District Profile
The Seventh Congressional District of Texas was created in Houston in 1966 as a result of the Supreme Court’s “one man-one vote” decision that required Houston (which had previously been one Congressional District) to be divided into three Districts.
Former President George H. W. Bush, then Republican County Chairman, chose to run in the new Seventh District, which included downtown Houston as well as the entire western half of Harris County. He won the Republican primary and faced Frank Briscoe in the general election. He won the General Election in November, 1966, to become only the second Republican to represent Texas in the House this century and the first to represent Houston. He was unopposed for re-election to the House in 1968 and served until 1970 when he gave up his House seat to seek a United States Senate seat.
Bill Archer ran for the Seventh District seat when George Bush ran for the Senate in 1970. Archer, then a two-term Member of the Texas House of Representatives, faced two opponents in the Republican primary but won the Republican nomination without a runoff. He had Democrat opponents in all but 3 of the 12 general elections in which he was a candidate for the House. He ran unopposed in 1976, 1990 and 1992. He was almost always re-elected with the largest percentage of the vote of any Republican member of the House with major party opposition.
John A. Culberson was elected to represent the Seventh District on November 7, 2000. He won an eight candidate Republican primary and a runoff before winning the general election. Prior to his election, he was a seven-term member of the Texas House of Representatives. During his last term he served as the Republican Whip in the Texas House working to build support for Governor George W. Bush’s legislative agenda. He was reelected to represent the Seventh District in 2002, 2004, and 2006.
The current Seventh District was redrawn during a special session of the Texas Legislature in 2003. The new boundaries include the Texas Medical Center, Rice University, West University, Bellaire, Meyerland, and the traditional core along Memorial Drive north of Westheimer from Shepherd to Highway 6. Barker-Cypress Road is the western boundary north of I-10, and the district includes Jersey Village, large portions of Spring Branch and all of the Villages – Bunker Hill Village, Hedwig Village, Hunters Creek Village, Piney Point Village, Spring Valley, Hilshire Village – along Buffalo Bayou west of the 610 Loop.
Texas District 7 Facts and Figures (courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau)
Detailed Maps of District Seven (courtesy of Texas Legislative Council)
