It’s only fitting that the last campaign video Congressman Al Green posted to Facebook—far and away the most-used social media platform among senior citizens—featured “Let’s Stay Together,” the greatest hit by the other Al Green, the last of the great soul singers, about a smooth talker imploring his lover to stay by his side, “whether times are good or bad.”
But not even 1970s sensuality was enough to keep about 69 percent of voters in Texas’ newly drawn 18th Congressional District from choosing 38-year-old Christian Menefee, Green’s junior by some 40 years.
Perhaps the times are just that bad, or perhaps it was simply time. Would the world really be that much better off if Green left office two years from now, at 80? First Sheila Jackson Lee, then Sylvester Turner—the 18th Congressional District had evidently seen enough of Houston’s towering Black icons, pugnacious as ever but well past their primes, securing the office only to succumb to the end that we all must face. It must feel heartless: Green gave decades of his life to the cause, and this is what he gets, a wallop on his way out the door?
As for Menefee, others will try to claim his victory as their own. Custom dictated that he thank “the people of this district” for voting, but the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was quick to congratulate him on defeating “one of the most outspoken anti-Israel voices in Congress.” (AIPAC didn’t even back Menefee in the race, but it was eager to punish Green, a reliable ceasefire vote.) Meanwhile, David Hogg, the self-exiled vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, was quick to plug his Leaders We Deserve PAC for helping “elect & re-elect” this “next-generation leader.” And if money talks, the more than $5 million Menefee received from crypto-aligned super PACs is probably giving him an earful, too.
In mid-January, Menefee completed a Stand With Crypto questionnaire and received an “A” (for “Very Pro Crypto”) from the advocacy group, putting him in league with Texas Blue Dogs like Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez. Green, for his part, has an “F.” Reporters, local and national, liked to say there was little daylight between Menefee and Green, and Menefee certainly downplayed this grade disparity to make that seem true. When The New York Times asked Menefee about it, he all but played dumb, as if surprised by all the hubbub, and referred to himself as a “local yokel.” Crypto lobby? You mean the stuff that hurts Superman?
Menefee’s response was frightfully similar to that of Jasmine Crockett, who has also been needled by questions about crypto funding. In 2022, having received $2 million from crypto super PACS, she told journalist Patrick Svitek that the groups simply gravitated toward her due to the “strength of my candidacy” and that, while she knew little about crypto, she was “committed to researching all these things.” Later, quite uncharacteristically, she joined Republicans on a vote to help Trump deliver one of his campaign promises: To make the United States the “crypto capital of the planet.” For what it’s worth, Crockett received a “C” (for “Neutral”) from Stand With Crypto, but when crypto-affiliated PACs cut their ads for Menefee, they specifically featured her endorsement.
Texas’ mid-decade redistricting had pitted a veteran of the Congressional Black Caucus (Green) against one of its newest members (Menefee), endorsed by one of its most popular (Crockett). The whole affair foreshadows fights to come across the South, as Republicans—armed with the recent Supreme Court decision torching the Voting Rights Act—gerrymander Black districts like Green’s out of existence. As many as one-third of CBC members are under threat, kicking off a panicked set of planning sessions within the CBC to discuss what fighting back might look like. As of mid-May, that plan is reportedly “still coming together,” but so far it looks a lot like what the plan always is: turning out Black voters come November.
It’s an expensive job. Not for nothing, Menefee has shown he can raise money. So has Crockett. She’s on her way out of Congress, but that hasn’t stopped her from stumping for Menefee and fellow CBC member Wesley Bell in Missouri, who relied on AIPAC and crypto cash to boot progressive Squadmember Cori Bush out of office in 2024. (Their rematch is set for early August.) This isn’t to say Menefee is in lockstep with Crockett’s national tour. Despite its reputation as the “conscience of Congress,” the CBC tends to turn a blind eye to how its members fundraise anyway. But the game is bigger than him now. Much has been said about “experience” this cycle—who has it, what it’s worth—but Menefee will have to learn quickly who his friends are, and who their enemies are, because those are his enemies now, too.
When Al Green refers to himself (quite frequently) as “unbought and unbossed,” he’s alluding to the words of Shirley Chisholm, a founding CBC member and the first Black woman to run for president. “It is incomprehensible to me, the fear that can affect men in political offices,” she once wrote. “It is shocking the way they submit to forces they know are wrong and fail to stand up for what they believe. Can their jobs be so important to them, their prestige, their power, their privileges so important that they will cooperate in the degradation of our society just to hang onto those jobs?”
She died in 2005, the same year Green entered Congress. How long ago that seems.
The post Christian Menefee’s Win Foreshadows Fights to Come Across the South appeared first on The Texas Observer.
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