Contender yet to concede in District H race

Down just 12 votes, council hopeful Longoria can get recount against incumbent Cisneros

Just a dozen votes separate City Council District H contenders Karla Cisneros and Isabel Longoria, and it may come down to an undetermined number of provisional, overseas and military ballots to determine a winner in the race.

According to the Harris County Clerk’s office, incumbent Cisneros had edged out Longoria by just .12 percentage points in Saturday’s

runoff election. Cisneros won 5,283 votes, or 50.06 percent, and Longoria received 5,271 votes, or 49.94 percent, of ballots counted.

Longoria could request a recount under Texas election law. When the difference in the number of votes received between the two candidates (12 in the District H race) is fewer than 10 percent of the number of total votes received by the race winner (528 votes, in Cisneros’ case), the losing candidate could petition for a recount, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s office.

Longoria has not yet committed to requesting a recount, nor has she conceded in the race. The deadline to file a recount request is 5 p.m. Sunday, two days after Harris County will canvass or officially tally the votes.

“I will wait for every vote to be counted before making any decisions about a recount or other process,” Longoria said in a news release Sunday morning.

The race is still too close to call for Longoria’s side. On Sunday morning, Cisneros said that she would honor the process of a recount if called.

“We have a system of checks and balances, and it’s there for a reason,” she said.

It is unclear how many of those ballots remain uncounted, and Longoria’s campaign has reached out to Harris County Clerk Diane Trautman’s office to get those numbers, said Rob Icsezen, Longoria’s campaign manager.

Trautman’s office can receive overseas and military ballots up to six days after an election, said Teneshia Hudspeth, a Harris County Clerk’s Office spokesperson. They do not know how many provisional ballots were cast.

It has no way of identifying if any of those ballots cast a vote for

District H until the election canvass, Hudspeth said.

For now, Cisneros said she has “appeared” to have won based on unofficial election results.

“I’m happy to be on the 12votes-up side,” Cisneros said.

And Longoria is optimistic about the uncounted ballots. “We’re very much still in the race,” she said.

Cisneros, 65, was elected to City Council in 2015 and has primarily focused on education and workforce development during her first term. The incumbent City Council member has worked with the Harris County Depart

ment of Education to create afterschool programs for District H students and worked on expanding a state program for workforce subsidies for childcare centers.

If re-elected, she vowed to continue her work on improving the quality of life in her district and to address flooding.

Longoria, a 31-year-old community organizer, said she would work on affordable housing and fixing city development codes. She criticized Cisneros for not focusing enough on other issues facing District H until election season, particularly the expansion of Interstate 45 that would impact businesses and homes in the area.

The other City Council runoff races finished with more definitive results. Incumbents Mike Knox (At-Large 1), David W. Robinson (At-Large 2) and Michael Kubosh (At-Large 3) will remain in office, while newcomers Letitia Plummer (At-Large 4), Sallie Alcorn (At-Large 5), Amy Peck (District A), Abbie Kamin (District C), Carolyn Evans-Shabazz (District D), Tiffany Thomas (District F) and Edward Pollard (District J) won seats in Saturday’s election. Incumbents Dave Martin (District E), Greg Travis (District G), Robert Gallegos (District I) and Martha Castex-Tatum (District K) won their seats in November.

Questions still remain about the fate of the District B runoff race, which is now in court after candidate Renee Jefferson-Smith, who came in third place in November’s election, filed two separate lawsuits challenging second-place finisher Cynthia Bailey’s eligibility.