Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D)

The congresswoman from the 18th District is Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat first elected in 1994. A native of Queens, N.Y., she was educated at Yale University and Virginia University’s law school. She practiced law in Houston, where she was a local judge and won two terms as an at-large member of the Houston City Council. After a local term limits law took effect in 1994, she ran for Congress. The incumbent was Democratic Rep. Craig Washington, a talented but iconoclastic legislator who voted against funding for the space station, a source of many local jobs, and against the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, which was a boon to port traffic. Jackson Lee supported NAFTA and raised a lot of money from business interests that favored it as well. She won the primary, 63%-37%, and she prevailed in the general election. She has been re-elected easily since.

In the House, Jackson Lee has a liberal voting record, though she has leaned toward the center on economic issues. She is prolific in proposing bills and offering amendments on the floor. Typically, her measures call for studies on one topic or another, add small amounts to spending bills, or are non-controversial, such as one that called on Afghanistan to prohibit the use of children as soldiers. When Republicans controlled the House, her more substantive proposals—for example, in favor of NASA funding and abortion rights—were usually defeated. In the 110th Congress (2007-08), she reportedly made more House speeches than any other Democratic member. In Washingtonian magazine’s annual poll of House staffers, Jackson Lee won best “Show Horse” every Congress since 2000, and she has routinely taken top honors in the poll’s “Biggest Windbag” category. She also draws negative reviews for her treatment of her staff. She used to have an aide drive her one block to and from her Capitol Hill apartment daily, and she has required aides to drive her to late-night hair appointments.

Jackson Lee came into national prominence as an outspoken defender of Democratic President Bill Clinton during his impeachment in 1998. On the Judiciary Committee, she has faced conflicting desires from Latino constituents who favor more generous treatment of immigrants and African-American constituents who see immigrants as dangerous competition for jobs. She frequently takes the pro-immigrant side. She favors an increase in visas and access to permanent resident status. She has vigilantly pursued alleged racial injustices in local courts; she called the Houston-area judicial system “tarnished” in 2008 after a grand jury failed to convict a white man who killed two black men after they robbed his neighbor.

Jackson Lee has chaired the Homeland Security Subcommittee on the Transportation Security Committee and Infrastructure Protection, an assignment that suits the port city of Houston. In March 2009, she complained that the Transportation Security Administration was not moving fast enough to meet the August 2010 deadline for screening all cargo on passenger planes. She sponsored a bill to mandate wireless communications systems for flight attendants on commercial airplanes to replace telephones that she said were “from the Howard Hughes era.”

Jackson Lee has been mindful to keep her name recognition in the district high, going so far as to have aides track constituents’ deaths and then call their grieving families to ask if she can speak at their funerals. Her most famous eulogy came in July 2009, when Jermaine Jackson asked her to speak at his famous brother Michael Jackson’s memorial service in Los Angeles. She delivered a rambling speech to the crowd of 20,000 who gathered for the pop star’s funeral, speaking for more time than many of the stars there who knew Jackson personally. Jackson Lee caused some anger at home during the 2008 presidential primary when she remained a steadfast supporter of Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton “in the spirit and the idea of opportunity for women.” Supporters of Democratic candidate Barack Obama said they think she should have a primary challenger in 2010.