Sheila Jackson Lee Dead at 74

HOUSTON — Congresswoman Sheila Jackson (D, TX-18) Lee died today at age 74, her staff announced on X.

Jackson Lee began her political career in Houston in 1989 when she was elected to the Houston City Council. She served on the council until 1994 when she successfully campaigned to represent Texas's 18th Congressional District, an odd shaped territory that surrounds downtown Houston like a bagel.

In 2023, she ran for mayor of Houston but was defeated by Mayor John Whitmire.

Jackson Lee was known for her political gaffes but still managed to win re-election to Congress with over 70 percent of the vote in most cases. She once stated that the U.S. Constitution was 400 years old. In 1997, while visiting the operations center for the Mars Pathfinder, she asked if the contraption on Mars had ever photographed the U.S. flag planted there by Astronaut Neil Armstrong. At the time, she served on the NASA subcommittee of the House Science Committee. In her final election contest, an advertisement created by her campaign asked voters to vote on the wrong day. She blamed her ad agency for the mistake.

On June 2, 2024, Congresswoman Jackson Lee announced that she was battling pancreatic cancer.