Michael Hagerty/Houston Public Media
Acting Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee and former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards lead the field in cash on hand as the clock ticks down toward the Nov. 4 special election in Texas’ 18th Congressional District.
Fellow Democrat Isaiah Martin made a third-place showing in the latest campaign finance reports — despite garnering the support of only 4% of likely voters in a poll released shortly before the start of early voting. Martin worked as a staffer for the late U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who held the congressional seat for nearly 30 years before her death in July 2024.
The October filings with the Federal Election Commission show Menefee having raised more than $1.5 million during a roughly three-month period ending Oct. 15, with Edwards having raised more than $1.2 million and Martin having raised just over $1 million. State Rep. Jolanda Jones was running a distant fourth in fundraising, having raised less than $342,000. All four leading candidates are Democrats.
“I think this is one of the real challenges in politics, and especially in a race like this, where oftentimes donors coalesce behind the candidate that they see as being the strongest,” said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “And what’s clear from these early fundraising numbers is that no candidate has won the money race, as it’s sometimes called, and by doing that, it makes it harder to push other candidates off the ballot, even informally, by scaring them off.”
RELATED: Here is what’s on the November 2025 ballot in Harris County
The top three candidates in fundraising are also relatively evenly matched in terms of remaining cash on hand. Menefee reports having nearly $393,000, Edwards nearly $332,000 and Martin nearly $268,000. Jones has just over $27,000 remaining, leaving her little to work with in the event she winds up as one of the final two contenders in a 16-candidate race that almost certainly will go to a second round. If no candidate gains more than 50% of the vote on Nov. 4, the contest will go to a runoff between the top two vote getters, most likely in late January or February.
Among the more notable contributions to the Menefee campaign were a $5,000 donation from the Jane Fonda Climate PAC, an organization dedicated to electing candidates who will oppose the fossil fuel industry, as well as several $5,000 donations from organized labor organizations, including one from the Carpenters Legislative Improvement Committee.
Some of the standout contributions to the Edwards campaign included multiple donations from industrial construction and real estate consultant David Du, totaling $6,500, as well as multiple donations from EMILY’s List, an organization dedicated to electing to office Democratic women who advocate legal access to abortion, totaling just over $4,000.
The lion’s share of Martin’s fundraising, more than $860,000, was aggregated through the Democratic online platform ActBlue, the overwhelming majority of the individual donations being less than $1,000 apiece.
As far as how the candidates will make use of their remaining funds, Blank said that is a more straightforward question.
“A congressional district is necessarily geographically compact,” Blank said. “What it tends to do is it tends to push candidates more towards outreach, mobilization and identification, and a little bit less towards mass media.”
The candidates are vying to complete the term of late U.S. Rep. Sylvester Turner, who won the November 2024 election to succeed Jackson Lee before dying in March at age 70. More than a month later, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called a special election for this November.