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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL player who broke with his party over President Joe Biden’s handling of the U.S.-Mexico border, won his Senate primary Tuesday. to fuel an underdog campaign to unseat the Republican senator. Ted Cruz.
Allred fended off his biggest Democratic rival, state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who became an outspoken voice for stricter gun laws after the Uvalde school shooting and courted the party’s left wing.
“We have no reason to be ashamed of our senator,” Allred said in a speech to supporters. “We can get a new one and that’s what this is all about.”
No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas in 30 years, the longest losing streak of its kind in the U.S. Despite that, Democrats believe Texas and Florida are their best chances for upsets in November as they try preserve a slim 51-49 lead. in the Senate. That majority includes West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who is not seeking re-election and whose seat will likely be Republican.
Cruz, who faced no major opponent in the primary, officially secured the GOP nomination. He has raised more than $46 million in his bid to secure a third six-year term.
“I look forward to continuing to meet Texans in every corner of the state as we work together to ensure we keep Texas, Texas,” Cruz said in a statement.
Allred, 40, has unseated a Republican incumbent before, taking advantage of demographic shifts in a U.S. House district in Dallas held for more than two decades by former Republican Rep. Pete Sessions to win his seat in Congress in 2018. That same year, Cruz narrowly defeated Beto O’Rourke for re-election by less than 3 percentage points. It was the closest Democrats have come in decades to winning a statewide seat and came during a midterm election that ended up being a strong year for Democrats nationally.
Texas Democrats have struggled to regain that momentum ever since. O’Rourke lost by double digits when he challenged Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in 2022.
“Things are changing in the state. It takes a long time,” said Jared Hockeman, chairman of the Democratic Party in Cameron County, on the U.S.-Mexico border. “We recognize it.”
Allred needed at least 50% of the primary vote to avoid a runoff. When The Associated Press called the race, more than two-thirds of the expected votes had been reported. Most of the votes left to be counted were in urban areas, particularly Austin and Houston, the places where Allred was doing best. In particular, Allred was winning about four-fifths of the vote in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which had reported the most votes for him.
During his campaign, Allred emphasized his background as the son of a single mother who earned a football scholarship to Baylor University, played in the NFL and worked for the Obama administration before being elected to Congress.
At Tuesday’s watch party, Allred promised to work to protect abortion access so that “people like Ted Cruz can’t force women to flee their own state to get the health care they need.”
Allred, who would become Texas’ first black senator if elected, has raised more than $21 million since the race began. That’s significantly more than his primary rivals, whom the civil rights lawyer largely ignored during the primaries as he kept his attacks focused on Cruz.
It is the first time Cruz has appeared on the ballot since his 2021 trip to Mexico during a deadly winter storm that left hundreds of thousands of Texans without power and wreaked havoc on the state’s power grid and utilities. Cruz later said the family vacation was “obviously a mistake.” Democrats, including Allred, attacked Cruz for it.
Allred made headlines in January when he was among 14 House Democrats who backed a Republican resolution in Congress criticizing President Joe Biden’s handling of the border. Gutiérrez criticized Allred for the vote, accusing him of siding “with the Republican extremists.” Cruz spokeswoman Macarena Martínez called the vote a “false attempt to take a stand on the border.”
Allred said he did not agree with all of the resolution’s language, but said he wanted to see more urgency at the federal level when it comes to the border.
“To me, it was about sending a signal that what we’ve been doing is not working,” Allred said in an interview last week during early voting in Texas. “We have to change something.”
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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