Sheila Jackson Lee Keeps Congress Seat After Mayor Runoff Loss

Houston mayoral candidate U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee talks throughout her marketing campaign occasion on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023, in Houston. | Supply: Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers through Getty Photos / Getty

This weekend’s decisive mayor runoff loss in Houston for U.S. Rep Sheila Jackson Lee is prompting pressing questions in regards to the longtime incumbent Texas Congresswoman’s political future.

Democratic state Sen. John Whitmire was shortly declared the winner on Saturday with simply over half of the precincts reporting and twice as a lot help from voters than Jackson Lee, in line with estimates from the Related Press.

Jackson Lee, additionally a Democrat, misplaced the runoff regardless of full-throated endorsements from name-brand members of the nationwide Democratic elite, together with Hillary Clinton, Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries and former Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

However all is just not misplaced for Jackson Lee, who retains her seat representing Texas’ 18th Congressional District, over which she has presided on Capitol Hill since 1995.

For now, not less than.

As a result of her present Congressional time period ends subsequent month, she didn’t need to resign to run for mayor. Nonetheless, it’s as a result of her present Congressional time period ends subsequent month that she must hurry up and decide about what’s subsequent.

If Jackson Lee, 73, intends to hunt a sixteenth time period in Congress, the submitting deadline to take action is Monday.

The esteemed member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) and former chair of the influential bloc of African American Home Reps and U.S. Senators hasn’t given any indication of whether or not she’s leaning in some way in relation to her pending resolution about her future.

The election for her present Congress seat is subsequent yr with not less than 4 different candidates already declared within the race, in line with Ballotpedia.

No matter what her selection is, Jackson Lee’s Congressional file speaks for itself, together with notable moments eternally etched in historical past like introducing Articles of Impeachment towards Donald Trump and introducing a invoice to ascertain a fee to review and develop reparations proposals for Black descendants of American slavery.

Houston mayors are restricted to serving two phrases, and outgoing Mayor Sylvester Turner’s looming exit after eight years in Metropolis Corridor offered the chance for Jackson Lee – a former metropolis judge-turned-city council member earlier than Congress – to announce her candidacy in March.

Political analysts level to an “October shock”-style report within the days forward of the overall election that irreversibly rocked her marketing campaign – a revelation that probably helped Whitmire in the long term.

(CNN defines “October shock” as “a game-changing occasion that may irreparably harm one candidate’s possibilities and increase the opposite’s.”)

And so, after all, it was again in October when a recording was leaked to the media purportedly containing audio of Jackson Lee insulting her workers with extraordinarily disrespectful language.

The Texas Tribune reported on the audio:

On the recording, which is a couple of minute and a half, a voice that seems like Jackson Lee’s could be heard erupting at a staffer who doesn’t have a doc she was on the lookout for. She tells the staffer she desires him to have a “fuckin’ mind” and says “no person is aware of a Goddamn factor in my workplace – nothing.” She refers to a different staffer, who is outwardly not within the room, as a “fat-ass silly fool” and provides each staffers are “fuck-ups.”

“It’s the worst shit that I might have ever had put collectively,” Jackson Lee says. “Two Goddamn big-ass youngsters, fuckin’ idiots who serve no Goddamn objective.”

The recording emerged almost 5 years after one in every of Jackson Lee’s former interns sued her and the CBC Basis over allegedly being sexually assaulted in 2015 by her male supervisor on the CBC Basis. The lawsuit claimed that Jackson Lee fired the intern in retaliation after the intern threatened authorized motion.

Jackson Lee apologized profusely for the “alleged recording” that she by no means truly admitted was her voice and condemned it as “one thing trotted out by a political opponent, that labored to use this, and backed by excessive Republican supporters.”

However the harm was apparently already carried out.

Through the common election, no candidate received 50% of the vote, forcing Saturday’s runoff between Jackson Lee and Whitmire.