Rep. Colin Allred of Texas to Tackle Ted Cruz for Senate Seat

Consultant Colin Allred, a Dallas-area Democrat who defeated an incumbent Republican to achieve his seat in 2018, introduced on Wednesday that he would problem Senator Ted Cruz of Texas subsequent 12 months.

In a three-minute video, Mr. Allred, 40, a former civil rights lawyer who performed as a linebacker within the N.F.L., introduced himself as a bipartisan politician whose working-class upbringing would allow him to beat the lengthy odds: No Democrat has gained statewide workplace in Texas for the reason that Nineties.

“We don’t must be embarrassed by our senator,” he mentioned, after describing Mr. Cruz as somebody who “cheered on the mob” throughout the Capitol riot and who left Texas to go to the resort metropolis of Cancun, Mexico, throughout the 2021 winter storm and energy grid failure that killed a whole lot of Texans. “We will get a brand new one.”

Mr. Allred got here into workplace driving a wave of Democratic enthusiasm that just about unseated Mr. Cruz throughout his final re-election combat, a 2018 victory over Beto O’Rourke, then a little-known consultant from El Paso. Mr. O’Rourke misplaced by about 2.5 proportion factors, a skinny margin within the Republican-dominated state.

Originally posted 2023-05-04 06:23:05.