NEW YORK ― U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) officially launched her campaign for mayor of Houston on Friday, adding an influential progressive voice in an election that will decide who leads the nation’s fourth-largest city.
“I want a 21st-century approach to cities based on hope and based on actionable solutions,” Jackson Lee told HuffPost Thursday after delivering a speech at the National Action Network conference in Manhattan. “You can take a city and listen to different neighborhoods and get real solutions to the nuts and bolts.”
Jackson Lee, the Democratic deputy chief whip, plans to use his familiarity with the federal government to ensure that Houston gets its fair share of federal resources. And he hopes to promote Houston’s “potpourri” of diversity, declaring it a national model of coexistence. (This city is home to people who talk 145 languages.)
“If there is harmony in America, I want people to see it,” he told HuffPost.
Jackson Lee first announced his plans to run in Houston’s nonpartisan mayoral race during an appearance at the Houston church at the end of March. Voting to succeed the term-limited Mayor Sylvester Turner, a business-friendly Democrat, is set to conclude on November 7. If no candidate receives an outright majority, there will be a runoff in December between the top two vote-getters.
Jackson Lee joins an already crowded field that includes Texas state Sen. John Whitmire (D), Houston City Council member Robert Gallegos (D), former Houston area transit chairman Gilbert Garcia, attorneys Amanda Edwards and Lee Kaplan, and a former Missouri police officer Robin Williams. Jackson Lee and Williams are the only Black candidates still in the race.
Jackson Lee, an attorney who has represented Houston in Congress since 1995, did not share details of his campaign platform with HuffPost.
He said in a brief interview with HuffPost and in a speech at a meeting of the Rev. National Action Network. Al Sharpton indicated that he would be one of the more advanced candidates in the field.
Jackson Lee has vowed to fight the effort by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to take over Houston public school system. He noted in his remarks at the National Action Network conference that the superintendent of Houston schools, Millard Houseit’s Black and that’s it Board of Education managing the school district is multi-racial.
“We may not all agree, but we know that these guardians care about their children,” he said.
Jackson Lee also promised to take measures to limit the eviction of tenants who have fallen behind on rent payments.
“Are we in a community, in a country, where people are coming out of their sick beds to go home to pack their belongings to be kicked out?” he told HuffPost. “We can do better than that.”
Jackson Lee, who serves on the House Judiciary Committee, is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. He has led efforts to advance civil rights for Black Americans, introducing the House version of the bill which made Juneteenth a national holiday in 2021. They are now the main sponsor bill who will create a commission to study reparations for Black Americans and bill that would criminalize certain forms of hate speech.
Although Jackson Lee is more of a mainstream progressive than the leftist personified by the “Squad” in the US House, his candidacy is the latest test of big cities’ appetite for police reform amid a rise in certain types of crime that have, at times, helped moderate Democrats .
Speaking to HuffPost, Jackson Lee praised the city’s use of American Rescue Plan funds for the One Safe Houston initiative and promised to release a “complex” public safety plan in the near future. (The initiative combines traditional law enforcement tactics with outreach to troubled youth and other prevention measures.)
“I believe that ‘hope’ is to let people know that I do not ignore the pain when dealing with the problem of crime,” he said.
Jackson Lee joined Sharpton in campaigning for Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson, who is more left-wing than Houston’s congresswoman, in late March. And Jackson Lee’s son Jason Lee, a financier turned progressive campaign consultant, is a senior adviser to Johnson’s campaign.
Asked if Johnson’s victory taught him any lessons for his bid, Jackson Lee replied, “It’s a people’s race. And I hope it’s a people’s race.