomination.
Edwards benefited from a late decision by Johnson to drop out of the running and direct all of his precinct chair voters to vote for Edwards. Johnson, like Edwards, had encouraged the precinct chairs to select a younger nominee during the brief campaign.
“We need a leader who will build on the promise of today, but also help pass the baton toward the future,” Edwards told the precinct chairs shortly before voting began.
Following the roughly two-hour meeting, Bell-Robinson said the voters’ of CD18 should be proud of the precinct chairs’ work.
“They should know it was done in decent order, it was done with integrity, it was done with ethics and it was done with character,” Bell-Robinson said. “We wanted to do this to where nobody could point and say it wasn’t done properly, and I think we did that.”
The specter of Jackson Lee hung over much of the meeting.
A photo of Jackson Lee was projected at the front of the room as precinct chairs filed in to the meeting. Jackson Lee’s daughter, Erica Lee Carter, spoke to the precinct chairs at the beginning of the meeting and encouraged them to keep her mother’s memory alive.
Lee Carter and her brother, Jason Lee, endorsed Turner for the nomination prior to the meeting. Lee Carter said her mother would have been proud of the precinct chairs’ decision.
“She loved him like a brother, but worked with him like a fighter,” Lee Carter said after the vote concluded. “There’s no one else she’d want in the fight to have your back than Sylvester Turner.”
An additional special election for CD18 will be held on Nov. 5 to fill the remaining weeks of Jackson Lee’s term. The special election was called by Gov. Greg Abbott.
Lee Carter announced Monday that she would run in the special election to “finish for my mom.”
Lee Carter’s decision seemingly gives Democrats a candidate to coalesce around despite feeling it was unnecessary for Abbott to call the election given the short period of time left in Jackson Lee’s term and that it could confuse voters because of the general election on the same ballot.
No other candidate has announced an intention to run in the election. The filing deadline for the special election in Aug. 22.
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