Colin Allred was running late, but it didn’t matter—nobody was waiting for him. Only staff and a single journalist occupied the cavernous International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Union Hall in Houston at 2:30 on a recent Tuesday afternoon, the time Allred’s campaign had provided for what it was touting as a “roundtable on Texas energy jobs.” Three conference tables were arranged in a U shape beneath the IBEW Local 716 flag, but neither the congressman nor the roundtable participants had shown up. Journalists had been informed of the event just the previous day; the invitation did not extend to the public.
Nearly half an hour passed before the nine invited union representatives—mostly electrical workers and city bus drivers—finally shuffled into the hall and took their seats around the table. Allred, the Dallas-area congressman and Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, arrived a few minutes later. He sat down at the head of the table, flanked by the American and Texas flags, and introduced himself in a nearly inaudible voice. For the next forty minutes, he politely listened as the union members discussed the challenges they faced in their careers, including the transition from oil and gas to green energy. A campaign photographer circled the table, taking photos for Allred’s social media feed.
Shortly after the event ended, Allred left the hall—seemingly in a rush. But if it was to scurry off to another public appearance, that wasn’t advertised to the reporters trailing him that day. He wouldn’t host an event for the public until two days later, in Austin. Indeed, for an upstart candidate challenging one of the most high-profile incumbents in the country, Ted Cruz, Allred is running an abnormal campaign. He has rejected freewheeling town hall meetings. He’s dismissed the strategy favored by former Cruz opponent, Beto O’Rourke, and is not making road trips to red rural areas trailed by an iPhone camera that broadcasts his every move to Facebook Live. He hosts few campaign rallies that would gin up enthusiasm among Texas’s liberals. Even at the smaller, policy-focused events he’s held, journalists are granted scant access. After the roundtable in Houston, Allred allowed one question from each of the three reporters in attendance. Texas Monthly used its turn to ask why the representative was holding such small events. “I like to talk to people, and I like to hear from them how things are going,” Allred replied. “I don’t think Ted Cruz listens to anybody. I don’t think he has much interest in hearing from people.”
When asked, Allred did not answer whether limiting public events is a deliberate campaign strategy. His team provided a brief statement about Cruz that did not address the question.
His strategy of maintaining a low profile is a marked departure from the one O’Rourke employed in 2018, when he came within three percentage points of beating Cruz, setting a high watermark for Democrats in the state this century. Instead, Allred’s Senate campaign seems to be driven primarily by targeting voters through roundtables on kitchen-table issues, including energy and Medicare. His website is heavy on biography and light on policy. He’s trying to run as a generic, largely uncontroversial Democratic candidate who, as one of his big appeals, isn’t named Ted Cruz.
Former president Donald Trump is all but certain to win the state this year, meaning that Allred can’t win without some ticket-splitters. Allred has criticized his party on a handful of issues—namely on immigration, where he’s condemned what he dubs the Biden administration’s “open border” policies. He’s seeking to make himself more amenable to the GOP in an attempt to distance himself from Democrats in order to broaden his electoral appeal. (One TV spot of his touts that the Dallas congressman is “tough” and will address what he calls a “border crisis,” highlighting a spate of border security proposals he endorses.)
Allred has to toe a fairly narrow line—he needs to ride Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s Democratic enthusiasm wave without overtly fawning her and risk alienating independent and moderate voters. Campaigning this way is novel for a Texas Democrat. But it might be working: The most recent nonpartisan survey of Texas’s likely voters, from the University of Houston/Texas Southern University, showed Allred trailing Cruz by only two percentage points—within the margin of error. (In 2018, surveys similarly found Cruz had a low single-digit edge over O’Rourke; one August poll essentially said the race was tied). Roughly 6 percent of respondents said they were still undecided. If the focus is on Allred luring some of these voters from now until Election Day, it becomes clearer how he can forge a competitive race: dominate the most populous cities, including Austin, Dallas, El Paso, and Houston, which are overwhelmingly Democratic; clinch some of the more competitive suburbs in Austin and Dallas, which are purple or trending that way; and limit the damage in the much redder rural areas.
“I don’t disagree with his strategy based on who Allred is as a candidate,” said Jeff Dalton, a North Texas political consultant who led Democratic state senator Royce West’s unsuccessful 2020 campaign for U.S. Senate. “He wants people to see that he’s an independent thinker and a candidate with his own convictions who is capable of criticizing or supporting policies on both sides.”
The strategy also points to certain vulnerabilities in the Cruz campaign. Cruz knows how to turn out his base of hard-core Republicans. But he’s not warmly embraced by others: polls show that, as of June, only 42 percent of Texas’s likely voters viewed him favorably, including just 23 percent of independents. And the junior senator’s average job approval rating as of the same month was at 46 percent, one percentage point lower than it was the month before beating O’Rourke in 2018.
To win, Allred needs to improve his own standing. He’s viewed favorably by just 39 percent of the state’s likely voters, and only 18 percent of independents. The University of Houston poll found that Cruz has a four percentage point edge among independent voters, with 14 percent still undecided.
Allred will need to turn out those independents, in particular. And he needs to improve among and another crucial bloc that has trended more Republican in recent years: Latino voters. (In 28 counties in South Texas or near the border, President Joe Biden won by a combined seventeen percentage points in 2020; far below the 33 point advantage Hillary Clinton enjoyed there in 2016.) Among Latino voters, meanwhile, Allred had a six percentage point edge, well below the margin Democrats have historically held. To help make inroads, Allred’s campaign says that it’s been on the airwaves since mid-May, with both English and Spanish ads.
If there were ever a moment for Texas to flip a statewide seat, however, polls suggest, this would be the year. Harris has made the presidential race in Texas closer than it was when Biden was the nominee and has improved on his standing with Gen Z and independent voters and women, according to the August University of Houston survey. Even before Biden dropped out of the race, Cruz was showing signs of weakness in Texas. An average of polls also has Cruz ahead by just single digits.
Cruz, for his part, has been trying to pivot to the center too. In a Hail Mary attempt to label himself as bipartisan, he has touted a handful of largely unknown Democrats (or, former Republicans turned Democrats) who have endorsed his reelection bid. He is also trying to tie Allred to liberal bogeyman Nancy Pelosi, whom Allred has voted in-line with 100 percent of the time in his six years in Congress. And the senator is actively on the stump, hosting a slate of public events as part of his Keep Texas, Texas tour.
Allred, meanwhile, would not provide a comprehensive list of public events he has held in Texas, but Josh Stewart, the campaign’s communications director, wrote that the representative has held more than fifty in July and August, including interviews. Allred also recently addressed the Democratic National Convention and held a rally in Dallas, drawing a crowd of more than eight hundred, where he proclaimed his support for abortion rights. (Allred’s campaign said that it raised more than $1 million in the day after his DNC remarks.)
At a public August roundtable in Austin, Allred tried to engage the crowd of about forty on the issues. He singled-out the plight of a family of three in the audience whose teenage son required expensive insulin treatments and said he would work to cap the costs of the drug if elected. But he then pivoted away from specific policy points and back to talking up his ability to work across the aisle. “I’m the most bipartisan Texan in Congress,” Allred said as he wrapped his speech, referencing an award he was given in 2023 by the Common Ground Committee, which rates how effectively an elected official embodies the spirit and practice of bipartisanship. The crowd seemed to care less about Allred’s cross-aisle work than his Cruz bashing. After the event I found the father of the family Allred singled out. When I asked Travis Jordan, a 56-year-old retiree wearing a face mask what he liked about the candidate, he told me “Allred is the guy who is possibly going to rid us of Ted Cruz, which is a very good thing for the state.”
For Texas Democrats, the general election has taken on near-existential importance, specifically when it comes to control of the Senate. Assuming Democrats hold all of their own Senate seats in 2024—a far from certain outcome—control of the upper chamber will hinge on a handful of states, including Florida and Texas. Of those, Texas will be one of the hardest for Democrats to win, but also the party’s biggest electoral prize, especially since a Democratic senate candidate’s last victory here was in 1988.
“With voters’ help and God’s grace, I will be your next United State’s senator,” Allred told the crowd in Austin. To those who question whether the representative’s dream for a blue Texas amounts to more magical thinking among Texas Democrats, Allred offers little counterargument, just a winning smile.
Michael Hardy contributed reporting to this story.
