WASHINGTON — Democratic Reps. Al Green and Christian Menefee are headed to a runoff election in their bids for Texas’ newly redrawn 18th Congressional District.
Neither won more than 50% of the vote in Tuesday night’s primary election. Menefee led Green by about 2 percentage points, but fell short of winning outright as two other Democratic contenders pulled votes from him and Green. The two congressmen will now face each other in the runoff election on May 26.
This congressional seat is safely Democratic, so whoever wins the runoff will almost certainly win the general election in November.
Green, 78, has been in Congress since 2005. He currently represents the 9th Congressional District, but after Republicans pushed through partisan redistricting last year, it bumped him into the new 18th Congressional District.
Menefee, 37, won a January special election in this district’s old boundaries to finish out the term started by the late Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner, who died in March 2025.
Their race was a test of voters’ hunger for generational change in Congress.
Menefee, who was previously the Harris County attorney, told NBC News last week he hasn’t been focused on Green’s age “at all,” and is ready to fight on issues like affordability and defending democracy.
But he also cast himself as “the person to carry this district into the future,” and claimed he’s “the only candidate in the race” who has stood up to the Trump administration.
Green has campaigned on his seniority in Congress, and his record on civil rights and voting protections. And in case you didn’t think he had it in him to stand up to Trump, the Texas congressman got ejected from the president’s State of the Union address last Tuesday for walking around with a large sign that read, “Black People Aren’t Apes.”
His sign was a protest of a racist, AI-generated video Trump shared in early February on social media depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
Heading into Tuesday’s elections, Menefee had raised a lot more money than Green. He’d brought in more than $2.6 million and had about $130,000 cash on hand as of Feb. 11, per his FEC filings. Green raised about $940,000 and had about $539,000 cash on hand during the same period, per his FEC reports.