Texas Dem House Candidate Hasn’t Lived in Texas for Years

A Texas Democratic House candidate voted as recently as last year using her parents' Dallas address while she was living and working in California.

Helane "Lulu" Sawsan Seikaly, who is challenging Republican incumbent Van Taylor in Texas's Third Congressional District, worked in California until at least last year as an attorney for a Sacramento-based law firm and as a professor at the University of California Davis. Using an address linked to her parents, however, Seikaly voted in Texas in both 2016 and 2018, public records show.

A couple of weeks after filing to run for the House last December, Seikaly switched her registration from Dallas to Collin County, Texas.

Seikaly, who is casting herself as somebody who "understands the challenges facing North Texans," has downplayed her recent residency in California. She makes no mention of it on her campaign website. But her work history, including for a law firm that boasts "deep roots in California," raises questions as to why she continued to vote in Texas rather than in the Golden State, and the perception that Seikaly returned to Texas only to launch a congressional bid could prove a stumbling block on the campaign trail.

Asked to describe her "length of residency in Texas" in a Dallas Morning News questionnaire earlier this year, Seikaly did not mention that she lived and worked in California until recently.

"My parents came to North Texas in the late 80s when I was a year old. It's been home ever since," she wrote in the questionnaire.

Seikaly was admitted into the California bar on June 2, 2014, according to the association's website, and is still listed as an active attorney in the state. She is also a member of Phi Delta Phi, an international legal society, and her membership record with the organization lists her as a resident of Roseville, Calif.

Seikaly worked as an employment lawyer at the Sacramento-based Churchwell White LLP from January 2015 to March 2020, according to her LinkedIn page. Churchwell White describes itself as "a law firm with deep roots in California."