WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, once seen as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in Congress, won her first re-election battle in a one-time Republican stronghold in west Houston.
The Associated Press called the race for Fletcher at 11:17 p.m. She led Republican challenger Wesley Hunt, a former Army helicopter pilot, by less than four percentage points.
Fletcher said voters in the district wanted to see “a positive and hopeful vision and a unifying vision for people in this country.”
“They want to see us working together at all levels of government,” she said.
Home to the energy corridor, the slice of west Houston was once a hotbed of Texas Republican politics, sending George H.W. Bush to Congress in 1966 and voting solidly GOP for half a century until 2018, when Fletcher unseated U.S. Rep. John Culberson.
Hunt, who outraised Fletcher in the final months of the race, castFletcher as bad for the energy industry and accused her of siding with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi most of the time.
But Fletcher, a former oil and gas attorney, positioned herself as a moderate throughout her first term, vocally opposing some of her colleagues’ efforts, such as the Green New Deal and legislation by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York that would ban fracking.
