In Texas, Allred targets Cruz on Cancun and January 6

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Colin Allred has full football stadium on his every word.

It’s a Friday night under the lights here in Houston and the energetic crowd is taking a break from what feels like a giant block party to hear from an array of healthcare providers, families who have used those doctors and nurses for abortions. Coming soon, Willie Nelson, Beyoncéand Kamala Harris (technically the headliner) will take turns on stage. But for those ten minutes, the stadium is focused on Allred, a former NFL linebacker who has become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and is fighting to unseat Senator Senator. Ted Cruz, and it’s like watching a rock star in his prime – because this might be the pinnacle of Allred’s political career.

“Everything is bigger in Texas. But Ted Cruz is too small for Texas,” Allred says to deafening cheers.

That talent, right here, is why the Democrats did that found I hope maybe next week they can deny Cruz a third term. To be clear, Texas is a challenge for the party. Texans haven’t elected a Democrat to statewide office in 30 years. But Allred, a third-term House member from Dallas, has surpassed Cruz in fundraising and captured the excitement of both Texas Democrats and outside groups in a clip that was unthinkable even six months ago. The FiveThirtyEight polling average is Cruz forward by just three points, within the margin of error – but no projection of the quantitative data there has ever shown Allred moving forward.

Still, Republicans are clearly nervous about Texas. In a sign of how seriously they take Allred’s prospects, Trump sent his plane to Austin on Friday, the same day. fetched Beyoncé’s public support. There was a hat in Cruz’s hand, grinning through gritted teeth, a man who was once baseless accused Cruz’s father played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and discredited the appearance of his wife.

“I couldn’t ask for a better summary of this campaign than Allred and Harris arm in arm as President Trump and I stand together,” Cruz said at that private airport. “That’s the clear choice Texans have, that’s the clear choice Americans have.”

Along with Trump’s jackets, Cruz is also counting on strong support from rural parts of Texas, which remain deep red and more comfortable than the state’s fast-growing urban areas, with the strict restrictions on abortion that the Harris campaign and Beyoncé rallied for loved. highlight. Moreover, they are Cruz’s allies run an advertisement stating that Allred wants transgender student athletes to compete in girls’ sports, giving them an unfair advantage. (Fact checkers have done that debunked a school district in Oregon has this asked Cruz to stop running ads featuring cisgender student athletes there, and Allred is too run (He distances himself from the accusations in his own ad.) Cruz himself is also touring the state as if he were running his first campaign, though he certainly wishes he could get another clean slate.

Since entering the Senate with a 16-point victory after the 2012 elections, Cruz has been something of his own in the Senate. A proud irritant to Republican leader Mitch McConnell and the national party, he has made a number of missteps that have misinterpreted the modern Republican Party. In his 2016 bid for the White House, he was the last person to stand between Trump and his first presidential nomination. His initial refusal to bend the knee – even try for a last-minute coup at the Republican convention in Cleveland with a protest speech from the podium – put him in the MAGA column for disloyalty. (A few weeks later, he endorsed Trump.)

Cruz was ultimately among those who did admitted Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. That campaign culminated on January 6, 2021, when a mob stormed the Capitol.

“I know many of you probably know where you were on January 6th. I know where I was. I was on the House floor doing my job,” Allred said. “I texted my wife Aly, who was seven months pregnant with our son Cameron, ‘Whatever happens, I love you.’ Because when you’re the only former NFL linebacker in the room and there’s a crowd at the door, everyone says: What are you going to do, Colin?”

After telling the rapt audience that he was taking off his suit jacket and letting muscle memory come into play if the barricaded doors were to break down, Allred delivered the blow: “Ted Cruz was hiding in a supply closet. That’s okay, that’s okay. I don’t want him to get hurt by the mafia. The point is, there shouldn’t have been a gang.”

Then there’s Cancun, Cruz’s ultimate misstep. When a freak winter storm left millions of Texans were without utilities for days, killing dozens of people, Cruz and his family booked tickets to Mexico. It was a move that hasn’t faded in the minds of many Texans, and Allred knows it.

“Can you imagine that you have the privilege and responsibility of representing our great state and a crisis hits our state, do you think I have to go to the Ritz Carlton in Cancun? You wouldn’t do it. If you did and run for re-election, you will lose your job.” Allred said at the campaign rally, drawing chants of “Lose Your Job” from the crowd.

Not that the crowd needed much reminder.

“There are plenty of people who are tired of Cancun Cruz,” said Michael Juge, a 51-year-old government intelligence analyst. Juge, who calls Houston home, cited Cruz’s move south before Allred took the stage, pointing to the slow gains Democrats have made in Texas in recent cycles. “The big metros aren’t like the rest of the state,” he says, standing along the security fence at the Harris-Beyoncé-Allred party on Friday night.

Or, as 44-year-old real estate agent Monica Vega, wearing a Harris-Walz camouflage hat, only half-joked: “We don’t all ride horses. We don’t all live in the sticks.”

Yet this is Texas.

“I am optimistic about Colin Allred. His chances are legitimate,” says Juge. “If he can win this, Texas will be the swing state for 2028.”

Many made similar predictions six years ago when Beto O’Rourke caught fire, only to lose to Cruz by three points. Allred has leveraged that same anti-Cruz sentiment well enough to raise the kind of money needed to run a competitive race. This is no small feat, especially in Texas.

“We’re three times the size of Michigan, okay? We have more people in this city than in all of Arizona, right? Allred tells me the morning after his meeting. “This is an incredibly expensive state. I don’t think people understand the size of Texas.

This Saturday morning we are in an office complex not far from Rice University. About three dozen volunteers have gathered in the lobby to listen to Lizzie Fletcher, a representative from Allred and Houston, whose office is the starting point for these local activists to knock on doors for the next two hours. Their targets are mainly people who they think would vote for Democrats if they just showed up to vote, so that they get a little boost from their neighbors to do their part in a state that is constantly a white whale for liberals. is.

“The assumption is that it will happen someday, but it will take work,” Fletcher says as she stands on the sidewalk in front of her outpost here. Yet you can’t help but shake the feeling that this has been the case for a long time. ‘That’s what you see with Colin Allred. He worked very hard and did everything he had to do to win. And so our job is to make sure that we support him and that we get out of it.”

This operation – like the previous ones in Texas – is very impressive, both because of its serious nature and because of the political machinery behind it. But it also creeps into strong headwinds. Trump is well ahead of Harris in the state, but Allred argues that all she really needs is for voters in Texas’ urban areas to turn out in stronger numbers than in the past.

“We can win the election here,” Allred tells the crowd about to storm the doors. ‘I’m not kidding. Not just Harris County, but the Houston metro can win this election on its own.”

It is a tough task and a narrow path, but not impossible. That’s why Democrats are sweeping into the state and Cruz is campaigning like he’s never done before, even if that means leaning on the MAGA movement as a buffer. And that’s why Democrats think Texas could, improbably, be the reason they keep the Senate.

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