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As of Tuesday evening, based on early voting results, Dwight Boykins and Alejandra Salinas appeared headed to a runoff for the open at-large seat on the Houston City Council.
Boykins, a former city council member for District D and unsuccessful candidate for Houston mayor, received 24.01% of the vote during the early voting period. He entered the race as the most well-known candidate and ran a narrowly focused campaign emphasizing flood mitigation in Kingwood, home repairs for senior citizens, incentives for grocery stores to open in “food deserts,” and steps to address the city’s growing budget deficit.
He trailed Salinas in fundraising, bringing in nearly $140,000 as of his most recently available campaign finance report from Oct. 27. Local political analysts expected him to receive a boost from the overlap between District D and Congressional District 18, where a special election is also underway. He boasted the endorsements of former mayor Lee Brown and former city controller Ronald Green, among other current and former elected officials.
Shortly after early voting results were released, Boykins told Houston Public Media he believed voters appreciated his experience.
“We worked hard and we campaigned hard, he said. “I think my experience counted, being that I served for six years and achieved some major milestones as a district council member, and showed my broad vision for Houston.”
Salinas, a newcomer to municipal politics, received 21.40% of the vote during the early voting period, according to results released Tuesday night by the Harris County Clerk’s Office. She is running a campaign focused on improving delivery of government services — from public safety to solid waste collection — as well as more general ideals like equity and defending democracy.
The trial attorney and partner with high-profile litigation firm Susman Godfrey LLP consistently led the 15-candidate field in terms of fundraising and endorsements — with more than $500,000 in monetary contributions this year and backing from multiple powerhouse labor unions, including the Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation AFL-CIO and Houston Federation of Teachers.
Salinas told Houston Public Media Tuesday evening and said her campaign has been about equity.
“I’m a first-time candidate running against someone with strong name ID,” she said. “We had a lot of work to do over the past four months, and the position we’re in, I think, is a testament to the work of not only myself, but the hundreds of people that have volunteered on our campaign.”
The pair sparred early in the campaign over allegations of artificial intelligence-driven plagiarism. Salinas accused Boykins of using ChatGPT or a similar tool to rip off the priorities on her campaign’s website.
Boykins acknowledged using AI to write the priorities on his website, but he denied intentional plagiarism — and told Houston Public Media, “my campaign manager said something that was interesting — how do we know they didn’t copy off us?” Salinas denied using AI at all, and told Houston Public Media, “I don’t think the city of Houston wants to be represented by an AI bot.”
In third place after early voting, Grid United project manager and former city council chief of staff Jordan Thomas trailed with 16% of the vote. His campaign barely cracked $50,000 in fundraising as of the last available campaign finance report, and his only notable endorsement came from the Houston Chronicle editorial board.
Thomas’ shortfall in the race to replace Letitia Plummer — his former boss, who is stepping down to run for Harris County Judge — came as a letdown for supporters of the underdog, who campaigned on a progressive, urbanist platform.
Speaking to supporters Tuesday night, Thomas said he stayed in the race because he believes in the policies that he campaigned on.
“I’ve always thought that people who believe what we believe — though we have always been the underdog — if we could just get a foothold in Houston politics if we could just grasp at a promise of what we could be, then we would be inevitable and we would be unstoppable,” he said.
None of the other 12 candidates cracked 51% of the vote.
The runoff election between Salinas and Boykins is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 13.