TX-18 & Houston, TX Mayor: Former Houston City Councilwoman Amanda Edwards announced Monday that she was dropping out of the Nov. 7 nonpartisan primary for mayor and would instead seek the safely blue 18th Congressional District held by her now-former opponent, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. It remains to be seen if Edwards would be competing for an open seat, though, because we don’t yet know if Jackson Lee would have time to turn around and seek reelection should she lose the race to succeed termed-out Mayor Sylvester Turner.
Edwards, who endorsed Jackson Lee’s mayoral campaign, also doesn’t appear to have said if she’d defer to the congresswoman should she run for reelection after all, while Jackson Lee herself hasn’t revealed what she’d do if she fails to become mayor. Edwards, who took fifth place in the 2020 primary to face GOP Sen. John Cornyn, for now is the only major candidate to announce a campaign to replace Jackson Lee.
Part of the reason for all of this uncertainty is that a runoff date hasn’t been picked for any city contests where no one earns the majority of the vote needed to win outright. The Houston Chronicle said in 2019 that state law “requires a 30-day gap between general elections and most runoff races,” but in 2015 and 2019 the second round of voting took place 39 days after the first. If that schedule was used this year the runoff would be Dec. 16― five days after the state’s Dec. 11 filing deadline to appear on the March 2024 ballot for federal and state offices.