Since Barbara Jordan walked into Congress in 1973 as the primary Black girl elected from the South, Texas’ 18th Congressional District has been a pillar of Black political energy in Houston.
However after two rounds of redistricting in lower than 4 years and the deaths of Congressmen Sheila Jackson Lee and Sylvester Turner, TX-18 is headed for yet one more election cycle in Could.
After a particular election and a runoff, Congressman Christian Menefee is at the moment on the helm of the district, however solely till the top of the yr, when the time period concludes. For the subsequent full time period, he’s working in opposition to longtime ninth Congressional District consultant Al Inexperienced.
After greater than 20 years serving TX-9, redistricting efforts redrew his residence into the 18th.
The query going through voters and civic leaders in Houston’s traditionally Black communities is whether or not the district can stay a automobile for Black political illustration.
Per voting rights activist Pamiel Gaskin, 79, the redistricting saga was a manner of impacting minority voter participation. She stated the Texas redistricting has diluted Black voting energy by “packing” Black voters into fewer districts (like Congressional District 18) whereas scattering others into closely white, Republican districts. She argues that is intentional and has weakened Black political illustration statewide.
“A lot of the Black and brown voters have been moved out of these districts, and most of them landed within the 18th congressional district.”
Michael O. Adams, Director of the Grasp of Public Affairs Graduate Program at TSU’s Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland College of Public Affairs.
“You both crack them, which suggests you cut up them up, otherwise you pack them and also you pack them right into a small space,” Gaskin informed the Defender. “They packed the Black district in order that they don’t have as a lot energy.”
She contrasts at present’s declining Black voter turnout with the 90-95% turnout she witnessed in her youth and known as for Black voters to mobilize within the midterms.
“The web impact is that Black residents and voters don’t get the illustration,” Gaskin stated. “We’re with 12-14% of the inhabitants…no person’s gonna be on the poll that’s gonna save us. What’s gonna save us is us and we have now to vote. We’re the final guardrail to guard the democracy that we have been promised.”
The adjustments within the district
When Texas Republicans redrew the state’s congressional map in October 2021, the 18th Congressional District underwent one in all its most important transformations in many years.
The GOP legislature eliminated downtown Houston, Texas Southern College, the College of Houston, and the traditionally Black Third Ward from the 18th, pushing the district into Inexperienced’s neighboring TX-9 and Rep. Sylvia Garcia’s TX-29.
Jackson Lee’s residence of practically 50 years was faraway from the brand new maps.
However after negotiations between Texas state representatives and senators, Jackson Lee’s residence was redrawn again into her district, and Inexperienced regained management of TX-9.
Throughout final yr’s redistricting efforts, the 18th underwent related adjustments.
Inexperienced’s district moved to the 18th-CD and remained unchanged.
“A lot of the Black and brown voters have been moved out of these districts, and most of them landed within the 18th congressional district,” stated Michael O. Adams, director of the Grasp of Public Affairs Graduate Program at TSU’s Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland College of Public Affairs.
The consolidation, he defined, turned CD-18 into what redistricting analysts name a “minority alternative district,” a seat designed to pay attention relatively than broaden minority political affect.
A federal courtroom blocked the 2025 map in November 2025, however the Supreme Courtroom’s December keep reinstated it for the 2026 primaries.
New maps
In August 2025, Texas Republicans pushed by a brand new mid-decade map on the urging of President Donald Trump, who needed 5 further Republican seats forward of the 2026 midterms.
In keeping with a research by Texas Southern College, solely 5 congressional districts have fewer than 40% of their former (2021 map) residents below the brand new map.
Three of those districts are positioned within the Houston metro space, together with TX-29, TX-18, and TX-9, and differ “dramatically” from the previous maps.
The revised plan, specifically, reshaped the 18th Congressional District, stretching it from the suburbs southwest of Houston diagonally throughout the town to its northeast limits.
In keeping with that map, roughly 45% of the voting-age inhabitants can be Black, 32% Hispanic, 15% white, and eight% Asian.
Residents weigh in
For residents like Ken Rodgers, president of Tremendous Neighborhood 67 within the Better Third Ward, the quick penalties of redistricting boiled all the way down to the sources his neighborhood would obtain.
“We’ve all the time been in 18,” Rodgers informed the Defender. “I’ll let you know what the true impact was…the drought of presidency cash. We truly felt that earlier than, as a result of we didn’t have Congresswoman Jackson Lee funneling that cash down into the 18th. So it’s simply wanting on the make-up of it, what it’s going to appear like after we go to vote, and the way the voting seems, whether or not we will nonetheless elect illustration that appears like us.”
His neighborhood’s considerations embody a scarcity of reasonably priced housing, transportation, and meals insecurity, spurred by a dearth of wholesome grocery shops.
“You may’t repair a kind of issues,” Rodgers stated. “You must repair all of them in order that we will shift from preventing to thriving. That’s what we need to be preventing for…to thrive and to not survive.”
Edna Griggs, 75, a lifelong resident of the 18th Congressional District, shared her private expertise of being redistricted into the twenty ninth Congressional District after spending her complete life within the 18th. She mirrored on the district’s historic energy as a Black democratic stronghold, noting that Acres Houses was as soon as one of many largest Black communities in the US. Griggs argued that the redistricting was a deliberate effort to interrupt up that voting energy.
“That is the place anybody who needed to run for workplace got here to the 18th congressional district to win an election,” Griggs informed the Defender. “That’s simply how sturdy it was. Now, the neighborhood has modified…now not a complete Black neighborhood because it was earlier than.”
Regardless of her disappointment over the change, she stays civically lively, serving to revive her neighborhood civic membership.
“We the individuals, which is what individuals neglect…we make the choice on how sturdy our neighborhood is,” she stated, urging voters to prove within the upcoming runoffs within the 18th Congressional District and midterm elections. “If we sit again and say nothing, then we get nothing. If the individuals don’t vote and the individuals don’t get out and do what they should do, we will’t blame the candidates for what they’re doing.”
What the info says
The demographic transformation of the 18th Congressional District is documented within the numbers.
Underneath the 2021 map, no single racial group held a majority amongst voting-age residents within the district because it was a “coalition district.”
Underneath the redrawn maps, the TX-18 would have a 50.8% Black citizens, with Black residents from the ninth Congressional District redistricted into the brand new TX-18.
Hector De Leon, Senior Advisor for Governmental Affairs, Public Engagement, and Elections for the Harris County Clerk’s Workplace, has spent greater than 20 years watching as uncooked information on voter registration is weaponized or ignored.
He lately described independently compiling voter registration rosters from publicly accessible information and importing them to Microsoft Entry to construct analyses that campaigns and political consultants usually guard intently.
Turnout, a hidden variable
Major turnout in TX-18 has traditionally been low, a sample that has allowed organized blocs to find out outcomes with outsized penalties.
Adams pointed to Sheila Jackson Lee’s first major victory as a cautionary story. Fewer than 40,000 votes have been solid within the race that launched her 29-year congressional profession.
“We noticed on this cycle an amazing enhance in voter turnout on either side of the aisle when it comes to the Republicans having a aggressive U.S. Senate major, and in addition we had Talarico working and Jasmine Crockett,” Adams stated. “It’s a midterm election, and the voters could also be attempting to ship the present administration a message. That all the time occurs with the facility of the social gathering that controls the White Home. Usually, they have an inclination to lose the midterm elections.”
With the 2026 major runoff set for Could 26, the precincts in Third Ward, Sunnyside, and the traditionally Black northeast Houston hall are the battlegrounds that can outline what sort of district the 18th actually turns into.
Adams framed it as a “descriptive illustration,” the precept that voters can choose somebody who displays their very own id and expertise.
“I might say that the 18th Congressional District is a minority alternative district,” he stated. “That’s what we are saying when it comes to redistribution terminology. It was elevated due to what they did with the breakup of the ninth and parts of the twenty ninth congressional district.”
The TX-18 boundaries have modified, and its citizens is evolving. Per specialists, its future won’t be determined by who votes in Could.
