Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A short-term-serving Democratic U.S. congressman is running against Ted Cruz for the senate.
With several presidential campaigns well underway for the 2024 election cycle, another office at the top of Texas voters’ ballots will be a contested race with the incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) drawing a Democratic challenger in U.S. Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX-32).
A Dallas resident, Allred is a former NFL football player who suffered an injury prompting him to shift his career into law. After serving in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, he entered politics by running for Congress and was elected in 2018 after defeating incumbent Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX-32).
Allred benefited from not only the 2018 Year of Beto, but also Sessions caught in the typical “sleepwalking incumbent in a district with shifting demographics near the end of a redistricting cycle” trap.
And yes, Allred was an NFL player. He played four seasons as a linebacker for the Tennessee Titans (strike one for Houston voters), during which he registered 46 tackles. That’s…not good. By contrast Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis managed to score 46 tackles over three games in 1997. (To be fair, Allred was probably never charged (and acquitted) of murder.)
Now in his fourth year in office, Allred announced his campaign challenging Cruz in a video posted to social media Wednesday morning.
Certainly Allred has Beto O’Rourke’s lack of experience, but he doesn’t seem likely to inspire the same Great Southern Hope hype as O’Rourke did. Right now he’s the only even-slightly-recognizable name in the race, and will likely be able to fund-raise well (but not Beto-well) based on the Cruz hatred of the Democratic base. But he won’t be lifted by the anti-Trump wave that helped lift O’Rourke to within 3 points of Cruz. Nor does he seem likely to stem Hispanic defectors to the Republican Party in south Texas…