United States – In the Democratic primary, holders of the dream of taking a seat in the US Senate were watching Texas closely to determine the person who would be elected to contest the incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (a man whose challengers have tagged as very vulnerable after a fine margin of victory in 2018).
Profiles of Top Contenders
Developing a profile of US Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL player and three-term House member from Dallas, and state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who have been favorite candidates in a primary routed by Texas Democrats to finally make history. For the longest run of elections in the US, none of the Democrats has won a statewide position in Texas in the last 30 years, as reported by Associated Press.
This notwithstanding, Democrats make their way to those two States they consider their best bet for flips as they try to maintain the edge of 51-49 in the Senate. That assembly comprises West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who is running for re-election and whose seat is going to turn Republican.
Political analysts predict that another seven Democratic candidates, including state Rep. Carl Sherman, will enter the Texas Senate race. If no one gets the majority vote on May 28, the race will be decided.
Allred, who will be the first non-white senator from Texas if he is voted in, has raised more than $21 million since his entry. He has already received that much, but his primary challengers, whom he mostly ignored in the primary while directing his fire at Cruz, are nowhere close to him at all.
Alred, 40, became a headline in January when he joined 14 Democrats in the House of Representatives who endorsed the Republican resolution in Congress that was highly critical of President Joe Biden’s border handling. Gutierrez criticized Allred for the vote, expressing that he voted “with the GOP extremists.” Cruz’s spokesperson, Martinez, accused the vote of being a “disingenuous attempt to posture on the border.”
Allred specified that he had some disagreements with the language of the resolution, but he wanted there to be more urgency at the federal level when it comes to the border.
“For me, it was about sending a signal that, you know, what we have been doing is not working,” Allred said in an interview last week during early voting in Texas. “We have to change something.”
Moves and Past Close Contests
Ted Cruz just pipped Beto Orourke by a margin of only 3% for the re-election contest in 2018. They were nearly the closest Democrats have ever been in the last years to outright winning a statewide contest and especially in the wake of 2018, which proved to be a record-breaking year for the Democratic party.
The only reason keeping Texas Democrats from reaching that momentum is their current situation. O’Rourke last ran against Republican Governor Greg Abbott in the 2022 election and was defeated by double digits, as reported by Associated Press.
“Things are shifting in the state. It takes a long time,” said Jared Hockeman, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Cameron County along the U.S.-Mexico border. “We recognize that.”