Senate Race Tests Texas’ Purple Drift
PLANO, Texas—In the suburbs north of Dallas, as in most of America, everyone has an opinion on Ted Cruz.
“He’s a man of integrity and intelligence,” 86-year-old Plano resident James Guthrie said of the junior GOP senator from Texas.
Local tech worker Cory Lewis, 40, had the opposite reaction. “I would vote for anything over Ted Cruz—a rock or a potato,” Lewis said. “He’s a terrible person.”
This year, amid a re-election race Republicans consider too close for comfort, the fiery Cruz is trying to move past his reputation for being unlikable and convince voters he is a substantive statesman. Democrats have poured money into the coffers of Cruz’s challenger, Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL football player and civil-rights attorney.
Cruz has been a household name since running for president in 2016. In Texas, he is known to fans for his staunchly conservative bona fides and to detractors for fleeing to Cancún, Mexico, during a 2021 freeze that crippled the state. In Washington, he has long had a mixed reputation with colleagues. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) once joked at a dinner with journalists: “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
The race won’t just turn on Cruz’s popularity. It is also the latest test of whether Texas is becoming a purple state or still leans red. Recent polls from Marist College and the New York Times/Siena College found Cruz leading Allred among likely voters by 5 points and 4 points, respectively. Both surveys showed Donald Trump leading Kamala Harris in the presidential race in the state by 7 points.
Austin-based Republican strategist Matt Mackowiak has been raising alarms about the race being unacceptably close. He said Cruz is consistently running behind Trump, who won Texas by less than six points in 2020. If this year’s margin is two or three points tighter, Cruz could lose, Mackowiak said.
Still, Mackowiak doubts that will happen. He said appealing to crossover voters is a challenge for Allred. “Who are these voters who are Trump-Allred voters?” he asked. “What does that person even look like?”
Allred, who ranked in the top half of House members for bipartisanship and flipped a GOP district in 2018, has built a political career on moderate pragmatism. He has tangled with President Biden on border issues and refrained from linking himself much to Harris.
The matchup comes six years after former Rep. Beto O’Rourke came within three points of beating Cruz, indicating Texas is potentially competitive. O’Rourke thrilled Democrats as he rallied supporters in all 254 counties, livestreamed his every move and appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair. (O’Rourke lost his 2022 race for governor by 11 points.)
Allred has been running what might be considered the opposite of an O’Rourke campaign. He has focused on TV ads over rallies, has been less prominent in the media and made many of his in-person events small gatherings centered on professional or industry groups. The softspoken former athlete elicits little excitement and mostly talks about his reputation as a centrist. At times, some fellow Democrats have questioned whether he is trying hard enough.
Allred has eclipsed Cruz in fundraising, in the past three months adding more than $30 million to the $38 million he had earlier raised. Cruz has reported a cumulative $47 million.
The race’s competitiveness should be no shock, said University of Houston political-science professor Brandon Rottinghaus, who noted that Texas is becoming younger and more urban, factors more favorable to Democrats. Cruz, whose approval rating has never gotten above 50%, is an obvious target. Allred’s strong fundraising advantage allowed him to define himself to voters early with expensive statewide TV ads.
Cruz has sought to portray himself as bipartisan, taking the lead on widely supported efforts such as continued funding of the Federal Aviation Administration and speaking often of bills he has passed. Trying to rebrand midcycle, as Rottinghaus said Cruz is seeming to do, is a challenge. “He’s trying to resaddle his horse while he’s riding it,” he said.
Adelfa Reyna, a retired educator and Democratic volunteer in San Antonio, said she feels good about most of the party’s candidates but uncomfortable with Allred’s approach, which she believes isn’t focused on grassroots voters. Still, she and others will vote for him because of what she called a lack of respect for Cruz, citing his denigration of immigrants while he himself is the Canadian-born son of a Cuban refugee.
Cruz’s effort to burnish a more bipartisan brand is a tall order for a senator long known for right-wing flame-throwing and legislative obstruction. During the past two-year Congress, Cruz was the fourthmost- partisan member of the Senate, according to the Lugar Center, a nonprofit that compiles data on how often officials work across parties.
Most often, Cruz serves up red meat for his base. As he recently rallied supporters at a Tex-Mex restaurant north of Dallas, the crowd of nearly 800 roared as the two-term Republican used Democrats as his punchlines in jabs about inflation and border security and transgender issues.
Allred’s campaign has heavily pushed messaging about the loss of abortion rights in Texas, after the overturn of Roe v. Wade and passage of one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans. Cruz celebrated both the Supreme Court decision and the state law, having previously said he opposes abortion exceptions for rape or incest. On the trail, he has generally refused to discuss abortion, saying only that it is a matter for the state legislature and governor.
