Here are the 7 Houston Democrats who want a chance to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. John Culberson

Congressional candidate Jason Westin answers a question as democrats vying to take on congressman John Culberson speak to voters at a Bayou Blue Democrats candidate forum at St. Stephens Episcopal Church Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2018 in Houston. less Congressional candidate Jason Westin answers a question as democrats vying to take on congressman John Culberson speak to voters at a Bayou Blue Democrats candidate forum at St. Stephens Episcopal Church ... more Photo: Michael Ciaglo, Houston Chronicle Photo: Michael Ciaglo, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close Here are the 7 Houston Democrats who want a chance to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. John Culberson 1 / 6 Back to Gallery

WASHINGTON – Democrats gave up their historic grip of Texas' 7th congressional district in 1966, when George H. W. Bush, then a rising star in Harris County GOP politics, was elected as the first-ever Republican to represent Houston.

One of the wealthiest districts in the state, it has remained in Republican hands ever since, with it's current incumbent, John Culberson, in office since 2001.

But something unexpected happened on Donald Trump's march to the White House in the 2016: He lost the upscale district in western Houston and suburban Harris County to Democrat Hillary Clinton, 48.5 percent to 47.1 percent.

The loss was paper-thin – a 1.4-point difference – but it was enough to resurrect Democratic interest at a time of growing political mobilization against Trump.

Photo: Jon Shapley, Staff U. S. Rep. John Culberson speaks with constituents during a...

There are now seven Democrats vying in the March 6 primary. The winner willgo on to the November general election against Culberson, who has no well-known opponent in the GOP primary.

But in a crowded field of mostly first-time candidates, a two-way runoff on May 22 is a near certainty. To avoid it, the winner would have to break the 50 percent threshold – unlikely in a seven-way split.

Only assistant city attorney James Cargas, who has run against Culberson three times, has much of a political profile. The rest are running on records of professional and community service, representing a range of Democratic factions.

Altogether, the Democratic field has raised nearly $3 million for the race – a credible threat, especially considering that Culberson has raised only a third as much by himself. But Houston is an expensive media market and most of the challengers remain unfamiliar to many voters.

Related: Democrats raise more than $2M to challenge Culberson

Analysts say the contest will help define the future of the Texas Democratic Party, which is targeting two other Republican-held districts that Clinton won in the state. The state party also hopes to be part of a post-Trump "blue wave" that wins back control of the House, if not the Senate.

Of course, much depends on who gets the Democratic nod. Come November, Democrats are counting on a candidate who can make it a close contest, a rarity in an age of gerrymandered districts like the Seventh.

"After nearly two decades in Washington," said Cole Leiter of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), "John Culberson is about to see the race of his political life."

Here, in the order of how much money they've raised so far, at the seven contenders:

Photo: Photo Courtesy Of Alex Triantaph Alex Triantaphyllis, candidate for U. S. Representative District 7.

Alex Triantaphyllis

The winner in the Democratic money chase so far is nonprofit executive Alex Triantaphyllis, who is running on his resume in business and community service.

A former Goldman Sachs analyst, Triantaphyllis, who understandably goes by "Alex T," has raised over $255,000 in the fourth quarter of 2017, bringing his total haul to over $925,000.

Outsiders consider Triantaphyllis one of the favorites among national party strategists, who see his "practical progressive" politics as a good fit for a Republican-leaning district that rejected Trump.

"I am the only candidate in the race with both community and business experience," he says. "That's an important contrast with John Culberson, who has not been very engaged in this community."

Triantaphyllis is currently the Director of Immigration and Economic Opportunity at BakerRipley (formerly Neighborhood Centers), a leading community development nonprofit. He started a small business development program there and oversees an immigrant legal services office.

He also founded PAIR – Partnership for the Advancement & Immersion of Refugees – a Houston area educational and mentorship program for young refugees. A graduate of Rice University and Harvard Law School, he has worked in banking and global business consulting.

The son of a fourth-generation Texan mother and a Greek immigrant father, Triantaphyllis was born and raised in Houston, where he boasts he can campaign in English, Spanish or Greek.

He also sees his fundraising haul as a sign of organizational prowess. One political ding against Triantaphyllis: His rivals note that he resides about a half-mile outside the district, though he works there.

"Voters are much more concerned about electing a new member of Congress who has a record of getting results for Houston," he says.

Photo: Photo Courtesy Of Lizzie Pannill Fletcher Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, candidate for U.S. Representative District 7.

Lizzie Pannill Fletcher

After Triantaphyllis, Lizzie Fletcher has proven the most prolific fundraiser in the Democratic primary, raising some $756,556 in 2017.

As a partner in the Houston law firm of Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Alavi & Mensing (AZA), Fletcher is running on her fifth-generation ties to the city and a record of representing clients from "all walks of life."

She also has emphasized her community involvement, including as a long-time volunteer for Planned Parenthood, the women's health network that has been in the forefront in the fight for abortion rights.

That no doubt helped her win an endorsement from Emily's List, an influential part of the Democratic coalition that supports "pro-choice" women candidates. While she's not the only pro-choice woman in the race (the other is Laura Moser), Fletcher regards the Emily's List endorsement as a badge of credibility.

"They get into races and back candidates where they think they can actually win the general election," she says.

She too is taken seriously in Washington, though the DCCC, the Democratic Party's congressional campaign arm, is technically neutral in the primary.

Fletcher's biggest problem has been with organized labor, one the party's mainstays, because of a case her law firm won years ago against a group of predominantly immigrant janitorial workers in Houston who were trying to unionize.

In a letter to the Harris County Democratic Party last month, Zeph Capo, president of the Texas Gulf Coast Area AFL-CIO, said that record should "disqualify" her.

Fletcher, a graduate of William & Mary Law School, responded that she was not involved in the case. In any event, she says, "You can't attribute the ideas or position of a client to their lawyer."

She says she's represented union members and other workers in cases involving discrimination and unemployment benefits. "You're not going to find a better advocate for workers than me," she says.

Photo: Revolution_Messaging/Courtesy Laura Moser, running for U.S. Representative for Texas's 7th...

Laura Moser

Like Triantaphyllis and Fletcher, Laura Moser has shown serious fundraising chops, hauling in $616,643 in 2017, rounding out the top three in the money chase.

Moser, a writer and activist, also comes to the race with close ties to former President Barack Obama. Her husband, filmmaker Arun Chaudhary, worked on Obama's 2008 campaign and became the first official videographer of the White House.

Following the 2016 election, she founded Daily Action, a text-messaging service focusing on liberal causes and opposition to the GOP agenda under Trump. At its peak, she says, the service engaged 300,000 people in direct calls to action.

Moser's long sojourn in Washington during the Obama administration has prompted rivals to question her affinity to Houston. However she was born and raised in the Southside Place area of Houston and, like Fletcher and Triantaphyllis, graduated from St. John's, an elite prep school in the city.

She also can claim a great-grandfather as one of the city's first Orthodox Jewish rabbis. A grandfather on the other side of her family came to Houston in 1942 as a refugee from Nazi Germany.

Educated at Amherst College, she's worked as editor, author, and national journalist with bylines in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Slate, Vogue, the Jewish Daily Forward.

She may be the most media savvy candidate in the race, with her husband's firm running her digital operation. She also grabbed some free media buzz by uncorking a $50,000 Super Bowl ad, which some rivals derided as a stunt.

Related: Houston congressional race in 'toss-up' Culberson district gets a Super Bowl ad

Some analysts believe Moser may be running too far to the left for a district which – though it may favor establishment Republicans like Bush and Mitt Romney over Trump – still skews heavily GOP.

Moser doesn't see it that way. "We have tried something over and over in Texas politics, which is to run to the middle and to the right, and it's not working," she says. "So why not stand firm for the values that we share? I'm progressive, but I don't think that the things I stand for are out of keeping with what the majority of this district believes."

Photo: Anthony Rathbun Jason Westin, candidate for Congress

Dr. Jason Westin

Jason Westin would be a rarity in Congress for the simple reason that he is a scientist and a medical doctor.

An award-winning researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Westin had raised $389,941 by the start of the 2018 election year, the only Democrat outside the top three to hit six figures.

As a scientist, the focus of Westin's campaign so far has been his attack, encapsulated in his TV ad, "Fighting for Facts," against what he regards as the Trump GOP's assault on fact-based science. Case in point: Trump's dismissal of climate change as a Chinese "hoax."

As a doctor, Westin also believes that he is uniquely qualified to carry a potent message on access to health care, a top Democratic issue. For many Democrats that means defending Obama's Affordable Care Act from GOP repeal efforts.

But for Westin, it also means pushing for a "Medicare-for-all" single-payer national health system, a view he shares with Moser and Sanchez.

That does not mean a "radical government takeover of the medical system," he says. "As a cancer doctor, I know that health care is a right, and that denying facts is wrong."

Westin's position has won him an endorsement from 314 Action, a nationally-focused political action committee that backs candidates with backgrounds in the hard sciences, math, engineering or technology. It is sometimes referred to as the "science lobby" or an Emily's List for doctors.

Westin has received a more high profile endorsement from the Blue America PAC, founded by music producer and liberal provocateur Howie Klein, who went negative in a recent blog post calling Triantaphyllis "another DCCC talking point robot."

Westin disavows any connection to Klein's post, which some see as the first direct attack of the primary.

But he's also scored what might be the first celebrity endorsement: Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker in Star Wars (and the veteran of a Twitter war with Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz over net neutrality) recently tweeted his support for Westin with the hashtag, #MayTheFactsBeWithYou.

Photo: Elizabeth Pudwill James Cargas is a candidate for U.S. Representative for TexasÂ...

James Cargas

Assistant City Attorney James Cargas, in his fourth bid to unseat Culberson, fancies himself a Democratic pioneer in the Seventh District – a step ahead of the pack.

"Don't skate where the puck is now," he says, paraphrasing hockey legend Wayne Gretzky. "Skate where it's going to be."

Unlike his Democratic rivals, Cargas has an electoral record. He lost with 43.8 percent of the vote in 2016 – his last try – nearly 5 points to the south of where Clinton ended up in the district.

What this shows is a certain amount of Republican ticket splitting for Clinton and Culberson – meaning that some die-hard GOP voters simply couldn't bring themselves to vote for Trump.

Cargas, a life-long Democrat who has held staff jobs in Congress and in the Clinton White House, believes that should dispel the notion that somehow the district has veered seismically left.

"They voted against Donald Trump," Cargas says. "They didn't vote for Hillary."

What that calls for, he argues, is his own brand of "Texas Democrat," meaning "socially progressive and fiscally responsible."

The Republicans who predominate in the district's wealthier precincts skew more Country Club Republican than tea party libertarian. "George Herbert Walker Bush would be one of my constituents," Cargas says.

Even among Democrats, Clinton easily bested Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries, a sign of the district's moderate leanings.

But with Trump in the White House, Cargas believes that the chances of finally flipping the district have increased. He's counting on more Democrats to vote – as well as others who normally sit out elections.

"This year will be a blue wave," he says. "Whether it will be a blue tsunami or a little blue wave, we don't know."

Like Triantaphyllis, Cargas lives slightly outside the district, a fact he attributes to a 2011 gerrymander.

Either way, by Cargas' calculation he has a head start over the rest of the Democratic pack. He looks at the 39 percent of the vote that went to Democrats in down-ballot races in 2016, the sort of races that are generally decided by straight-ticket voting.

But Cargas got nearly 44 percent. His conclusion: "I'm starting at 44 percent, and the rest of them are starting at 39 percent."

Photo: Photo Courtesy Of Joshua Butler Joshua A. Butler, candidate for U.S. Representative District 7....

Joshua Butler

Joshua Butler recently gave up his position as an administrator at the Texas Medical Center to run full time for Congress.

"I wanted to give it the maximum," he says.

His top issue is health care, having experienced personal and family health challenges, including his own hospitalization for food poisoning in 2016, which exposed him to the gaps in medical care and coverage.

"All it took was a little bit of care," he recalls of his experience, where he felt overlooked in the emergency room. "How many people get overlooked every day? "I knew at that point that I needed to do more to improve access to health care," he continues. "I just realized I needed to step up and make a difference in my community."

He is campaigning on protecting and strengthening the Affordable Care Act, which he acknowledges is not "perfect," but which has opened up health care to millions of Americans.

He's a graduate of the University of Alabama, where he ran track, and also attended Samford University, where he became the first African-American student in the school's 162-year history to be elected Freshman Class President.

He started his professional career with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama. He later joined Eli Lilly and Company as a pharmaceutical sales representative. He was laid off during the financial crisis of 2008, but found work afterwards with the American Heart Association as a director of youth market development.

He moved to Houston in 2012 to work for the University of Houston as a state employee. In 2015 he joined the Texas Medical Center's affiliated University of Texas' Health Science Center.

Having raised a little less than $50,000 in campaign cash through the end of 2017, Butler says he's emphasizing door-knocking, literature drops, and grassroots organizing. Though he has not had television ads like some of his better-funded Democratic rivals, Butler believes he can make up for it with hard work and personality.

"We're just in the primary now," he says. "It's not the general, a lot can still happen."

Photo: Photo Courtesy Of Ivan Sanchez Ivan Sanchez, candidate for U.S. Representatives District 7.

Ivan Sanchez

Ivan Sanchez, at 30, is the latest and the youngest entrant in the Democratic primary.

Like Butler, he quit his job to run for Congress full time – giving up a position as a senior liaison to 18th District Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.

More than any other candidate in the race, Sanchez is running on his biography – in his case as a child in an immigrant family fleeing from the violence of drug-torn Colombia in the 1990s.

"I'm a 'Dreamer' with papers," he says.

He admits he took his new life for granted and became a "disoriented teenager" making poor marks in school.

The death of his mother, a lawyer, from cancer, helped awaken him, putting him on a course to Houston Community College and then the University of Houston-Downtown, where he was student body president.

He has since become a dedicated community activist and organizer, serving as a precinct chair for the Harris County Democratic Party. He was appointed by Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner to serve in the Mayors Hispanic Advisory Board, making him one of its youngest members. He also serves on the boards of Target Hunger, Alianza Latina, the UHD Executive Alumni board.

His entrepreneurial side includes founding the Houston Millennials, an education non-profit with over 3,000 members that promotes professional opportunities for "ambitious millennials" in positions of "influence, leadership, and economic power."

Sanchez says his story of adversity has helped fuel "a desire to help others." Starting his campaign in December, long after the rest of the Democratic pack, Sanchez has been able to raise only about $18,000.

While he's not on TV, he's heavy on events in the minority communities, particularly the 32 percent of the district that identifies as Hispanic.

"I want to give Latinos a voice," he says, lamenting that 29th Congressional District on the eastern side of the city, which was drawn to be a Hispanic district, does not have a Hispanic representative.

Latinos, he says, are the "sleeping giant" of Texas politics - and Trump has served as an alarm clock. "Thank you President Trump for waking us up," he says, "now we just have to get out and vote."

Related: Record number of candidates running for Congress in Houston area