Paul Cobler, Houston Landing

This article first appeared on Houston Landing and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The residents of Houston’s Congressional District 18 have been represented by U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee for 30 years.

Following her death Friday at the age of 74, pieces are quickly falling in place for a small group of Harris County Democratic Party leaders to select a new nominee for the November general election. The chosen candidate is expected to be the clear frontrunner in the heavily Democratic district against Republican Lana Centonze.

Jackson Lee handily won the March Democratic primary to secure her nomination for reelection over her former intern and former Houston city council member Amanda Edwards. Because there is no time to hold a new election before November, 88 party precinct chairs from Congressional District 18 will vote for a new nominee in mid-August, Harris County Democratic Party Chair Mike Doyle said.

The process for Democrats to select Jackson Lee’s replacement is laid out in Texas election law, Texas Southern University political science Professor Michael Adams said.

“You put it in the hands of the precinct judges, and they’re supposed to be representing the interests of the people in their precinct,” Adams said.

The meeting likely will take place Aug. 15 or 17, Doyle said. The deadline for the Democrats to select a new nominee and transmit their choice to the Texas Secretary of State’s office is Aug. 26, according to Texas law.

Harris County is heavily Democratic, making the act of precinct chairs essentially coronating a successor not uncommon. Harris County Precinct One Commissioner Rodney Ellis, state Sen. Borris Miles and state Rep. Shawn Thierry were all nominated by precinct chairs in recent years.

Candidates will have an opportunity to make their case for the nomination to the precinct chairs during an Aug. 10 forum, Doyle said.

Speculation has been swirling around a number of prominent local Democrats who may seek the nomination.

RELATED: Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, longtime champion of women’s rights, racial equality dies at 74

Former Houston Mayor Sylvester said Tuesday he was considering coming out of retirement to run for the seat. Turner said he is waiting for funeral arrangements for the veteran congresswoman to be made before he makes a final decision.

Turner said the only thing that would pull him out of retirement is “the passing of the congresswoman during this critical time in the election cycle.”

“You don’t want to lose a lot from the congresswoman not being there,” Turner said. “It's not about replacing her. It's about continuing the work she did for the people of Congressional District 18.”

Because candidates only have to sway a majority of the 88 precinct chairs to their side to win the election, Turner’s status as a popular local Democrat would make him a formidable challenge for any other candidate to overcome. He was a state legislator for 26 years — representing a district partially contained within CD-18 — before serving two terms as Houston mayor from 2016 through the end of last year.

“Generally, the candidate who will be the ultimate favorite will be someone who is well known among those precinct chairs,” Adams said.

House District 139 State Rep. Jarvis Johnson announced Tuesday he would seek the nomination. Johnson recently lost a May runoff election for state Senate District 15 against emergency room nurse Molly Cook.

Johnson, 52, promised to be a bridge from Jackson Lee to a younger generation and provide cohesion and strength as the district’s representative.

Former Houston City Councilmember Dwight Boykins and Bishop James Dixon, both longtime friends of Jackson Lee, each told the Houston Chronicle Tuesday they were considering a run for the seat.

Melanie Miles, one of the precinct chairs who will vote on Jackson Lee’s ballot replacement, said Tuesday that she had not yet been contacted by anyone seeking the nomination.

Miles said she was humbled by the responsibility her role as precinct chair has brought her as the district grapples with important environmental, infrastructure and transportation issues. She said her ideal candidate is someone who can match Jackson Lee’s ability to be a constant presence in both the district and Capitol Hill.

“It’s really kind of scary because it’s so important that we get this right,” Miles said. “It’s a lot of influence, but also, we’ve got the whole district looking at us and depending on us to make the right decision. It can’t be a popularity contest, it needs to be the right person.”

As the process plays out to select a Democratic nominee for the term beginning in 2025, Congressional District 18 is now vacant. Under state law, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has the option to call a special election to fill the remaining months of Jackson Lee’s term.

There is no deadline for Abbott to call for a special election, but it must be held within two months of him making the announcement.

With a narrow Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, politics could impact the governor’s decision making, Adams said. Any vacant Democratic seat will make it a little easier for the Republican majority in the House to pass any bills, Adams said.

Regardless of Abbott’s decision, constituent services in the district will not be impacted by Jackson Lee’s death, her office said this week.

Jackson Lee’s Congressional staff wrote in a letter Monday that it would continue to operate the office’s constituent services as Houston recovers from Hurricane Beryl’s impact earlier this month and enters the heart of hurricane season.

The staff also promised to work with other congressional offices to carry out Jackson Lee’s final priorities: the establishment of an Emancipation National Historic Trail from Galveston to Houston and the creation of a Juneteenth commission to study the impact of slavery on their descendants.

This article first appeared on Houston Landing and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

This article first appeared on Houston Landing and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, state constitutional amendments have been at the primary electoral battleground in the fight over abortion access across the country.

That battleground does not exist in Texas.

As many as 19 states have voted or will vote this year on constitutional amendments that enshrine a right to an abortion in their state constitution. Many of the votes were launched through citizen-led petition drives that serve as an avenue to exercise political power in states where the government is controlled by anti-abortion advocates, like Texas.

But Texas voters do not have that option. The state’s constitution requires that amendments be initiated by the legislature, which is controlled by Republican lawmakers who passed a near-total ban on abortion in 2021.

In the meantime, some Texas women must carry their medically complex pregnancies to term under the new law, prompting lawsuits that have reached the state Supreme Court. The plaintiffs allege that the law is unconstitutional and vague, putting women’s lives at risk and harming their mental health.

If Texas legislators put the issue to voters, polling shows the vote could be tight. A February University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll of 1,200 registered voters found 45 percent of respondents support making the state’s abortion laws less strict, while 48 percent said they either support leaving the laws alone or making them stricter.

“We would love to have the opportunity to prove to the country that Texans overwhelmingly support abortion access,” said Caroline Duble, the political director at abortion-rights group Avow Texas. “I think a ballot measure with that question would absolutely come back in our favor.”

There are 26 states that allow citizen initiatives, nine of which may have an amendment regarding abortion on their 2024 ballot. Two states, Ohio and Michigan, have already overturned abortion bans through citizen-initiated referendums.

Abortion rights advocates have prevailed in all six of the state constitutional amendment elections on the question of abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Why can’t Texas voters call for an abortion vote?

Thanks to Texas’ 1876 constitution and a 1914 vote, Texans do not have the ability to initiate constitutional referendums. That power is reserved for the legislative branch, where two-thirds of the House of Representatives and Senate must approve of an amendment appearing before voters on the ballot.

The Texas constitution was drafted during the post-Civil War reconstruction era, at a time when white, property-owning Texans were working to regain political control from a Union-appointed provisional government in a state where minorities recently gained the right to vote, said Nancy Beck Young, a history professor at the University of Houston.

“They tried to write a constitution that no minority faction could come and have more power than the state government, and a citizen-initiated referendum can come out of someone out of favor with the Texas government,” Beck Young said.

The Texas “Progressive Era” of the early 1900s saw a series of efforts to establish forms of direct democracy in Texas as the women’s suffrage movement was in full swing around the nation.

In 1911, voters adopted a “home rule” amendment that allowed residents of cities larger than 5,000 to adopt their own form of government. Today, hundreds of cities in Texas allow for petition and referendum at the local level, including Houston.

The legislature voted to pose the question of whether citizen-initiated referendums should be allowed in the state in 1913.

Only 109,000 people participated in the election the following year, and the measure was defeated by fewer than 4,000 votes. That was the last time the question of citizen-initiated referendums was posed to Texas voters, and there has been little discussion of another attempt in the 110 years since.

“When the state is asked to vote on institutional changes, they almost always say no,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at UH. “I think part of it is people just don’t know what the results would be and how things change, so they’re fearful enough to vote things down.”

Have there been recent attempts to change this?

Legislators have floated the possibility without much success.

State Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, filed a joint resolution during the 2023 legislative session that would have created a system for citizen-initiated referendums. The bill died in a Senate committee without a hearing.

“It was an aspirational bill,” Johnson said. “I did not think it would get passed, but I thought it was an important conversation to have … to highlight the disconnect between the legislature and the public on several fundamental issues.”

All four of the resolutions filed since 2000 to grant Texans the power of referendum failed to advance from committee, according to legislative records.

Recent attempts to pass the legislation have been undertaken by Democrats, who have not controlled either chamber since Republicans retook power in the House in 2002.

Jane Nelson, Texas’ secretary of state and a former longtime Republican state senator, filed a referendum resolution three times during the 1990s, when Democrats controlled the legislature for a couple of years and the state saw divided government for the remainder of the decade.

All three of her proposals barely moved. In the meantime, Nelson chaired an interim committee in 1996 that studied the issue of referendums across the country and provided recommendations about how it could be implemented in Texas, according to a Senate committee report.

Citizen-initiated referendums are primarily a tool of the political party out of power, Rottinghaus said.

Today, Democrats believe the conservative legislature’s policies are out of step with the will of most Texans, making the idea of citizen-initiated referendums appealing, Rottinghaus said. The opposite can be true if Republicans lose control of state government, he added.

Texas Alliance for Life Executive Director Joe Pojman said his organization does not support Texans gaining the ability to initiate constitutional referendums. He argued the legislature, where the anti-abortion movement has had success in gaining political clout, is the best avenue for debating sensitive issues.

Pojman also argued out-of-state money influenced voters in states that recently enshrined abortion rights through constitutional referendums — and he worries that could happen in Texas.

“It’s a delicate issue,” Pojman said. “Education by 30-second ads on both sides doesn’t lend itself to a well-informed electorate.”

In a moment of intense polarization between the two parties, Johnson said he thinks there is an opportunity to see some movement on the issue.

“When things get tight, that’s when the opportunity exists,” Johnson said. “Somebody is going to be fearful that there will be a legislature that is not responsive to what they believe is right. In this case, it’s Democrats.”

Where does the fight over abortion go without a referendum?

Without the ability to initiate a referendum, abortion rights advocates in Texas have few options, Rottinghaus said.

“It’s largely settled,” Rottinghaus said. “The courts have given Texas the green light to restrict abortion in almost every way. You’ve got Republicans who control all the levers of government, so that’s a non-starter.”

Texas Alliance for to Life primarily is focused on lobbying for funding to support women dealing with an unexpected pregnancy and campaigning to maintain its grip on power in the state, Pojman said.

Texas abortion-rights advocates are focused on pushing local initiatives to fund contraception and out-of-state abortion travel while they work on the tougher task of winning back control of Texas’ government, Duble said.

“There’s the short term, which is helping people right now who need an abortion in Texas, and there’s the long term, which is creating the conditions to elect pro-abortion leadership and roll back every anti-abortion law on the books,” Duble said.

Editor's Note: An earlier version of this story misidentified an anti-abortion group. The story has been updated to reflect that Joe Pojman is executive director of Texas Alliance for Life.