Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee is running for Houston’s ‘Hope’ Mayor

NEW YORK – US Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) officially launched her campaign for mayor of Houston on Friday, adding an influential progressive voice to an election that will decide who leads the nation’s fourth-largest city.

“I want the approach of the 21st century city to be based on hope and possible solutions,” Jackson Lee told HuffPost on Thursday after delivering a speech at the National Action Network conference in Manhattan. “You can take a city and listen to the different neighborhoods and get real solutions for the practicalities.”

Jackson Lee, deputy head of the House Democrats, plans to use his familiarity with the federal government to ensure that Houston receives its fair share of federal resources. And he hopes to promote Houston’s “potpourri” of diversity, citing it as a national model of living together. (The city is home to people who speak 145 languages.)

“If there is harmony in America, I want people to see it,” he told HuffPost.

Jackson Lee first announced his plans to compete in Houston’s nonpartisan mayoral race during an appearance in a Houston church at the end of March. Voting to succeed limited-term mayor Sylvester Turner, a pro-business Democrat, will conclude on November 7. If neither candidate obtains an absolute majority, there will be a runoff in December between the two main vote winners.

Jackson Lee joins a field already full that includes Texas State Senator John Whitmire (D), Houston City Councilman Robert Gallegos (D), former Houston Area Transit Chairman Gilbert Garcia, attorneys Amanda Edwards and Lee Kaplan, and former Missouri Police Officer Robin Williams. Jackson Lee and Williams are the only black candidates still in the race.

Jackson Lee, a lawyer who has represented Houston in Congress since 1995, did not share any details of her campaign platform with HuffPost.

However, her comments in the brief interview with HuffPost and in her speech to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network meeting suggest that she will be one of the most progressive candidates in the field.

Jackson Lee has vowed to fight Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) effort to take the control The Houston Public School System. He noted in his remarks at the National Action Network conference that Houston school superintendent, millard houseis black and that he board of education who governs the school district is racially diverse.

“We may not all agree, but we know those trustees care about our children,” he said.

Jackson Lee also promised to take action to limit evictions of tenants who have fallen behind in their rent.

“Are we in a community, in a nation, where people get up from their sick beds to go home to pack up their belongings for eviction?” she told HuffPost. “We can be better than that.”

Jackson Lee, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He has led efforts to promote civil rights for African Americans, introducing the House version of the bill which made Juneteenth a national holiday in 2021. She is currently the main sponsor of an invoice that he would create a commission to study reparations for African-Americans and an invoice that would criminalize certain forms of hate speech.

Although Jackson Lee is a mainstream progressive rather than a leftist of the sort that “the Squad” embodies in the US House of Representatives, his candidacy is the latest test of a big-city appetite for police reform. amid a spike in certain types of crimes which has, at times, helped moderate Democrats.

Speaking to HuffPost, Jackson Lee praised the city’s use of the American Rescue Plan funds for the An initiative of Safe Houston and promised to publish a “complex” public safety plan in the near future. (The initiative combines traditional law enforcement tactics with outreach to troubled youth and other preventative measures.)

“I think ‘hope’ is giving people the understanding that I’m not ignoring their pain in dealing with the issue of crime,” he said.

Jackson Lee joined Sharpton in the campaign for Chicago mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, who is more to the left than the Houston congresswoman, in late March. And Jackson Lee’s son, Jason Lee, a financier turned progressive campaign consultant, was a senior adviser to Johnson’s campaign.

When asked if Johnson’s victory offered any lessons for his candidacy, Jackson Lee replied: “It was a popular race. And I hope to make this a popular race.”