Voters traveling to the SPJST Lodge 88 early voting center in northwest Houston passed piles of woody debris and collapsed fences, a reminder of last week’s storm that disrupted daily life and shut down six of Harris County’s 50 polling sites.
“Everything feels a little surreal when you’ve been struggling just to find a place to get cool and take care of your pets and your children. It’s easy to forget that the world is still going on,” said Lynda Clemmons, 54.
Voters, many of whom said they lost power in the storm and only saw their electricity restored in the last few days, still fulfilled their civic duty Thursday afternoon, casting ballots in Democratic or Republican primary runoff elections taking place across the state.
Clemmons and her partner, Kat Abshire, 50, lost power during the storm and only had it restored on Tuesday. Abshire said the couple likely would have forgotten to vote if she had not set a reminder on her phone last Thursday, hours before the storm hit.
“It would have been easy to forget,” Abshire said.
Friday is the last day of early voting in Harris County.
Democratic voters will decide three hotly contested legislative races: state Senate District 15 across a northern swath of the city, House District 146 in south Houston and House District 139 in northwest Houston. Incumbent Justice Jerry Zimmerer also faces a runoff in the 14th Court of Appeals Place 3 election.
On the Republican side, voters are being asked to choose a longshot nominee in the two deep blue seats held by Democrats: Congressional District 7 represented by Lizzie Fletcher and Congressional District 29 represented by Sylvia Garcia. Kenneth Omoruyi faces Caroline Kane in District 7, and Christian V. Garcia faces Alan Garza in District 29.
Through four days of early voting, 23,214 ballots have been cast, nearly split between in-person and mail-in votes.
In a county that regularly sees low turnout and no statewide or national election to draw less engaged voters, Rice University Political Science Professor Mark Jones said the storm is likely to depress turnout further.
“You add to that a shorter early voting period and the runoff occurring the Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend, you have a recipe for very low turnout,” Jones said.
Because the election is a primary runoff, there are no recent Harris County elections that are suitable to compare early voting turnout, Jones said.
A handful of elections are playing out on both ballots for congressional races, state legislative seats, county positions and judicial posts.
Residents can view a Democratic or Republican party sample ballot and find their nearest open polling location at HarrisVotes.com .
The principal draw for voters at the SPJST lodge was the Senate District 15 Democratic primary runoff between state Rep. Jarvis Johnson and the district’s interim state Sen. Molly Cook.
Cook defeated Johnson in a May 4 special election to fill the remaining seven months of Houston Mayor John Whitmire’s Senate term. Because the district is heavily Democratic, the winner of the May 28 race likely will secure a four-year term in the Senate.
Monty Mitra, a 46-year-old who lives in Garden Oaks, said he voted for Cook because of her advocacy against the state takeover of Houston Independent School District, where his oldest child is enrolled.
“I like her positions, I like her ideas, I like her energy and enthusiasm,” Mitra said.
Mitra also lost power during the storm, and it was restored on Sunday, he said. Voting is a priority for Mitra, he said, but the storm combined with Houston’s now five elections since November has made it difficult to follow every race.
“This could have been one of those events where it was hard to be here, but we got power back pretty quickly,” Mitra said.
The storm could affect races around the county, Jones said.
Campaigns typically save their final push of digital advertisements and mailers for the weekend before early voting begins. With nearly 1 million Houston residents without power over the weekend, as well as traffic snarled across much of the city, that final push likely was disrupted for most campaigns, Jones said.
That could be particularly impactful in the SD 15 race, he said.
The district runs northwest from the Bellaire area, then wraps around the north half of the city and back south to a portion of the eastern part of Houston. That map encompasses many of the worst hit areas by the storm.
Johnson’s state House District 139 makes up much of the northwestern slice of Houston and was devastated by the storm. As the representative of the majority Black district, Johnson’s success on Tuesday hinges on strong turnout from the portions of his House district that also are in Senate District 15, Jones said.
Johnson said Thursday he asked Cook to work with him to request that the election be delayed because of the storm.
Cook said her campaign never received a request from Johnson’s to move the election.
Regardless, both candidates said the day-to-day work of campaigning has included disaster recovery efforts in their respective districts over the past week.
“These senior citizens out here are just trying to live, they’re just trying to make it by,” Johnson said. “It’s hard, but my community is resilient, will bounce back and will respond the way they need to respond.”
Unlike recent elections in the county, those watching results the night of May 28 should expect the Election Day ballots to have a far larger impact on the various races because of the short period of early voting and the storm’s distractions, Jones said.
Election Day is Tuesday. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
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