According to The Associated Press, Representative Christian Menefee defeated Representative Al Green on Tuesday in a Texas showdown that represents the generational conflict affecting the Democratic Party across the country.
Mr. Menefee, 38, defeated 11-term incumbent Mr. Green, 78, in a new Houston district that Republicans redrawn last year, compressing two Democratic-held districts into one as they sought to increase Republican seats in the state.
Mr. Green becomes the first sitting Democrat to lose the primary in 2026. A series of other generational challenges are set to emerge in the coming weeks and months, including next week in California.
Mr. Menefee first won a special election in February to fill the congressional vacancy. She immediately continued campaigning to remain in Congress, putting her on a collision course with Mr. Greene, an outspoken progressive who is known for heckling President Trump during his speeches before Congress.
Republican mapmakers shifted Mr. Green’s Ninth District from south of Houston to the city’s suburbs, making it solidly Republican. He chose to run for re-election in the new Texas 18th, which Mr. Menefee had begun representing only a few months earlier and which overlapped with some of his old seats.
The race pitted two black progressives against each other. Even though he had just arrived in Washington, Mr. Menefee, who previously served as Harris County attorney, received the endorsement of the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC.
The biggest spender in the race by far was a super PAC tied to the crypto industry, which invested more than $5.7 million in the race, partly to make an example of Mr. Greene, who is a critic of the industry and sits on the powerful House Financial Services Committee.
In a speech on the floor of the house In May, Mr Green blasted the industry and called those in his party who sided with it “cryptocrats”.
“I am emerging as a free, fearless Democrat, unbought by crypto cash,” he declared in the speech.
Mr. Menefee initially led Mr. Green in the first round of voting in March, but because neither had 50 percent, the race ended.
The 18th District boasts a proud legacy of prominent black representatives, including Mickey Leland and Barbara Jordan. In the two years before Mr. Menefee’s election, two of the previous occupants of the seat, aged 70, died in office.
