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 Houston’s port traffic. Jackson Lee supported NAFTA and raised a lot of money from business interests that favored it. She won the primary, 63%-37%, and she prevailed in the general election. She has been re-elected easily since. Read More

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 Houston’s port traffic. Jackson Lee supported NAFTA and raised a lot of money from business interests that favored it. 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. Her more substantive proposals—for example, in favor of NASA funding and abortion rights—usually have been defeated. She also is known for regularly grabbing a prominent aisle seat for presidential State of the Union addresses, ensuring her a moment of national television time with the chief executive as he enters. In Washingtonian magazine’s annual poll of House staffers, Jackson Lee has won best “Show Horse” every Congress since 2000, and she has routinely taken top honors in the poll’s “Biggest Windbag” category.

Jackson Lee 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. The conservative website Daily Caller, citing disclosure forms on the website Legistorm, reported in March 2011 that in the previous decade, at least 39 staffers had left her office within a year, and during that time she had employed at least nine chiefs of staff. She told The Houston Chronicle that while she can ruffle feathers, she is unflagging in her desire to serve constituents. “I just want to be called an Energizer bunny that keeps on working for the people of this great district,” she said.

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 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 indict a white man who killed two black men after they robbed his neighbor.

She is the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security, an assignment that suits a port city. Jackson Lee got into a furious debate with Homeland Security Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., at the panel’s controversial March 2011 hearing on domestic Muslim extremism, waving a copy of the Constitution and denouncing the effort as “an outrage” to law-abiding Muslims. Meanwhile, King pounded his gavel to try to silence her.

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 calling 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.

In 2010, Jackson Lee faced a primary challenge from Houston City Councilman Jarvis Johnson, who cited her reputation as difficult to work with, and local lawyer Sean Roberts. Neither, however, could come remotely close to her in fundraising, and in February, she unveiled her trump card—an endorsement from President Barack Obama calling her “a tireless champion for Houston’s working families.” She drew 67% of the vote to Johnson’s 28% and Roberts’ 5%, a victory that ensured her re-election.