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Are you aware of how messed up the next few months are going to be for Houston voters?

Don't want people to vote? Confuse them!

Live look at the inside of my brain when thinking about elections in Houston.

It’s going to be one of those years where we’re going to have to convince Houstonians to vote roughly a thousand times, which you know they won’t do. Regardless, here’s what’s going on.

2025 18th Congressional District runoff

Early Voting: Wednesday, January 21 - Tuesday, January 27
Election Day: Saturday, January 31

Greg Abbott draaaagged his feet giving a date for the election to replace Sylvester Turner after he died in office LAST MARCH. That election was held last November. Abbott then draaaaagged out the date for the runoff between Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards. It’s finally coming up, with early voting starting this Wednesday.

So, nearly a year after Turner’s death, someone (I hope Menefee) will once again represent the 800,000 Houstonians that have gone without representation. They won’t have long to enjoy their victory because wait, what’s this?

2026 primaries

Voter registration deadline: Monday, February 2
Early Voting: Tuesday, February 17 - Friday, February 27
Election Day: Tuesday, March 3

Thanks to Texas Republicans boot-licking ways, we have newly drawn districts in 2026. In Houston, the most significant changes are in the the 18th, the 29th and the 9th, but you might find that elsewhere you’ve been drawn out of your old district. (Check here.) These districts were targeted because they were safe Democratic districts represented by people of color.

While this is going to be a mess for everyone, what this means for the 18th is that a new set of voters will be voting on a new set of candidates just a few weeks after the old set of voters picked their winner.

The new candidates for the 18th primary include Rep. Al Green, who no longer lives in the 9th, formerly a Black majority district, because now it’s a completely new (white, suburban) area of town meant to be a Republican stronghold. So now he’s going to run in the 18th against Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards (and Gretchen Brown, but I don’t know her.) He has great name recognition and his old voters (many of whom are now in the 18th) obviously loved him enough to re-elect him 10 times, but he will be 79 if he wins and goes back to Congress next year. Again, I hope Menefee wins this, but wouldn’t be surprised to see a runoff between Green and Menefee. So, then:

Runoff voter registration deadline: Monday, April 27
Runoff Early Voting: Monday, May 18 - Friday, May 22
Runoff Election Day: Tuesday, May 26

The thing is: do you even know what district you’re in? Do you think most voters do? It’s confusing enough that if a voter isn’t fully engaged and educated, they’re very likely to sit out the primary, which is always bad. Voter education is key, but I can tell from the work I’ve been doing on social for a couple of candidates that people are absolutely checked out. Impressions, engagements, comments, everything is down on every channel.

Every time someone tells you, “I just can’t watch the news/social media,” understandably it could be to protect their own mental health from the horrors that are unfolding hourly in our country. But it also means they’re not getting political ads, they might not know about redistricting, they don’t know who is running, they might not understand primaries, etc. It worries me.

2022 districts vs. 2026 districts

To get a better idea of what Republicans did, you just need to see it:

Current reps:
18 — empty until Jan. 31
9 — Al Green
29 — Sylvia Garcia
2 — Dan Crenshaw
36 (Liberty County) — Brian Babin

That’s some nasty revenge they pulled on Rep. Green.

More to come from me

I think this is all disheartening for Houston Democrats, having to fight each other like this. But there’s something I’m even more worried about that I’m going to write about next time, which is that the Republicans running in the statewide primaries are SCARY and even most Republicans don’t know them. Some of these guys winning the primary and then likely in November would steer the state further right into even more chaos and culture wars.