Gov­er­nors hold the pow­er to play pol­i­tics with vacant House seats

The vacan­cies are not expect­ed to shift con­trol of the cham­ber once elec­tions are even­tu­al­ly held — Turner’s seat is reli­ably blue and Stefanik’s com­fort­ably red — but with among the small­est mar­gins in House his­to­ry, every seat mat­ters on con­tentious votes. 

As of now, Speak­er Mike John­son (R‑LA) can afford to lose two Repub­li­cans, requir­ing near una­nim­i­ty from his con­fer­ence.

Turn­er, a fresh­man mem­ber of Con­gress and the for­mer may­or of Hous­ton, died at 70. After recov­er­ing from bone can­cer in 2022, he announced he was “can­cer-free.” Turn­er filled the vacan­cy of the late Rep. Sheila Jack­son Lee, a long­time House Demo­c­rat who rep­re­sent­ed Texas’s 18th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict.

State law requires that Abbott sched­ule the spe­cial elec­tion with­in about two months after he calls one if it is held as an emer­gency elec­tion, but there is not a set dead­line when the gov­er­nor must make the ini­tial announce­ment. 

Last year, Abbott did not call an emer­gency spe­cial elec­tion after Jack­son Lee’s death and just held the race on the same day as the gen­er­al elec­tion. If he were to do so again, the next reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled elec­tion is set for the first Sat­ur­day in May. 

“An announce­ment on a spe­cial elec­tion will be made at a lat­er date,” said Andrew Maha­leris, a press sec­re­tary for Abbott. 

The spe­cial elec­tion for Stefanik’s seat in New York’s 21st Dis­trict is anoth­er that could also be held up as pol­i­tics delay her res­ig­na­tion. She was nom­i­nat­ed as U.N. ambas­sador months ago, yet her Sen­ate con­fir­ma­tion vote remains in lim­bo.

The elec­tion date is viewed as a pos­si­ble bar­gain­ing chip as the White House moves to oppose New York’s plan for con­ges­tion pric­ing. The New York Leg­is­la­ture, run by Democ­rats, had been con­sid­er­ing a bill that would delay spe­cial elec­tions until Novem­ber, but a vote on the bill was paused, appar­ent­ly at the urg­ing of Hochul.

In the­o­ry, Hochul has a 10-day win­dow to set a date once Ste­fanik resigns.

As of now, there are a cou­ple of con­tenders for Turner’s seat.

Isa­iah Mar­tin, a for­mer staffer for Jack­son Lee, ran a pri­or cam­paign that raised around $400,000. The 26-year-old is a Hous­ton native who has over a quar­ter mil­lion fol­low­ers on Tik­Tok, where he posts polit­i­cal con­tent and livestreams dai­ly.

Mar­tin con­firmed to the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er he is strong­ly con­sid­er­ing announc­ing his cam­paign next week. He would be launch­ing his cam­paign with a lit­tle more than $174,000 left from his pri­or run. 

“I built such a strong plat­form across all plat­forms, and I spent the last cou­ple months going on Tik­Tok live every sin­gle day, so I’ve talked to 30,000 peo­ple a day, every sin­gle day for the last odd months or so,” Mar­tin told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er.

“I think hav­ing an influ­encer in Con­gress, some­one who under­stands that mind­set, is going to be very impor­tant in the next direc­tion where we want to go,” he con­tin­ued. 

Aman­da Edwards, a for­mer at-large mem­ber of the Hous­ton City Coun­cil and native Hous­ton­ian, is anoth­er pos­si­ble con­tender. She pre­vi­ous­ly ran against Jack­son Lee in a tough pri­ma­ry ear­ly last year in which Jack­son Lee ulti­mate­ly came out on top before her death lat­er that year.

Her team has not con­firmed if she will run yet. 

For Stefanik’s seat, New York Assem­bly­man Chris Tague and for­mer con­gres­sion­al can­di­date Liz Joy are among the names being float­ed as GOP con­tenders.

“Hochul def­i­nite­ly didn’t do us any favors when she said she was going to hold up the elec­tion,” Mar­tin told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er.