EXCLUSIVE
UPDATE, March 21, 2025:
A D.C.-based tech company is suing Isaiah Martin for alleged unpaid services during his previous bid, Chron reported. According to the news outlet, the lawsuit accuses Martin and his congressional campaign of breaching a contract with Grassroots Analytics, a firm that helps candidates and nonprofits fundraise, for failing to pay for assistance listed in the contract and invoices.
Chron reported that the company accused Martin of using the campaign “to his own benefit” since after his first bid for Congress.
In a statement, Martin’s campaign told The Barbed Wire that the “lawsuit fails to mention that they previously breached the contract with the campaign by failing to deliver the agreed upon services, as well as by prematurely terminating the contract without proper notice to switch sides in the race to work with another candidate in the same race.”
PREVIOUS STORY:
A few years ago, Isaiah Martin’s mentor, the late U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, told him to start posting videos on social media. That would be the future of politics, she advised. At first he didn’t think it’d go anywhere. But he was consistent, and he shared daily, unapologetic takes, mainly explaining Democratic stances on political issues.
Soon, he was in the fray.
“I would go into what was called MAGA TikTok lives,” he told The Barbed Wire. “You would have right-wing Republican creators that oftentimes would have debates 8-1 stacked up against me.”
“And I would go and cook them all.”
In excerpts of some of those live debates on his page, Martin beats back at disinformation. He denounces claims, like that cutting the corporate tax rate isn’t a boon for billionaires (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found research that President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut boosted executives’ earnings but not workers below the 90th percentile); that President Joe Biden was responsible for increasing the national debt (as ProPublica found, Trump heralded an explosive rise in debt in his first term); and that Biden tanked the economy (the opposite is true, as The Guardian reported.)
Martin’s aim, he said, isn’t so much about converting Trump supporters as answering “those questions that they might not have heard a Democrat answer before.”
“I don’t believe that, in this moment, we can be scared,” Martin said. “I think we need to be very bold about answering every question.”
His resume is one you’d expect from a 26-year-old — he interned and volunteered for Jackson Lee; briefly ran for a Houston City Council seat; has worked as a consultant; served as a student activist on issues like vaccination, rape kits, and voter outreach; and has, of course, amassed a following on TikTok. Now, he has 275,000 followers and roughly 20,000 to 30,000 views per video. But earlier this month, Martin posted that he was taking a break from live videos after the death of his congressmember, Sylvester Turner, who also served as mayor of Houston.
“I really want to take some time to sit back and think about things and figure out what’s next,” he said into his phone.
In that stillness, the answer came: He decided to pick up the torch.
In an exclusive interview with The Barbed Wire, Martin said he’s running for Texas’ 18th Congressional District, which covers much of the city of Houston and surrounding areas, and is where he grew up.
Texas’ 18th has had a tumultuous eight months.
Jackson Lee represented the district from 1995 until her death in July of pancreatic cancer. She was succeeded briefly by her daughter, Erica Lee Carter, who completed Jackson Lee’s final term in office, and then by Turner, who had previously served as mayor of Houston after decades in the Texas House of Representatives. Turner also died after being treated for bone cancer.
The successive losses mean the 18th District will have a fourth representative in less than a year, Martin or otherwise. Although Gov. Greg Abbott has yet to announce the date of a special election, speculation has already begun over who will carry on the legacy of the political heavy-weights who have long-served Houston’s residents.
It’s a tall order.
In 1972, in that same seat, the late Rep. Barbara Jordan became the first Black woman elected to Congress from the South. Anti-poverty activist Mikey Leland also held the position and was succeeded by his friend Craig Washington, until Washington was handily defeated in 1994 by Jackson Lee.
In 2023, Martin ran to take over Jackson Lee’s district seat as she vied to become mayor of Houston. After her loss to (former state senator and current mayor) John Whitmire, Jackson Lee decided to try again for another U.S. House term, and Martin dropped out to support her. Afterwards, he said, he didn’t sit idly.
“I went to New York to go and help Congressman Tom Sazi, who’s now elected to Congress. I traveled to places like Oregon to elect Janelle Bynum, traveled to places like Alabama to go and elect people like Shomari Figures, who is right now inside of the United States Congress,” he said. “I’ve been around the country. I’ve campaigned for Democrats up and down the ballot and for Vice President Kamala Harris.”
Of course, though some of those were wins, others were glaring losses.
Now that Martin is himself running, he’ll face a challenge from candidates with both more experience and more name-recognition.
Christian Menefee, the county attorney for Harris County, also filed paperwork to run for the 18th congressional district on Saturday. As lawyer for the largest county in the state, 37-year-old Menefee is an immediate frontrunner. He’s previously sparred with Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton over the Republicans’ claims questioning the legitimacy of the 2020 election, over rights for transgender Texans, and over a program to provide financial assistance to low income families.
Martin is offering a somewhat novel approach by hoping to turn social media views into votes.
He’s decades younger than his would-be predecessors (Jackson Lee was “a grandmother-like figure for me,” Martin said) and a member of a generation that expects something different from its politicians.
“Gen Z has really shown that we’re not afraid of very much, and we’re not people that are gonna play by the rules of the last hundred or so years,” Martin said, “I’m gonna do things a lot differently.”
“I believe that that’s the leadership that the people of this country really wanna see,” he added. “They want leadership that is not afraid. They do not want a Democratic Party that’s afraid of its shadow.”
In an interview, Martin was quick to bring up the latest fracas on Capitol Hill. Last week, Congress approved a stop-gap measure to fund the federal government and avert a looming shutdown. House Democrats rallied against the measure, arguing that it slashed funds in a way that would allow the Trump administration to eliminate longstanding programs. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was one of 10 Senate Democrats who voted to advance the bill Friday, securing a 62-38 vote. Though Schumer ultimately voted against it on final passage, he’s facing intense backlash from the bulk of his party.
Martin was frank: The measure was terrible.
“It defunded care for veterans, it defunded care for storm recovery. It did a lot of things that hurt people,” he said. “When you kowtow to Donald Trump in a degree that we did and effectively give up all of our leverage, it made no sense.”
Martin sees raising awareness around the impact of legislation and the Trump administration’s agenda as an important part of the legislative process — another on-brand Gen Z perspective. He feels politicians should be talking more about stories like that of the Rio Grande City family that was arrested, and later deported, while on their way to Houston to see medical specialists for their 10-year-old daughter, an American citizen. She was seeking treatment for brain cancer.
“One of the first things that I believe in is not being a quiet leader, right? So I’m gonna be one of the first ones to call stuff out like that, to go and amplify these stories, to talk about why this is important,” he said.
Martin has plans for specific legislation as well. The Dignity Act, co-introduced by Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas District 16, includes measures to address border security as well as grant legal status to undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S. and legal pathways for economic migrants.
“I think it’s a very strong piece of legislation that really needs to be talked about more, and getting across the finish line. I certainly want to work with people like Congressmember Escobar,” he said.
But, as The Intercept pointed out when he announced his candidacy (for the first time) in 2023, Martin may be out of step with other Gen Z voters — at least on the topic of Gaza. Martin said he supports Israel’s right to defend itself; many of his peers condemn the country’s ongoing military attacks in Palestine. Still, Martin is adamantly opposed to Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. should take ownership of Gaza and redevelop it into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
“He wants to use this so he can commercialize and use this for his own accord,” he said. “I don’t think that we should sit by as this guy is trying to be a mad man and waste trillions of dollars of our taxpayer money in this conflict.”
Whether he finds the right note on every policy platform, or garners enough momentum to overcome more seasoned candidates, Martin hopes to establish himself as part of Houston’s new political guard.
“I built a reputation for not being afraid,” he said, “and I think that’s really essential in today’s Democratic Party.”