Menefee vs Green: Ground game strategies needed for voter turnout
Republican lawmakers did something in the summer of 2025 that Democrats had not seen in two decades. They forced two Black incumbents into the same congressional district and had them go head-to-head for the Congressional District-18 seat in last month’s primary race. The result of that March primary was a 1,700-vote margin and a May […]
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Republican lawmakers did something in the summer of 2025 that Democrats had not seen in two decades. They forced two Black incumbents into the same congressional district and had them go head-to-head for the Congressional District-18 seat in last month’s primary race.
The result of that March primary was a 1,700-vote margin and a May 26 runoff that could reshape Black political power in Houston for a generation. Neither Congressman Christian Menefee, 37, nor Congressman Al Green, 78, cleared the 50% threshold required under Texas law to avoid one.
Now, with the clock ticking, the question is no longer who the better candidate is. It is who can get their voters back to the polls weeks before Memorial Day, in a race both sides are encouraging participation in.
Credit: Courtesy Dallas Jones/LinkedIn
The forces working against that outcome are well documented. In Texas, runoff turnout typically falls by half from the primary that preceded it. According to Houston Democratic strategist Dallas Jones, more than 50% of the voters who turned out for CD-18 in March had little to no Democratic primary history, a surge driven in part by the high-profile U.S. Senate primary between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico. When the energy driving those voters disappears, Jones warns, many of them will too.
“Those people aren’t necessarily coming back,” Jones said. “If they are, it’s because a campaign did the work to bring them back.”
That work, Jones argues, had to start long before now. He describes a winning runoff ground game not as something you build in the final weeks, but as an operation either constructed during the primary or not.
Campaigns must return to their identified supporters, avoid wasting resources by activating their opponent’s base, and ensure every messenger in the field delivers a disciplined, consistent message.
For the Menefee campaign, which has been running continuously for nearly a year through a special election and primary, that infrastructure is already in place. For Green’s team, which entered the primary race later, the runway is shorter and the urgency higher.
Jones also points to a generational dimension neither campaign can afford to ignore. The nearly four-decade age gap between the two men is a sociological variable that shapes how each candidate is perceived, who shows up for them, and how each campaign must communicate.
These young people face important issues, such as food costs, tuition, and transportation costs. You have to go where they are and actually listen.
Joy Davis, senior field organizer, Pure Justice
At the end of the day, the single most consequential decision either campaign will make is where it invests its turnout dollars.
“You cannot afford to get that wrong,” Jones said. “Fish where your fish are.”
It is a calculus that veteran voting rights activist Pam Gaskin has been running in her head for decades.
Gaskin grew up watching her father pay poll taxes out of pocket, $1.50 in 1952, a sum that was equivalent to nearly $25 today, so that Black men in Galveston County could exercise their right to vote.
She registered her first voters in 1966, as a college freshman at the University of Texas at Austin, going door to door in East Austin as part of a sorority project that helped elect the first African American to the Austin school board. Sixty years later, she is applying that same urgency to a race she believes will be decided by infrastructure.
“The turnout is going to be low, period, the end, no discussion,” Gaskin said. “It’s in May, it’s on a Saturday, it’s before a holiday.”
The runoff strategy, she explains, centers on repeated contact with confirmed supporters, an aggressive chase of mail-in ballots, particularly among voters over 65, who turn out at higher rates than younger voters, and maximum use of the 10-day early voting window to build a cushion before Election Day.
She warns against spending finite resources on low-propensity voters who did not show up in March. The more productive targets, she argues, are the persuadable voters, supporters of the eliminated primary candidates who are now unattached and reachable.
When Republicans redrew the map last summer, they folded much of Green’s former 9th Congressional District into the new 18th, delivering a Fort Bend County base that had supported Green for two decades directly into contested territory.
“Al Green really made it into that runoff because of Fort Bend County voters,” Gaskin said. “They knew him. They are former congressional district nine members.”
While campaigns wrestle with voter universes and precinct-level data, organizers on the ground are focused on something harder to measure and, they argue, harder to replace.
Credit: Courtesy: Joy Davis
Joy Davis, senior field organizer with Houston-based nonprofit Pure Justice, has been doing outreach in spaces most campaigns rarely enter, barbershops, nail salons, gaming communities, jail registration lines, and sports event parking lots. These are not just convenient locations.
They are places where trust has been built over the years, where people speak freely and are more likely to actually listen. Her team’s conversations connect voting directly to the issues voters raise themselves, such as rising utility costs, health care access, housing, and public safety.
“Text messages and mailers are good at awareness and basic information,” Davis said. “They are not really good at getting someone to care.”
What fills that gap, she argues, is authenticity built through consistency, showing up before the election, during it, and after it is over. Young voters, especially, Davis says, can identify campaigns that arrive only when something is wanted.
“A lot of times they feel like nobody ever listens to them,” she said. “They only come when they want something. But these young people face important issues, such as food costs, tuition, and transportation costs. You have to go where they are and actually listen.”
Her team follows up with registered voters, checks in after Election Day, and maintains a presence in communities between cycles. That kind of ongoing relationship, she argues, is what eventually moves someone from skeptical to committed.
Winning the May 26 runoff in CD-18 will not be determined by which campaign runs the smarter television ad or the better-targeted text blast. It will be determined by who already built a relationship with the voter long before the ballot was printed.
“The runoff is going to decide who your next congressman is,” Jones said. “You have to come back and finish the job, or you didn’t really play a part in the process at all.”What voters need to know: The May 26 runoff is a Democratic primary runoff. Any registered voter who participated in the March Democratic primary, or who has not voted in any other party’s primary this cycle, is eligible to cast a ballot. Early voting begins in mid-May. Confirm your registration and find your nearest location at HarrisVotes.com.
