Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee said Monday he was running for the vacant U.S. House seat of Representative Sylvester Turner, who died this month, hoping to capture a heavily Democratic district and chip away at the Republicans’ narrow majority.
Mr. Menefee, 36, is the first candidate in what is likely to be a contested, nonpartisan race to fill the seat of Mr. Turner, who died just weeks after being sworn into office.
Mr. Menefee has been seen as a rising star among Texas Democrats. He has frequently sparred with the state’s Republican leadership over voting rights and Republican efforts to impose greater state control over the Democratic-controlled Harris County and Houston, the state’s most populous county and city.
In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Menefee said he hoped to draw on that experience if elected, describing himself as well prepared to fight the Trump administration.
“They’re running the federal government in an incoherent, incompetent way that’s impacting lives, and they’re acting like bullies,” he said, referring to President Trump and his administration. “Frankly, I don’t like bullies.”
There appeared to be little question that the Democrats will hold onto the seat in Texas’ 18th congressional district, which includes downtown Houston and the historically Black neighborhoods of Third and Fifth Ward. The area was formerly represented by Barbara Jordan and Sheila Jackson Lee, both Democrats.
But with Republicans holding the slimmest of majority in the House, Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, could drag his feet on calling a special election in the Democratic district, just as Democrats in New York are contemplating for the seat of Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican who was nominated to be ambassador to the United Nations.
House Republicans currently hold 218 seats to the 213 held by Democrats. There are four vacancies: Mr. Turner’s seat in Houston, a pair of seats in Republican districts of Florida and an Arizona district represented by Raúl Grijalva, a progressive Democrat who died last week.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Republican, has set special elections for next month to fill the open seats, while Gov. Katie Hobbs of Arizona, a Democrat, has already called for special elections to replace Mr. Grijalva in Tucson.
But Mr. Abbott has so far not set a date for an election in Houston, and his office declined to address when he would do so, or whether partisan politics in Washington was playing a role in his thinking. “An announcement on a special election will be made at a later date,” said his press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris.
In Texas, the next regular election is May 3. Mr. Abbott could call the House seat election so that it coincides with that date, or set another date — or he could do nothing: The Texas governor is not obligated to call an election to fill a vacant seat, though Mr. Abbott has not taken that route in the past.
“I don’t think we’ve seen the governor play politics with this seat — that would probably be a step too far,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, who has followed Mr. Abbott’s past calls for special elections. “A May election would be faster than he usually calls these elections, but not out of line with his usual pattern.”
For Texas Democrats, the race in Houston represents a changing of the generational guard. Mr. Turner died at 70. Ms. Jackson Lee, who died in office last year, was 74 and had been in the seat since the 1990s.
In addition to Mr. Menefee, other young Democrats have been suggested as potential candidates, including a former Houston City Council member, Amanda Edwards, who lost to Ms. Jackson Lee in last year’s Democratic primary.
Mr. Menefee comes into the race as a locally familiar name since being elected as county attorney first in 2020 and being re-elected in November.
A former commercial litigation lawyer from a military family, Mr. Menefee had been mentioned as a potential statewide candidate. His decision to run for Congress instead underscored what many Democrats have acknowledged: that the prospects for breaking the Republican hold on state politics in Texas appeared dim for Democrats in the short term.
“The fight right now for the soul of this country is happening in Washington, D.C.,” said Mr. Menefee. “I want to be a part of that fight.”
Mr. Menefee, who has been vocally critical of Mr. Trump on immigration and other issues, pointed to his successful legal battles with Republicans over voting rights and challenges to election results in Harris County in 2022. He also resisted an attempt by state Republican leaders to claim that the county had illegally defunded its police force.
He said he would jump in to the fight against Mr. Trump, but he described himself as “pragmatic” rather than progressive. He said health care would be a top issue, describing his brother’s battle with leukemia and his own efforts to address cancer clusters in Houston’s Fifth Ward.
Mr. Menefee, who is Black, said he believed the inroads that Republicans had made with Black and Hispanic voters were already being eroded by the president’s actions, such as firing federal workers, cutting federal programs that “benefit everybody” and using attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion “as a racist dog whistle.”
“Donald Trump is ruining himself with Black men,” he said.
Even before he had formally announced, Mr. Menefee lined up an endorsement from Ms. Jackson Lee’s daughter, Erica Lee Carter, who won a special election to serve out the remainder of her mother’s term last year before stepping aside for Mr. Turner’s run.
“I know his values,” Ms. Carter said of Mr. Menefee. “I know how much he cares, I know how much my mother and Representative Turner invested in him personally.”