The minority leader of the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y., threatens a demand against Texas Republican governor, Greg Abbott, for stopping calling a special choice to occupy a vacant seat in the House of Representatives in Houston, that the Democrats claim that it is a deliberate movement designed to help the majority of the Razo party.
In an answer to an NBC News question on Wednesday, Jeffries said it is “very likely” to seek litigation against Abbott, who has not yet established a date for an election to replace the late representative Sylvester Turner, D-Texas, after he died in early March.
When asked if he thought that Abbott was deliberately delaying the special elections in the solidly democratic district of Texas, Jeffries said “yes.”
Andrew Mahaleris, ABBOTT press secretary, said in a statement to NBC News on Wednesday: “An announcement will be made about a special election on a later date.”
Christian Menefee, the Harris County Prosecutor and Democrat who plans to run for the seat, also said he would sue Abbott if he did not request a special election soon.
“Almost 800,000 Houstonons have no voice in Congress. Abbott has called for emergency elections before, he simply does not want to do it here,” Menefee published on X on Wednesday, accusing Abbott of trying to keep the seat open to benefit the Trump administration and the House Republicans.
“Congress is voting on critical issues. TX-18 deserves a representative now, not months within now,” said Menefee.
And the president of the Texas Democratic Party, Kendall Scudder, echoed Jeffries’ comments in a statement on Wednesday.
“Our Council to Greg Abbott: I call an emergency or lawyer,” Scudder said.
Texas’s law does not seem to include a deadline for Abbott to call a special choice after a vacancy opens. The special elections generally take place in the elections already scheduled in Texas, unless the governor considers it an emergency. And since the deadline to request Turner’s special election coincides with the next May elections in Texas has already passed, the next election available in the state is not until November.
That means that the district of the Houston area, which has a predominantly Hispanic and black population and has now made its two previous members die in office, could pass up to seven months without representation in this congress, unless Abbott requests an emergency election.
An emergency choice would be an expensive movement that Republican agents consider very unlikely. Some democrats from the House of Representatives fear that Abbott can expect even more than in November, since there are no laws that force their hand.
In addition to how expensive the elections would be to establish before November, there may be another reason for Abbott’s delay: the mathematical problems of the House Republican Party. While two more Republicans will join the Chamber after winning a couple of special Florida elections on Tuesday, there is still a unbridled concern for the thin majority of the party, especially when they try to approve the internal policy agenda of President Donald Trump.
These concerns have become so acute in the last weeks that Trump even decided to withdraw the nomination of representative Elise Stefanik to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations, deciding that it is ultimately better to keep the Republican of New York in the Chamber.
The office of the president of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, did not immediately answer the questions about the Texas vacancy.
Maintaining an open congress seat for a prolonged period of time is not completely unknown: the Democrats contemplated a proposal in the New York state legislature that would have allowed them to keep Stefanik’s post open indefinitely if it had been confirmed to the UN post, although they finally retreated the idea.
Abbott acted faster by establishing a deadline in other cases in which there was a vacancy in the Delegation of the Texas Congress.
After Democratic representative Sheila Jackson Lee, who previously represented Turner’s seat, died last July, Abbott issued a call for a special choice two weeks later. Turner did not run in those special elections, but won the regular elections that fall for the seat and served for a few months in Congress before his death.
And in two cases, responding to vacancies in seats represented by each part, Abbott declared a special emergency choice to limit the time that a seat remained open, in 2022 after Democratic representative Filemon Vela resigned and in 2018 when Republican representative Blanke Farenthold resigned.
