An election to fill a vacant House seat in a heavily Democratic district in Texas will take place in November, Gov. Greg Abbott said on Monday, ensuring that the seat will remain unoccupied for most of the year as Republican leaders try to secure President Trump’s agenda.
Democrats have complained that Mr. Abbott did not act faster to fill the seat in Houston after the death of Representative Sylvester Turner last month so that Republicans could pass a contentious budget through the narrowly divided House. They accused the governor of deliberately delaying the announcement of a special election until after a deadline had passed to set the election for May.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said Mr. Abbott was “openly conspiring with House Republicans to rig the system and disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Harris County residents.”
But Mr. Abbott said that his decision to wait had been based on what he said was a desire to give election officials in Harris County, where the district is, more time to prepare.
“No county in Texas does a worse job of conducting elections than Harris County,” Mr. Abbott said in a statement. “Forcing Harris County to rush this special election on weeks’ notice would harm the interests of voters.”
Republicans have a narrow 220-213 margin in the House. A special election has been scheduled for July to fill a vacant seat in a heavily Democratic district in Arizona after the death of Representative Raúl M. Grijalva. The vacant seat in Texas is widely expected to be filled by a Democrat.
Mr. Abbott has the power to schedule an emergency special election, even after the May deadline passed. Candidates for the open seat had hoped that he would schedule the vote for June. Instead he opted to wait for the next regularly scheduled election on Nov. 4. Political observers said that was in keeping with the law and with Mr. Abbott’s political goal of assisting his fellow Republicans in Washington.
But Democrats were not happy.
“It is unconscionable to leave nearly 800,000 people in this district without representation in Congress for most of the year,” said Christian Menefee, the Harris County attorney and a Democratic candidate for the House seat.
“Governor Abbott knows how to move quickly — he’s done it for other districts,” Mr. Menefee said, citing a special election in the Rio Grande Valley that the governor called for the summer of 2022, which a Republican won. “He just chose not to for us.”
