HOUSTON — U.S. Rep. Al Green announced Friday that he plans to run in the redrawn 18th Congressional District, setting up a competitive primary between the longtime Houston Democrat and whichever candidate wins the upcoming special election runoff to decide the seat’s occupant through the end of next year.
Green began his speech not by talking about himself, but of President Donald Trump.
Recommended Videos
“This democracy belongs to the people, it doesn’t belong to one man,” Green said from a Southwest Houston hotel. “He is an authoritarian, and we are going to make sure that he knows that the people in the 18th Congressional District are going to send somebody to Congress that he fears.”
Green has been a strong advocate of the effort to impeach Trump, and he said continuing to criticize the president will be one of his priorities if he secures another term in Congress — but he’s facing a crowded race.
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards, both Democrats, finished atop a field of 16 candidates in Tuesday’s election to fill out the remainder of late Rep. Sylvester Turner’s term representing the district under its old lines. Green plans to run in the March primary, which will be held under the 18th District’s new boundaries created by Republicans’ mid-cycle redistricting this summer. Menefee has already announced he plans to run in the March primary, which will take place weeks after the runoff. Edwards has yet to reveal her plans beyond the special election.
Green has represented Texas’ 9th Congressional District — anchored in the southern parts of Houston — since 2005. But that district was redrawn by Texas Republicans in their new congressional map to favor the GOP, and its boundaries were moved to eastern Harris County and Liberty County, pulling in almost none of the same area as before. The new 9th Congressional District went from voting for Kamala Harris in 2024 by 44 percentage points to one that President Donald Trump would have carried by a 20-point margin under the new lines.
Much of Green’s turf in the old 9th District was drawn into the new 18th District, including Central Southwest Houston, NRG Stadium and Missouri City. It’s a deep-blue district with a long history of Black representation, having sent titans including former Reps. Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland. The new 18th District would have voted for Harris by a 54-point margin in 2024 had it existed.
But the 18th District is currently vacant after Turner, the former mayor of Houston, died in office in March, two months into his first term. Turner himself had been nominated for the seat by Harris County Democratic Party officials after the district’s longtime representative, Sheila Jackson Lee, died in office in July 2024.
Green said he worked alongside Jackson Lee representing their respective districts for years. Now that their districts have merged, Green said “in her absence, I am going to carry on the fight for the 18th and 9th Congressional District — on the north side of the south side.”
With two of the district’s septuagenarian representatives dying in office within the course of a year, age — an uncomfortable but public fault line in the Democratic Party since then-President Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate performance — will almost certainly factor into a prospective primary. Green is 78, and will be 79 by the time winners of the 2026 election are sworn in in 2027. The Democrats competing to represent the current iteration of the 18th Congressional District are considerably younger; Edwards is 43, while Menefee is 37.
A running theme among the slate of speakers who spoke before Green took the stage Friday evening, including California Congresswoman Maxine Waters and Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson, was “seniority matters.”
Green would bring many advantages of incumbency to the primary, as a Houston congressman of 20 years with a national profile over his efforts to impeach Trump and his disruption of the State of the Union address earlier this year, for which he got kicked out of the chamber. Under the new map, 75% of registered voters in Green’s current district — including himself — have been moved into Congressional District 18.
His experience, Green said, is why Houstonians should trust that he’s fit for the job.
“You know what I have done, you know what I will do,” he said. “You know that I will stand up to Donald Trump because you saw me do it. Stand because you’ve seen me do it.
In August, Green heavily hinted that he planned to run in the 18th District, noting that he and the majority of his constituents had changed district numbers, but he said he would not announce his plans until after the Nov. 4 special election to avoid confusing Houstonians.
Candidates can begin filing Saturday for a spot on the 2026 primary ballot, the start of a monthlong window that runs until Dec. 8. The timing ensures that Edwards and any other prospective candidates will need to decide whether to put their name on the ballot before their runoff election.
Though Green brings high name identification and a decades-long history of representing Houston, the prospect of defeating a Democratic incumbent in Houston has precedent. A former Houston NAACP president, Green first captured his congressional seat after winning a primary against an incumbent Democrat, Chris Bell, whose southwestern Houston district had been redrawn by Republicans.
But Green is hopeful that his track record in his two decades in office will be enough to get him elected for another term in a different district.
He also made a promise if he’s reelected to Congress.
“When I go back to Congress, I promise you, I will file additional articles of impeachment to remove Donald Trump,” he said.
Colleen DeGuzman contributed to this story.