Texas District 18 Congressman Christian Menefee pushes election reform after yearlong vacancy

For 334 days, Houston’s 18th Congressional District had no one fighting for it in Washington, D.C. 

The lack of representation in Congress stretched from the March 2025 death of former Rep. Sylvester Turner through hurricane season, a historic government shutdown, and the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill. It is also now the driving force behind the first piece of legislation introduced by Congressman Christian Menefee, who won a special election to fill the seat’s unexpired term.

Menefee introduced the Special Election Timeliness Act, or the SET Act, which would require states to hold special elections to fill vacant House seats within 180 days of a vacancy occurring.

If a regularly scheduled general election falls within that window, it satisfies the requirement.

Per the bill, if a governor refuses to comply, the U.S. Attorney General can bring a civil action in federal court, and any aggrieved person, including the Speaker or the Minority Leader of the House, can bring a civil action in federal court.

The bill is Menefee’s first original legislation since being sworn into office in February after winning a January runoff to succeed Turner.

It amends Section 26(a) of the Revised Statutes of the United States and closes what Menefee’s office describes as a constitutional loophole: The Constitution requires governors to call special elections when House seats go vacant, but sets no deadline for when those elections must be held.

Texas has no such deadline either.

Its law requires only that a governor act as soon as “practicable”, a word flexible enough, as the press release notes, “to mean almost anything a governor wants it to mean.”

Timelines

I just filed my first bill in Congress: the Special Elections Timeliness Act, or the SET Act. It’s simple, common-sense, and long overdue. When a House seat becomes vacant, communities deserve their voice back quickly. Not months later. pic.twitter.com/SRSkvB7rQf

— Congressman Christian D. Menefee (@RepCDMenefee) April 30, 2026

More than a month after Turner’s passing, Texas Governor Greg Abbott called a special election for November 4, 2025, leaving the seat vacant for at least eight months. When no candidate won a majority that November, the vacancy stretched through a January 31 runoff, pushing the total to 334 days without representation for roughly 800,000 constituents.

That timeline was a record under Abbott.

The 244 days between Turner’s death and the November election were longer than any other congressional or state legislative seat that had been vacant during Abbott’s decade as governor, with the next-closest being 194 days in 2018. Two-thirds of Texas special elections under Abbott happened within 100 days of a vacancy, with an average gap of about 91 days, a KXAN analysis found. 

In contrast, after GOP Rep. Blake Farenthold resigned in 2018, Abbott called an emergency special election within weeks, citing the need for the district, impacted by Hurricane Harvey, to have representation in Washington.

On the Democratic side, California Gov. Gavin Newsom scheduled a special election for Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s seat seven months after LaMalfa’s death, while moving considerably faster for Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell’s vacancy.

Next steps for the SET Act

The SET Act has an uphill path in a Republican-controlled Congress.

The bill was referred to committee upon introduction, and with both chambers under GOP control, floor debate is yet to be seen.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has signed on as a cosponsor.

The 119th Congress has already seen 12 vacancies in 16 months. During TX-18’s 11-month absence, Menefee noted, Republicans passed the initial version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” by a single vote.

“For communities that are already underserved and underrepresented, it means losing the one person whose entire job is to fight for them in Washington,” Menefee said. “The SET Act is a commonsense reform, and it should be bipartisan. When a Member passes away or resigns, their communities should have its voice restored as soon as possible.”

Local leaders, such as state Sen. Borris Miles, D-Houston, and Houston City Controller Chris Hollins, have expressed support for the bill.

“After the untimely passing of Congressman Sylvester Turner, Congressional District 18 remained vacant for nearly a year because the governor failed to act immediately and decisively to call a special election,” said Texas State Senator Borris L. Miles. “No community should be left without representation or shut out of having a voice in Congress due to a governor politicizing the process of filling congressional vacancies.”

Hollins echoed the concern.

“Governor Greg Abbott twisted Houstonians’ constitutional right to representation into a partisan weapon, leaving Congressional District 18 without a voice for nearly a year,” Hollins said. “The Special Election Timeliness Act will make sure no governor, Republican or Democrat, can play politics with our representation ever again. I commend Congressman Menefee for bringing this critical bill forward. We shouldn’t need a law to force elected officials to do the right thing, but this bill will protect our rights when we do, and help us create a fairer, stronger, and more just America.”

For community advocates like Edna Griggs, a longtime Houston civic organizer focused on senior voter engagement, the prolonged vacancy meant no one to fight for marginalized communities in the 18th Congressional District.

“There’s no way that we should have had no representation in a district,” said Griggs, who was once a constituent in TX-18 and has now been redistricted to the 29th. “If anything had happened during those eight months, we’re talking about going into hurricane season, we had no one there to represent the district.”

Griggs said the extended vacancy left voters confused and disengaged. 

“It was done to confuse the people, so that the people would not get out and vote,” she said, describing how she scrambled to keep elderly constituents informed about mail-in ballots.

As another election cycle approaches under newly drawn maps, many residents in the former 18th District are still trying to regain their footing after months of uncertainty and multiple elections and shifting representation. 

For voters like Griggs, the experience left a lingering concern about how communities, particularly Black and elderly voters, can become disconnected from the political process when the system itself becomes difficult to navigate.