Not Ted Cruz
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s campaign is warning donors this week that he’s already tied with Colin Allred and bracing for a tougher 2024 reelection campaign than GOP voters might expect.
The push comes less than a week after Allred secured the Democratic nomination in the race and six years after Democrat Beto O’Rourke emerged from relative obscurity to push Cruz to the brink of losing his seat.
While no Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since the 1990s, Cruz has been telling Republicans for weeks that they can’t take things for granted in Texas anymore, partly because of that close call to O’Rourke.
“I will say, my race here in Texas is a battleground race,” Cruz told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo last month. “My last race I won by less than three points because I’m the Democrats’ top target.”
Allred has been telling supporters he has a real shot at toppling Cruz based on limited early public polling and fundraising data. At his primary victory party in Dallas last week, the congressman acknowledged being the underdog but pointed to his history of knocking off veteran U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions, a Republican, in 2018 to win his seat.
“I’m used to overcoming long odds,” Allred said, pointing not just to his races in 2018, but his upbringing as the child of a single mother and making the NFL as a linebacker despite being undrafted.
I have no insight into Ted Cruz’s thinking, nor do I want to spend any time pondering his deep thoughts. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that at this point of the campaign, it’s in both Cruz and Allred’s interests to portray this as a close race, and for the same reason – the fundraising. It’s good for Cruz to keep his funders from being complacent, and Allred needs his backers to have hope. Everything else at this point is just details – the polling is mostly meaningless, comparisons to 2018 are premature at best, and what issues or lines of attack may land are too soon to tell. The name of the game is keeping the engine running. Allred has done a very good job of that, and Cruz is trying to keep up.
I really don’t think Rafael has deep thoughts about anything other than himself.
For the first time ever his campaign has called me(sometimes daily). I originally assumed he had some far right primary challenge. However, after seeing the results I guess the reason is he is scared of Allred.