Houston Answers Back: Menefee Says the Voter-Ads Lawsuit Wants 'to Stop Houstonians From Going to the Polls,' and the County Attorney Calls It a Distraction
Within hours of the Attorney General's office suing the Harris County clerk over get-out-the-vote ads, the county's congressman and its county attorney answered in public - and both told voters the response is to vote.
HOUSTON - Harris County's elected officials answered the Attorney General's voter-ads lawsuit in public on Thursday, hours after it was filed. U.S. Rep. Christian Menefee, a Democrat who represents Texas's 18th District in Houston, said in an official statement that Attorney General Ken Paxton "filed this lawsuit in the final days of voting because he wants to stop Houstonians from going to the polls." The suit, filed Thursday by Paxton's office against County Clerk Teneshia Hudspeth, alleges the clerk's get-out-the-vote ads on Meta platforms were targeted by race and ethnicity and asks a court to order them pulled or reconfigured; Paxton, a candidate for U.S. Senate on the same ballot, recused himself from the case.
"He's whining about ads that do nothing more than tell neighbors when to vote and where to get information about voting," Menefee said. "Paxton is upset that diverse voters across Harris County are making their voices heard. He doesn't like that in this election, people are showing up in big numbers in neighborhoods like Third Ward, Acres Homes, Cypress, Tidwell, and Sunnyside." Menefee added: "Someone with as much power as the Texas Attorney General would only take desperate action like this lawsuit because he is scared. I hope everyone in Harris County who is eligible to vote sees this lawsuit for what it is, and goes to cast their ballot in this election."
The county's own lawyer answered in the same register. Harris County Attorney Abbie Kamin said her office is reviewing what she called the "politically motivated lawsuit," that the county's efforts to ensure all voters in a diverse county have access to voter information are legal, and that the county does not want what she called a pathetic political distraction to take away from election operations. Harris County, she said, "remains hyper focused on ensuring every eligible voter's voice is heard and their votes protected." The clerk's office itself had not publicly responded when the earlier lawsuit file was reported.
The timing is the whole fight: the suit landed one day before early voting ends, in the county that has already cast more early ballots than any in Texas, and both responses were aimed less at the courtroom than at the line outside the vote center. The legal question - whether the ads' targeting violated the state constitution's equal-rights protections, as the state alleges - now sits with a Harris County district judge; the political question gets answered Friday, the last day to vote early, and Tuesday.
