Republican Redistricting Is Sowing Chaos in Houston

First came the Republican gerrymander in Texas. Now comes the Democratic chaos in Houston.

When Republican lawmakers, at the behest of President Trump, successfully redrew the congressional map of Texas this summer, the explicit aim was to grab as many as five U.S. House seats from the Democrats to try to preserve the Republican majority in the 2026 midterm elections.

But well before then, the repercussions are being felt in a newly drawn district in Houston, even though it will almost certainly stay Democratic.

“It’s just kind of ridiculous,” said one exasperated Houston voter, a trumpet teacher named George Chase.

A certain amount of confusion is likely to play out in districts from the Rio Grande Valley to suburban Dallas, as voters and candidates adjust to new lines that are usually redrawn only once a decade.

But Texas’ 18th House district is feeling it right now, thanks to the unexpected death of its Democratic congressman, Sylvester Turner, just weeks into this session of Congress; a special election that was delayed by the Republican governor to help Republican leaders in Washington navigate their narrow House majority; and new district lines that will take effect soon after the special election.

“It’s been wildly confusing to people,” said Amanda Edwards, a former Houston City Council member who is running for a seat in the district, as she knocked doors in the Woodland Heights neighborhood last Saturday morning.

The chaos is partly from an act of fate — the death of Mr. Turner on March 5 — but mostly from acts of humans. A special election to serve out the remainder of Mr. Turner’s term is set for November, eight months after his death, and even then, it is expected to end up in a runoff that will come in mid- to late January.

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Mr. Chase offered his support after Ms. Edwards stopped at his home, but if she wins, he will not be able to vote for her in the primary because his neighborhood will no longer be part of the district.

To many Democrats and voting rights groups, the confusion is part of the playbook. They have accused Republicans of seeking to diminish the power of Black and Hispanic voters and are challenging the maps in court. A panel of three federal judges in El Paso is set to hear arguments over the maps in early October.

In Houston, Republican lawmakers redrew the congressional map to reduce the number of Democratic seats by one. They did so by shifting the lines of the Ninth Congressional District, which is held by Al Green, a veteran Democratic representative from a safely Democratic area south of downtown to an area to the east, where voters favored Mr. Trump by a comfortable margin in 2024.

At the same time, the lawmakers drastically redrew the 18th district, moving it from an area mostly north of downtown to one that is largely south — including much of what had been in the Ninth district. The 18th will become, in redistricting parlance, a vote sink, where Democrats are packed together tightly to pull them from surrounding districts that will become more Republican.

“This is the clearest example of packing you’re ever going to see,” said Christian Menefee, the county attorney for Harris County, where Houston is, and a candidate in the 18th district special election in November.

Beyond the raw pursuit of more seats, the Republican redistricting turned what probably would have been a changing of the generational guard for Democrats in the 18th district into a looming clash of generations.

Now, the winner of the special election is likely to face Mr. Green, 78, in the March primary. Mr. Green has expressed his interest in running in the newly drawn 18th, saying it includes a large portion of his old district.

The pileup of candidates and elections has also created an unusually challenging situation for election officials in Harris County, who must handle mail-in ballots, early voting and Election Days in two different contests, with two different maps, in close succession.

“Anytime you change any aspect of voting, it takes several election cycles for voters to catch up,” said Teneshia Hudspeth, the Harris County clerk who oversees elections. “I foresee that we are going to be working overtime to provide clarity.”

She predicted “some chaos.”

Mr. Menefee said Gov. Greg Abbott could have called the special election in the spring or summer. Instead, he chose to hold the seat left by Mr. Turner vacant to help Republicans in the House, where the party has a slim majority, pass Mr. Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 3.

Mr. Abbott said in the spring, when he set the November special election date, that his decision to wait was based on a desire to give local election officials more time to prepare. That was before anyone was talking about redistricting.

Of all the tumult, Jacques Davis, 53, said that he was most upset by having no representative in the House for the start of the second Trump administration.

“There’s so much dismantling of some of the rights and liberties that we have now,” said Mr. Davis, who works in human resources, adding that “the right to be married to my husband” was now being questioned. “It’d be great to know that somebody was there to defend us.”

The special election in November includes more than a dozen candidates, Democrats and Republicans, vying to serve until the end of next year.

Polls have shown a close contest between Mr. Menefee and Ms. Edwards, with another candidate, Jolanda Jones, a Democratic state representative, appearing to rise. Carmen Maria Montiel, a Republican real estate broker and journalist, has also drawn some support.

Ms. Jones was one of dozens of State House Democrats who left Texas in August as part of a legislative walkout over the redistricting that temporarily denied Republicans the quorum they needed to move forward with the proposal. She said her candidacy gained momentum after the walkout.

“The quorum break changed the game,” she said, adding that the new lines that she had protested had transformed the district. “Eighteen looks nothing like it was.”

Ms. Edwards, who in recent years has been a candidate for mayor of Houston and for the 18th House seat, said that she had been surprised, while campaigning door to door in recent months, to find voters much more anxious but also more willing and eager to open their doors and talk than in past elections.

“Because I think people are really stressed out, they’re talking more,” she said, describing the look of Democratic voters opening their doors as a mixture of shock and angst. “They were like, ‘What is going on?’”