Sylvester Turner, Congressman and Former Houston Mayor, Dies at 70

Sylvester Turner, a former mayor of Houston who was sworn in as a U.S. representative in January, died on Wednesday in Washington. He was 70 and had been in attendance at the president’s speech on Capitol Hill.

His press secretary, Gregory Carter, said Mr. Turner had been taken to a hospital after the speech and then returned home, where he died. He said a cause had not been determined.

Mr. Turner, a Democrat, was a veteran of Texas politics. He served in the State Legislature from 1989 to 2016, when he became mayor of Houston. He served two terms before leaving office in January 2024.

A few months later, he entered a special election to fill the congressional seat left empty by the death of Representative Sheila Jackson Lee; he then withdrew from the primary in favor of Ms. Lee’s daughter, Erica Lee Carter. Ms. Carter won that race and endorsed Mr. Turner in the November regular election.

He was sworn into office on Jan. 3.

Mr. Turner was born on Sept. 27, 1954, in Houston. His father was a painter, and his mother was a housekeeper at a hotel.

He graduated as valedictorian from his high school, then received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Houston in 1977 and a law degree from Harvard in 1980.

He returned to Houston to work as a trial lawyer, first for an established firm and then for his own firm, Barnes & Turner, which focused on commercial law and personal injury litigation.

His marriage to Cheryl Turner ended in divorce. Survivors include their daughter, Ashley Turner-Captain.

As a liberal Democrat in the increasingly conservative Texas State Legislature of the 1990s and 2000s, Mr. Turner earned a reputation for fiery, partisan speeches. But he also had the ability to work across the aisle to advance issues he cared about, like health care for low-income Houstonians.

He ran for mayor of Houston in 1991 and 2003, both times unsuccessfully. His 1991 loss was close, and he blamed the outcome on what he called a libelous news report linking him to an insurance scam.

In 1996, he successfully sued the reporter and the television station that broadcast the report. But the state Supreme Court overturned the jury award, saying that Mr. Turner had failed to prove malicious intent.

He ran for mayor again in 2015, and this time he won, thanks in part to an endorsement from President Barack Obama.

As mayor, he continued his efforts to expand health care access in Houston, and he won praise for cleaning up the city budget. But he was criticized for his decision in 2017 not to order a general evacuation of the city in the face of Hurricane Harvey, a Category 4 storm that killed some 60 people.

Having been in Congress for only two months, Mr. Turner did not have much time to establish a presence or a legislative record. His first bill, introduced last month, was to provide on-the-job cybersecurity training in federal offices.

Ahead of the president’s speech, Mr. Turner spoke to reporters with his guest the evening, Angela Hernandez, a Houston mother who relies on Medicaid to care for her child, who has special needs.

“My message to the current administration for tonight’s State of the Union: ‘Don’t mess with Medicaid,’” he wrote on his Instagram account.