With all of the Election Day vote centers reporting in her race for re-election to her 18th Congressional District seat U.S U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee has won the Democratic primary against former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards with 59.94 percent of the vote to Edward's 37.38 percent.

The third Democratic candidate in the contest, Robert Slater, a Houston chef and businessman, suspended his campaign last week and endorsed Jackson Lee. Despite dropping out, Slater collected 2.67 percent of the vote since it was too late to remove his name from the ballot.

In November, Jackson Lee will face Republican Lana Centonze who won her primary with 53.25 percent of the vote to Aaron Ray Hermes's 46.75 percent.

According to local political experts, the contest to represent this district, which includes areas in and around Downtown, Fifth and Third Ward, Northeast Houston and parts of unincorporated Harris County, was one to watch as Edwards had been thought to pose the first significant threat in years to Jackson Lee’s chances at reelection.

The incumbent congresswoman has secured disaster relief for Houston residents after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, worked to establish Juneteenth as a national holiday and endorsed the Violence Against Women’s Act. She has also brought federal grants to the district for Texas Southern University and the University of Houston. More recently, she locked down a $20.5 million grant for Harris County Public Health Department’s Uplift Harris — a guaranteed income pilot project.

Throughout Jackson Lee’s nearly 30 years of service, she has faced four primary challengers. The lowest margin of victory Jackson Lee has had in the past was when she collected 67 percent of the vote in 2010, running opposite former Houston attorney Sean Bell and current State Representative Jarvis Johnson (D-Houston).

Rice University political science fellow Mark Jones said despite Jackson Lee continuing to have a stronghold of older, Black voter support, backing from younger generations of voters appeared to be waning this election cycle.

“As she [Jackson Lee] moved into this election, her unfavorability and favorability rating suggested that she was very vulnerable," Jones said.

He added that the congresswoman needed to maintain her core base of supporters, and Edwards needed to be unable to mobilize new or less frequent voters for Jackson to have a reasonable prospect of victory.

Jones said the "glass half full" for the congresswoman was that three-fifths of her constituents reported having a favorable opinion of her — despite her recent landslide defeat in the mayoral contest between her and John Whitmire and controversy surrounding an audio recording of her berating congressional staffers that leaked during her mayoral campaign.

However, he noted that the “glass half empty” was that two out of every five of her constituents shared an unfavorable opinion of her going into the election cycle.
Edwards also had an initial leg-up in the race after dropping out of her mayoral bid late last year. She subsequently announced her candidacy for the congresswoman’s seat and began campaigning and fundraising in the community.

Campaign finance reports indicated that Edwards's early start helped as she reported to have out-raised Jackson Lee significantly.

The municipal finance attorney previously served as one of Jackson Lee’s interns. However, when the congresswoman joined the contest for reelection in her district after being defeated by Whitmire, Edwards — unlike Isaiah Martin, another former intern of the congresswoman’s — chose not to suspend her campaign.

“One of the things that sometimes we forget about is that these seats, although held by individuals, don't belong to individuals. They belong to the people,” Edwards said. “I think this time when people have felt very rejected and shut out from Washington — I hear quite a bit how people are over the status quo.”

“At this leg of the journey, I think something different is required, and if you want to get something different, you are going to have to do something different,” Edwards added. “I think this election cycle is evidence of that.”

Edwards ran toting her ability to bring new ideas and a fresh perspective to the district. She said she would assume a more policy-driven approach to the decades-long held seat.

“We haven’t seen a lot of policy coming out of the 18th congressional district, and that’s a lot of the transformative changes that I am hearing people talk about they want — that’s where you get it from,” Edwards said. “You can’t bring bandaids to surgery. We’ve got to perform the surgery where surgery is needed.”

The Houston Press reached out to speak with Jackson Lee about her congressional campaign but did not  receive a response from the congresswoman or her team.

According to Bob Stein, Rice University political science professor, the more voters who came out to vote who were younger and more progressive, the more support Edwards received. He said this was similar to the contest to secure the Democratic nominee for Whitmire’s former Senate seat.

Stein said the younger, more progressive candidates made significant inroads in both races. Edwards trailed behind Jackson Lee by a short margin of 5 percentage points, according to University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs poll conducted in early February.

Edwards previously served on Houston City Council from 2016 to 2020 and unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate Democratic nomination to run against Republican nominee U.S. Senator John Cornyn. While on city council, she led former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s technology and innovation task force and focused her work on Houston’s public transit matters.

Her congressional priorities include providing educational and economic opportunities — particularly for smaller business owners — immigration reform, infrastructure improvements and healthcare access for all.

During the campaign trail, Edwards said she wanted to fight to fix Medicare issues and the Affordable Care Act, especially for those on fixed incomes or who may be uninsured or underinsured.

This is a personal priority of hers, as Edwards added that she remembered her father, who had cancer and died when she was 17, telling her that if insurance didn't cover his medical needs, her family would "just have to figure it out."