What Do We Think About Sheila Jackson Lee Running For Mayor In Houston?

This isn’t a joke. Can you imagine having this buffoon as the mayor of your city?

U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee announced she will be running for mayor of Houston on Monday, March 27.

“I hope I’ve been a humble servant for you for 28 years,” Lee said at the City Cathedral Church podium in Houston. “Sheila Jackson Lee wants to come home to be your mayor for the city of Houston. I will not be able to do it without each and every one of you. Let the fire start now.”

Lee’s run for Mayor of Houston brings the longtime politician back to where she initially started her career in local politics as an at-large Houston City Council member from 1990 to 1994. Her federal political career began in 1995 after beating former Democratic Congressman Craig Washington in a Democratic primary in 1994.

Since then, Lee has been the representative for Texas 18th Congressional District comprising Acres Homes, Fifth Ward, East Houston, Highland Heights and the Bush Intercontinental Airport. In her tenure, Lee has focused on passing legislation on gun safety, health care, environmental issues impacting minority communities, foreign policy, and has served as an advocate for the Violence Against Women Act.

Lee is the latest to announce their bid for mayor of Houston, adding her name to a growing list of candidates for the November election. Others to declare include longtime state Sen. John WhitmireHouston City Council member Robert Gallegos, former Harris County Clerk Chris Hollins, former at-large Council Member Amanda Edwards, and local attorney Lee Kaplan, among others.

The word is she’s the frontrunner in the race, but it’s seven and a half months before the election happens. She’s got to run a campaign, and most of Houston is not in her congressional district.

And we’re not sure Jackson Lee really is the frontrunner. We think Whitmire, the white guy who has $11 million in his campaign account, is.

Sheila Jackson Lee hasn’t run a competitive race against challengers with money since the 1990’s. She gets 70 percent of the vote every two years. Last year she was re-elected with 70.7 percent of the vote, but with very, very low turnout – Lee won with only 110,000 votes. Her district is, interestingly enough, somewhat representative of the demographics of Houston. It’s 42 percent Hispanic, 36 percent black and 18 percent white, while the city as a whole is 44 percent Hispanic, 24 percent white and 22 percent black. Asians make up seven percent of the city’s population, which is a huge number for a Southern city.

So Lee can get Hispanic votes. But so can Whitmire. His district is 37 percent Hispanic, 32 percent white, 21 percent black and nine percent Asian. Whitmire is the dean of the Texas Senate; he’s been in his current office since 1982, and he was 10 years in the state House before that.

Whitmire is seen as a moderate, though. He’s the chair of the Texas Senate’s criminal justice committee, the only Democrat with a committee chairmanship in the Texas Senate, and he’s generally a pretty responsible voice on crime. This is not a woke Defund The Police type.

And that’s going to contrast a good bit with this…

Houston isn’t a conservative town by any means. It’s very much a blue island in a sea of Texas red.

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There doesn’t appear to be a major Republican candidate in this race. It looks like the GOP is going to line up behind Whitmire.

You’d think Gallegos, the Hispanic city councilman, would be a major factor in the race seeing as though the electorate is so heavily Latino. But he’s the openly gay candidate, and one wonders if the Latino base would mobilize behind that. Hollins, the former Harris county clerk, is a young black guy in his 30’s, and he might pull away some of Lee’s support among black voters and particularly the woke crowd – Hollins oversaw the 2020 election in Houston and he got himself into a major controversy when he tried to send a mail-in ballot to everybody in Harris County, which had Republicans in Texas looking for blood.

Then you’ve got Edwards, who like Lee is a black female. She’s been elected city-wide before, having been an at-large council member. But Edwards ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020 and came in a poor fifth in the Democrat primary, which doesn’t particularly speak well of her voting strength. Still, she’s a younger, more attractive candidate with most of the same politics.

It’s a long way off. But it would seem like Lee will have a pretty tough road to win this race, and one wonders what possessed her to get into a tough election fight when she can coast forever in that congressional seat.

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