What's Driving Miss Shelia?

Friends and foes alike agree that Sheila Jackson Lee is unique in Houston's African-American political realm. For starters, she was born in New York City. Unlike Washington, Leland and Jordan -- all previous representatives from the 18th District -- Lee did not grow up in the inner-city wards or pass through the academic halls of Texas Southern University. State representative Sylvester Turner shares Lee's outsider status in the local black power structure, but relative to Lee, he's an insider: He grew up in the north Houston community of Acres Homes and attended the University of Houston before heading to Harvard. Justice of the Peace Al Green, who grew up in New Orleans, is perhaps Houston's only other high-profile black official to hail from outside the city.

Perhaps conscious of Houston's preference for homegrown politicians, Lee plays down the fact that she was born in the Jamaica section of Queens, and that her grandparents on her father's side are Jamaican immigrants. In fact, when she first ran for office, the candidate profile submitted to the Houston Chronicle listed her birthplace as Houston.

Even today, she offers biographical details grudgingly. She describes herself as "a very private person" and refuses to reveal what her parents did for a living or what high school she attended. Previous articles about Lee yield these facts: Her late father, Ezra, was a day laborer who aspired to be a cartoonist. Her mother, Ivalita, worked evenings as a nurse. Lee has one brother, Michael. Before Ezra's death last fall, he told the Chronicle's Texas Magazine that his daughter had always been a driven person. "I don't know where she got her drive," he said, "but she's always had it; she's always been like that."

Lee describes serving in student government at her unnamed middle and high schools. She notes that she was forced to serve in positions relegated to girls, including secretary, while boys held the more prestigious offices. She earned her undergraduate degree from Yale, where she met fellow student Elwyn Cornelius Lee, a Houstonian. After graduation, she attended law school at the prestigious University of Virginia, while Elwyn remained at Yale. She joined him there to complete her final year of law courses, and they married.

In the late '70s, the couple moved to Houston, and Elwyn accepted a teaching post at the University of Houston law school. Eventually, he moved into UH administration as vice president of student affairs, dealing primarily with minority students. While Lee is in Washington, Elwyn handles the family's domestic life. Both their children are in school in Houston: 15-year-old Erica at Bellaire High School and nine-year-old Jason at St. John's, an exclusive private school in River Oaks.

Once in Houston, Sheila worked at a series of legal jobs, starting with a two-year stint in the energy section of the downtown law firm Fulbright & Jaworski. According to former associates, Lee and the firm's management did not see eye to eye, and she moved on to Union Texas Petroleum. Later, she worked in the legal office of Booker Morris, a longtime supporter who has run several of her campaigns.

At political forums and community gatherings, Lee began to attract notice -- or rather, to demand it. Reporters of the time recall a determined young woman who methodically buttonholed members of the media, thrust out her hand and declared, "Hi, I'm Sheila Jackson Lee."

"She's a different bird from people you meet here," says a black Houston politician outside the congresswoman's camp. "She's kind of a carpetbagger from Queens. That's why her political table manners are so bad .... [She has] that kind of dog-eat-dog attitude, that Jamaican attitude."

Lee ran three times for judicial positions -- twice for district judge and once for probate court. Because of Harris County's strong Republican tilt, veteran black politicos considered the races suicidal.

It was during her unsuccessful attempts to win a judgeship that she met Willie Isles, a behind-the-scenes political player who resembles Richard Roundtree, the star of Shaft. Isles says he immediately recognized in Lee an innate political gift: the ability to project her name and image in ways normal politicians can't. And he set out to play Henry Higgins to Lee's Eliza Doolittle.

"Sheila Jackson Lee is not a politician," stresses Isles. "She's a public servant .... She happens to be elected, but her real strength is that if there is someone who is ill, she will go visit the person that's sick. If someone loses a family member, she will show up at the church." As for Lee's knack for appearing on TV, he laughs heartily: "She's got that down to perfection. Every time you look around, she's on camera."

After Anthony Hall vacated his at-large position on City Council, Isles called his protege. "Sheila Jackson Lee," he told her, "your name is on that seat."