PRIMARY FOES PUTTING LAWMAKERS ‘ON NOTICE’
Houston Democratic congressional incumbents Green, Jackson Lee facing rare challenges from younger progressives
Nobody has even bothered to challenge U.S. Rep. Al Green in a primary election in 14 years. And the last candidate to challenge U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, one of the most senior Democrats in Congress, lost by 70 percentage points.
But this year, even they are not inoculated from a wave of younger progressive candidates around the nation determined to challenge not only every Republican seeking re-election but also every
Democrat, no matter how long the odds. Six Democrats are running against Jackson Lee in Houston’s 18th Congressional District. And for the first time in his career, Green faces a Democratic challenger in Houston’s 9th Congressional District.
“We’re putting these folks on notice and making them defend their careers,” said Stevens Orozco, a 33-year-old activist who is opposing Jackson Lee.
It’s not just for Congress, either. State Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, and longtime Houston state Reps. Senfronia Thompson, Harold Dutton Jr. and Garnet Cole
man all find themselves with primary challenges, too.
History shows how rare it is to defeat an incumbent in a primary. Since 1946, there have been 14,684 candidates who have run for re-election in the U.S. House. Just 237 failed to win their primary. That is a 98 percent success rate, according to data compiled by the University of Virginia on every congressional re-election since World War II.
Nevertheless, as Orozco walked door-to-door in the Heights with a group of six volunteers last weekend, it was hard not to hear echoes of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a political giant-killer in 2018 who shocked the Democrats by defeating a 20-year incumbent in a primary in New York. Support for the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, are all a big part of Orozco’s plea to voters.
His campaign stresses that Jackson Lee has been in Congress since 1994, when he was in elementary school.
“She’s been there long enough,” Orozco, a schoolteacher, said of Jackson Lee, as he talked with Heights resident and Democratic voter Ralph Ellis.
Democrat Jerry Ford, 60, a retired firefighter and another Jackson Lee opponent, has been even more blunt.
“She’s a typical career politician,” Ford said.
That’s not dissimilar to the message that mortgage broker Melissa Wilson is taking to voters in the 9th Congressional District as she talks about Green.
“No one has even challenged him,” the 36-year-old Wilson said. “I am not going to be bullied out of challenging him. If I don’t step up, then who is going to?”
Jackson Lee says she’s not bothered at all by the rare primary challenge.
“It’s indicative of being a vocal member of Congress,” said Jackson Lee, 70. “It’s easy to draw individuals to run against you.”
Green said he’s not sure why he is getting opposition this year, or why he went so long without a primary opponent in the past.
“You can do a great job and still get an opponent,” Green said. “The system allows for that. I respect the system. People are allowed to run regardless of how well you are doing.”
Incumbents take on Trump
Jackson Lee was first elected to Congress in 1994 after having served two terms on the Houston City Council. In Congress, she has distinguished herself as a prolific filer of legislation and as an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump on the House Judiciary Committee that played a key role in his impeachment. Jackson Lee has been a lead advocate of creating a commission to study reparations for slavery.
Just last month, she was able to get Trump to sign legislation to study creating a National Historic Trail from Galveston to Houston that would mark the migration of former slaves after they were finally emancipated in Texas two years after the rest of the nation.
She said she’s going to continue to listen to voters and talk about the issues that are important to improving the economy of the 18th District.
In campaign mailers, Jackson Lee is stressing her long experience in Congress and is touting her work to restore funding for children’s health insurance programs, protect early education programs such as Head Start, and push for increased funding for public education.
Jackson Lee knows a thing or two about defeating incumbents in primaries. In 1994, Jackson Lee was leaving the Houston City Council when she took on
U.S. Rep. Craig Washington in a primary. She beat him by 26 percentage points.
Green, 72, has a similar story. In 2004 he challenged incumbent U.S. Rep. Chris Bell and defeated him in a newly redrawn district by 35 percentage points.
Green, an attorney and former president of the Houston NAACP, has been as aggressive as anyone in Congress in calling for Trump’s impeachment — starting in May 2017, just four months after Trump was sworn in.
It was not a political expedience, but a moral imperative that Green said made him push for votes on impeachment long before most of the rest of the House was ready.
“It was important to have to have those votes because those votes laid the foundation for the president’s final impeachment,” Green said.
But Green said his tenure is about a lot more than just impeachment. He said he’s fought for consumer protections, to
create jobs and to streamline the disaster relief process. Green said that although he hasn’t had a primary election since he took office, he treats every day like he is facing challengers.
“I’m involved and engaged,” he said. “I run every day. I don’t run just on Election Day.”
Shoe leather and shoestring
Green and Jackson Lee hold two of the most Democraticleaning districts in Texas. They also have the third- and secondhighest concentrations of black residents among Texas’ 36 congressional districts. Trump won just 20 percent of the vote in Jackson Lee’s 18th Congressional District and just 18 percent in Green’s 9th District.
The rarity of Green facing a primary opponent is evident on his campaign’s Facebook page. As of Wednesday, that page had not had a new post since October 2014.
Both Jackson Lee and Green are witnessing a new reality within the Democratic Party, said University of Houston political science professor Brandon Rottinghaus.
“There is a youth moment in the Democratic Party that is coming sooner than a lot of incumbents recognize,” he said.
After 2018, it is clear a lot of candidates think they can do what Ocasio-Cortez did in New York, University of Virginia political science professor Jenn Lawless said. Ocasio-Cortez’s opponent raised 12 times as much money as she did. OcasioCortez kept her campaign donations in a jar as she tended bar. Few experts saw then-U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley in any danger of losing the primary. But he did, and Ocasio-Cortez became a national figure.
“That left a lot of people thinking maybe it’s possible to do what she did,” Lawless said.
It’s not that Marc Flores doesn’t know the odds are against him. Still, the 40-yearold Democrat has left his job as a construction project manager to join the half-dozen candidates challenging Jackson Lee for re-election. Flores has raised the most money of the candidates running against Jackson Lee, with $78,000 for his campaign, including $5,000 from his own pocket. Jackson Lee had raised just over $400,000, according to her last campaign finance report filed late last month. No other candidate in the field has raised more than $70,000 in the race.
“On a shoestring budget and with a lot of shoe leather,” Flores said of his strategy. “That is how we are going to win.”
In 2018, it was a different Democrat who ultimately inspired Flores to run. He said after he volunteered with Beto O’Rourke’s U.S. Senate campaign, he was hooked on politics and started to believe he had something to offer voters.
“We are in a position to give them an option,” Flores said. “That’s what people want.”
Ford has been a big self-funder in his campaign, putting more than $50,000 of his own money into the race — a sign he said he’s also serious about taking on Jackson Lee.
“I’ve walked through fire before,” the former firefighter said. “So I’m kind of fearless.”