Former Houston mayor Sylvester Turner, who was sworn in as a U.S. representative in January, passed away in Washington on Wednesday. He was 70 years old and had attended Tuesday night’s speech by President Trump on Capitol Hill. Gregory Carter, his press secretary, reported that following the address, Mr. Turner was brought to a hospital before being brought home, where he passed away. “A cause has not been determined,” he stated. Mr. Turner was a seasoned politician from Texas and a Democrat. From 1989 to 2016, when he was elected mayor of Houston, he was a member of the State Legislature. He left office in January 2024 after serving two terms. He entered a special election a few months later to fill the congressional seat that was left vacant by Representative Sheila Jackson Lee’s death in July. He subsequently withdrew from the primary in favor of Erica Lee Carter, Ms. Lee’s daughter. After winning that contest, Ms. Carter supported Mr. Turner in the regular election held in November.
On January 3, he was sworn into office. Mr. Turner was born in Houston on September 27, 1954. His mother worked as a hotel housekeeper, and his father painted. After graduating as his high school valedictorian, he went on to get a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Houston in 1977 and a law degree from Harvard in 1980. He went back to Houston to practice trial law, initially for a well-known company before starting his own firm, Barnes & Turner, which specialized on personal injury and business law cases. He divorced Cheryl Turner after their marriage. Ashley Turner-Captain, their daughter, is among the survivors. During the 1990s and 2000s, Mr. Turner, a liberal Democrat in the increasingly conservative Texas State Legislature, gained a reputation for delivering venomous, divisive speeches. However, he was also able to work across party lines to promote causes that were important to him, such as health care for Houston’s poor.
He made unsuccessful runs for mayor of Houston in 1991 and 2003. He attributed his narrow defeat in 1991 on what he said as a slanderous news article that connected him to an insurance fraud. He was victorious in his 1996 lawsuit against the reporter and the television network that carried the report. However, the state Supreme Court declared that Mr. Turner had not proven malignant intent, overturning the jury award. In 2015, he ran for mayor once more and was successful, partly because President Barack Obama endorsed him. He continued to work to increase access to healthcare in Houston while serving as mayor, and he received recognition for streamlining the city budget. However, he came under fire in 2017 for failing to issue a citywide evacuation order during Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 hurricane that claimed about 60 lives.
Mr. Turner had only been in Congress for two months, so he had little time to make a name for himself or build a legislative record. In his first bill, which was proposed last month, cybersecurity training for federal employees would be offered on the job. Mr. Turner spoke to reporters with his evening guest, Angela Hernandez, a Houston mother who depends on Medicaid to care for her special needs kid, prior to the president’s speech. “My message to the current administration for tonight’s State of the Union: ‘Don’t mess up,'” he posted on his Instagram account.