Here's a simple question each voter should ask: After 2017, what is the most important issue facing the Houston area?

Anybody who was driven from home by rising floodwaters in August knows the answer. And most important, so should any politician who asks for your vote next year.

The filing deadline for candidates running in the March primaries is 6 p.m. Monday. As the campaigning begins, Houston area voters need to send one very loud message to every candidate on the ballot:

The 2018 Vote is a one-issue election. The issue is flooding.

Our political leadership must respond to Hurricane Harvey by better preparing for the inevitable storms that lie in our future. Voters need to hammer each politician with hard questions about what they're going to do to protect our homes and communities from the next catastrophic flood.

On the federal level, voters should get downright mad at congressional candidates parroting national partisan rhetoric. Instead, they should demand answers about funding for a third reservoir to protect Harris County, about paying for a coastal barrier system to protect the Houston Ship Channel and the Clear Lake area and about reforming the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Flood Insurance Program.

On the state level, any candidate for governor, lieutenant governor or the state legislature who dares talk about potty politics after this disaster needs to get flushed down the drain and replaced by somebody who prioritizes protecting us from floods. We need our state government to help pay for a third reservoir, to establish a regional flood control authority, to find new funding streams for flood mitigation and to work with local officials preparing for future disasters instead of tying their hands with big government mandates imposed out of the state capitol.

On the county level, voters need to demand tougher regulation of development in flood prone areas, restructuring budgets to make flood control a bigger priority and specific plans on how counties should pay for new flood control initiatives. Just as important, incumbents who've served in office for years need to answer some tough questions about why they didn't act earlier to address the problems disastrously highlighted by Harvey.

Abortion, gun rights and immigration shouldn't be the hot button issues in next year's elections. Our homes are in danger, and our political leadership needs to do something about it. Let 2018 become the year voters demand dramatic action on flood control.