U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz declares victory over Democrat Colin Allred

(Texas Tribune) - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz declared victory over U.S. Rep. Colin Allred on Tuesday, defying another spirited and well-funded effort to turn Texas blue and preserving his status as a leading conservative voice in American politics.

"This decisive victory should shake the Democrat establishment to its core," he said in a speech to his supporter in Houston.

After his close scare against then-U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke in 2018, Cruz vowed to enter this election cycle better prepared and more aggressive, determined to avoid the ignominious fate of becoming the first Texas Republican to lose statewide since 1994.

Cruz's victory once again dashes Democrats' dream of breaking their decades-long drought in Texas statewide elections. But it was not without a serious challenge: Both candidates raised north of $80 million and attracted millions more from outside groups eager to sway a contest that carried potential to decide control of the U.S. Senate.

Allred, a former NFL linebacker and civil rights lawyer from Dallas, repeatedly broke fundraising records in his campaign, raising more than $80 million by mid-October. He blanketed the state with ads introducing himself as a more bipartisan alternative to Cruz. Meanwhile, it was Cruz's first election since the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade and Cruz's effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, giving Democrats hope that he would be vulnerable this year.

Like in 2018, polls in the lead up to Election Day remained close. Allred was repeatedly polling within single digits behind Cruz, with one September poll showing him one point ahead. The Allred campaign revealed internal polling just days before Election Day showing the two tied.

In the end, Allred couldn't overcome Vice President Kamala Harris' deficit to Republican nominee Donald Trump atop the ballot in Texas. Though Allred kept his distance from his party's presidential nominee, Cruz tied the two together at seemingly every turn, telling audiences that "Colin Allred is Kamala Harris."

Late in the campaign, Cruz and his allied PACs launched a barrage of ads accusing Allred of supporting legislation that would allow men to use women's restrooms and boys to play in girls' sports — including a spot that showed an adult male football player wearing an Allred jersey tackling a young girl, which Cruz highlighted as his "favorite ad of the cycle."

Democrats and LGBTQ+ advocacy groups criticized the attacks as peddling dangerous and false narratives about transgender youth, and Allred rebutted with his own ad accusing Cruz of mischaracterizing his stance. But Cruz — and Republicans who ran similar ads around the country — saw the anti-transgender ads as effective, particularly among the moderate voters Allred was courting.

Also fueling Cruz's win was his standing as one of the most popular Republicans among conservative voters in a state where GOP voters still outnumber Democrats. He ran on a message of experience, having racked up a legislative record after 12 years in the Senate and as the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee.

Meanwhile, Allred gave up a promising career in the U.S. House to run for Senate. His political future, once bright, is now unclear.

Cruz was ready

The 2018 Senate race was a warning shot for Cruz. O'Rourke came within striking distance of flipping the seat, becoming a cultural phenomenon that attracted attention — and donors — from around the country. Republicans were caught off guard by the challenge, and Cruz's history up to the point as being one of the biggest disruptors in the Senate made him vulnerable. O'Rourke brought in over $80 million to his campaign effort, making the race the most expensive in the history of the Senate.

This cycle, Cruz rallied donors early with warnings that they should take nothing for granted. Cruz warned the state's suburban expansion could lead to more Democratic voters.

"Texas is a battlefield," Cruz told Texas delegates at the Republican National Convention this year. "It's easy to be complacent. One of the real mistakes people make in politics is they have a recency bias. They say well, whatever things have been recently, that's what it's going to be forever."

In response to O'Rourke's record-breaking haul, Cruz doubled his fundraising from the 2018 cycle. He got an early start, raising over $30 million by the time Allred launched his Senate bid in May 2023.

He also launched a reputational rebrand, trying to soften his incendiary image with an early media blitz highlighting his work with Democrats.

As the race took shape, Cruz hit the campaign trail with a message focused on preserving Texas' conservative values — he called his campaign bus tour "Keep Texas, Texas" — and framing the race as "a battle between sane and crazy." In his stump speech, delivered at breweries, barbecue restaurants and music halls around the state, Cruz cast Allred and the broader Democratic Party as having gone too far left on transgender rights, critical race theory and other issues at the heart of the nation's culture wars.

In the closing weeks he deployed a lineup of high-powered surrogates, rallying with former President Donald Trump in Austin and bringing some of his GOP Senate colleagues onto the campaign trail ahead of Election Day.

Cruz also benefited from his virtually universal name recognition among Republicans in Texas and around the country — an advantage the little-known Allred has had to battle throughout the cycle.

Cruz first made a name for himself as a rabble-rouser in the Senate and cultivated the image throughout his time in office, often clashing with the leaders of his own party. He became known for his spirited speeches both in front of the cameras and behind closed doors in the Capitol, where he could at times be heard screaming from the halls.

He expanded his reach with the help of his thrice-weekly podcast syndicated through iHeartMedia to millions of listeners, and his four books on topics ranging from his life story to his furor with the federal judiciary.

But Cruz's fame also offered Democrats an easy caricature to target. The Allred campaign repeatedly attacked Cruz as a conservative celebrity more interested in cultivating his brand than serving Texans. Allred alluded to Cruz's brief trip to Cancún during the 2021 winter storm Uri, labeling him as "the ultimate Me Guy" who would leave the state during a natural disaster.

"No one is more self-serving, more disconnected from Texans' needs," Allred said in a speech at the Texas Democratic Convention in June.

Allred also tied Cruz to Texas' abortion restrictions, noting the senator's past statements opposing abortion. Amanda Zurawski and Kate Cox, two Texas women who had care for their nonviable pregnancies delayed because of the state's abortion laws, campaigned for Allred. After largely keeping Harris' campaign out of his calculus, Allred joined the vice president at a Houston rally on reproductive rights.

Cruz deferred opining on the state's abortion laws, saying it was up to the state government to decide while pointedly refusing to clarify whether he agrees with Texas' lack of exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

Cruz pushed back on the partisan accusations throughout the campaign, asserting he was capable of simultaneously being a right-wing fighter while also working across the aisle to get things done. He touted over 100 legislative accomplishments as a senator, making efficacy a key aspect of his campaign. He rebranded himself as a bipartisan dealmaker early in the cycle, saying it could exist in tandem with his role as a conservative firebrand.

"It is easy and probably more fun to cover the battles that I have waged against the Obama administration or the Biden administration, or [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer," Cruz said in April. "Those may make for easy headlines, but often overlooked are now [100] different pieces of legislation that I've authored and passed into law in my time in the Senate."

Allred dismissed the claims, pointing out that Cruz opposed many of the biggest bipartisan bills of President Joe Biden's time in office, including the CHIPS and Science Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Acts, both of which brought billions of dollars to Texas. Cruz also opposed an ultimately unsuccessful bipartisan Senate border deal negotiated by the White House and Republican Sen. James Lankford, independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy. Allred supported all three bills.

Allred's playbook

Allred's biggest weakness for months was that no one knew who he was. Despite three terms in the U.S. House, he had low name recognition outside of his Dallas district or the halls of Congress. He was not one to pine for viral moments or become a political brand as was Cruz's wont.

He spent heavily to introduce himself to the state, investing over $31 million in television ads, according to tracking firm AdImpact. National Senate Democrat groups spent another $15 million.

Allred proved to be one of the state's most prolific fundraisers. He outraised Cruz every quarter of the year and repeatedly broke O'Rourke's fundraising records. Allred also led the state's first coordinated campaign for a Democratic Senate candidate in decades, consolidating resources up and down the ticket.

There were other forces at play working in Allred's favor. Until Biden dropped out of the race, few Democrats thought Allred had a realistic shot of overcoming the president's dismal approval ratings in Texas. Polls showed Biden trailing Trump by an average of almost 10 percentage points by the time he nixed his reelection bid, reinforcing Democratic pessimism after a midterm cycle in which Gov. Greg Abbott had defeated O'Rourke by 11 points. And while Allred offered only a tepid embrace of Harris as the nominee, the momentum began to shift in his favor as Harris narrowed Trump's advantage in the state.

Allred also caught a break with Democrats' tough Senate map this year. Senate Democrats identified Texas as a top flip opportunity largely because they didn't have any others and were looking for ways to protect their 51-seat majority.

He touted work he had done with Republicans, earning him the ranking of 27th most bipartisan member of Congress in 2023 by the Lugar Center and Georgetown University . He was endorsed by both the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO labor group in 2020 and 2022, though the chamber endorsed Cruz this year.

Allred also capitalized on Cruz's role in Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, hoping to appeal to conservative voters turned off by the episode. Former U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Republicans who served on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, endorsed and campaigned for Allred.

Allred never fully escaped the shadow of O'Rourke, who famously barnstormed through all 254 counties in Texas and became an internet sensation with his freewheeling, profanity-laden stump speeches.

He took a much more conventional campaign strategy, prioritizing curated ads and carefully choreographed appearances that didn't lend themselves to the kinds of spontaneous moments that catapulted O'Rourke into political stardom.

Allred said his strategy was necessary to maximize his message throughout such a large state.

"We've got a great state and a massive state, and last month, we've done 50 stops in 22 cities," Allred said in September. "We also have to have resources to make sure we communicate in the biggest media markets in the country, and also in markets in places that are completely siloed from each other."

Cruz laced into Allred for his understated campaign strategy , blasting him for "hiding in his basement" and often taunting him for posting photos that showed modestly attended campaign events. But he also warned that the race was still "very, very dangerous" for him, in part because coastal Democratic donors have made "money rain in from the sky."

"Look, it's not complicated," Cruz said after a campaign rally in August. "If you're a really partisan left-wing Democrat, after Donald Trump, there is nobody in the country you want to beat more than me."