WeedVoter

Helen Zhou Republican

Texas House, District 137

About this race: South-west Houston. The incumbent coauthored a medical-cannabis bill, raised a point of order against further consideration of SB 3 on the floor, and voted against it at both stages.

Whose record this page shows. The paragraph above is about the race, and part of it describes a different person. Everything after this line on this page is Helen Zhou’s own record and nothing else — including, where it says so, the finding that no record was located. Every record the paragraph above describes is set out candidate by candidate on the Texas House, District 137 race page.

Helen ZhouRepublican

No record compiled yet. Nothing on cannabis — no vote, bill, statement or endorsement — was found in any source we could read. One limit on that search is recorded with it.

What was checked for Helen Zhou, and the limits on it

Checked on 2026-09-18: the member-level rolls of every 2025 cannabis and hemp record vote in the official Texas House and Senate Journals — SB 3 and HB 46 in the regular session, SB 5 in the first called session and SB 6 in the second — including every Yea, Nay, present-not-voting, absent and statement-of-vote list, where this name does not appear because they hold no Texas legislative office; the author, joint-author, coauthor and sponsor tables of every cannabis, hemp, THC and Compassionate Use bill filed in the 87th, 88th and 89th Legislatures and the 2025 called sessions, at the Legislature's own bill-lookup service; and a press sweep including the Spectrum News report on the March 2026 Austin candidate forum on THC policy, which quotes six candidates by name and does not include them.

Also checked, and read in full on 2026-09-18: this candidate's Ballotpedia profile at ballotpedia.org/Helen_Zhou, including any Candidate Connection survey answers published there, which contains no mention of cannabis, marijuana, hemp, THC or CBD.

Their Ballotpedia profile was read in full on 2026-09-20 at ballotpedia.org/Helen_Zhou (14949 characters). It contains no occurrence of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8 or Compassionate Use. When we re-read their Ballotpedia profile on 2026-10-15, it recorded that they had not completed Ballotpedia’s 2026 Candidate Connection survey.

⚠️This card does not tell you whether this candidate held a seat in an earlier Legislature, but the question is now narrower. Read on 2026-10-15, from each chamber’s own journal: the roll of members-elect that the Texas House Journal prints, district by district, on the first day of every regular session from the 75th Legislature (1997) through the 89th (2025), and every senator the Texas Senate Journal names with a district on the first day of every regular session from the 76th (1999) through the 89th.

For the 89th those are journals.house.texas.gov/hjrnl/89r/pdf/89RDAY01FINAL.PDF and journals.senate.texas.gov/SJRNL/89R/HTML/89RSJ01-14-F.HTM and every journal read is listed on this site’s corrections page. No one by this candidate’s name appears in any of them. That is narrower than a negative answer. Those rolls name the members seated as each session opened, and in most years the Senate’s names the senators who were not up for election by surname alone, so a member who sat only in earlier sessions, who arrived at a special election and was never named in full on a later first day, or who served under another name would not be found this way.

If this candidate is one of those, there may be a cannabis voting record this site is missing.

Also checked on 2026-10-05: the Texas Hemp Business Council’s published 2026 candidate questionnaire roster at texashempbusinesscouncil.com/wp-json/thbc/v1/candidate-responses and texashempbusinesscouncil.com/candidate-responses. The council is a hemp industry trade association; it put twenty questions about hemp and THC policy to 221 named candidates for the Texas Legislature and statewide office, this candidate among them, and publishes the answers it receives.

On the date checked the council’s own roster recorded this candidate’s status as "awaiting" and carried no answers from them; 30 of the 221 had answered by that date and this candidate was not one of them. The council states that answers are added as they are completed, so this records only what the roster showed on 2026-10-05.

This card has been corrected. What an earlier version of it said, and what was wrong with it, is published in the corrections log.

No score: this candidate has no recorded vote or bill authorship on a cannabis measure. Silence is not a position, so nothing is inferred from it.

Campaign sites and voter guides checked for Helen Zhou

Pages read in full:

  • helenforstaterep.com/about-us their own site — sections on the page: Community Safety; Job Creation; Economic Growth; Public Safety; Community Development; Transparency; Affordable Housing
  • communityimpact.com/bellaire-meyerland-west-university/election/q-a-meet-the-candidates-for-texas-house-district-137 — sections on the page: a candidate questionnaire published 2026-09-04, on top priorities, district challenges, legislative projects and disaster aid
  • communityimpact.com/bellaire-meyerland-west-university/election/qa-meet-the-republican-candidates-running-for-texas-house-district-137-in-the-march-primary-election — sections on the page: Read 2026-10-15, HTTP 200. Community Impact's candidate Q&A for the March 2026 Republican primary in Texas House District 137, published 2026-01-22. The page lists this candidate by name and prints “Candidate did not respond” against every question, so it carries no answers from them. The page contains no occurrence of cannabis, marijuana, marihuana, hemp, THC, CBD, delta-8 or Compassionate Use.
  • onyourballot.vote411.org/race-detail.do?id=71558371 — sections on the page: The League of Women Voters’ VOTE411 voter guide page for this seat, read in full by us on 2026-10-17 (HTTP 200). It lists 2 candidates, the same field as the November 2026 ballot, this candidate among them as Helen Zhou (Rep). The page prints no election date and no date for any answer. The questions were: What are the two most pressing issues unique to your district, and what specific, measurable actions would you take to address them during your term? / Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation. What steps would you take as a state representative to ensure access to affordable healthcare, including mental health services, for residents who are currently uninsured or underserved in your district? / What training, experience, and characteristics qualify you for this position? / What measures would you support to ensure adequate state funding for public schools and accountability for taxpayer funds used in voucher or education savings account programs? Not one asks about cannabis, hemp or drug policy. ⚠️The Candidate has not answered: the guide shows every question under their name as “Candidate has not yet responded.” This records an unanswered questionnaire, not a silence of their own choosing.

Could not be read, so nothing is concluded from them:

  • www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/endorsements/article/face-gene-wu-republicans-back-helen-zhou-21345882.php — paywalled; no article text was returned
  • ivoterguide.com/candidate/89795/race/32512/election/1471 — returned a page template with no issue or survey content

See the whole Texas House, District 137 race, including every opponent →

Who is paying for this campaign

Campaign finance — Texas Ethics Commission

We could not match a Commission filer number to this name. The Commission’s list of candidates who have appointed a campaign treasurer carried no single row matching both the surname and the given name on the ballot for this seat, so none was guessed at. Helen Zhou may have filed under a different form of their name.

Why there are no figures and no industry breakdown here. Texas does not require a candidate to report a contributor’s employer or occupation — the Commission’s own 2026 guide asks for the amount, the contributor’s name and address, and the date, and that is all. So there is nothing in these filings to group into industries, and we have built no such grouping rather than imply one. Separately, the Commission’s bulk filing archive tells automated readers to stay out of it, and we honour that, so we have read no individual Texas contribution record. Treat the itemised question as unchecked by us, not as checked and found empty.

Search campaign filings at the Texas Ethics Commission (ethics.state.tx.us) → — choose Transaction Type “Contributions” and search by name.

Any grouping of contributors into an industry is weedvoter’s own classification, applied to employer and committee names exactly as filed. The Commission publishes employers and committees; it never publishes industries. OpenSecrets discontinued its public interface in April 2025, so nothing here is an OpenSecrets classification.

Money received is not a position. Everything on this card is money that changed hands. It is not evidence that any contribution influenced any decision, nothing on it is placed beside a roll call, and we make no claim about anyone’s motive. For what Helen Zhou has actually done about cannabis, read the record above on this page — the roll calls, the bills that carry their name, and the date of each one, every entry linked to the document it came from. That is the part of this page built to be judged, and it is the part the score is calculated from. No contribution on this card moves that score by a cent.