(CN) — With the March primary election fast approaching, Democrats in Texas will soon choose a nominee to take on incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.
A polarizing figure, Cruz was first elected to the Senate in 2012. He’s since aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump, including during efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. In 2018, Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke lost to Ted Cruz by less than three percent of the vote in the closest Senate election in Texas in decades.
O’Rourke isn’t running this year, and Texas Democrats are instead investing their hopes in new candidates.
Amid a crowded primary ballot, three candidates have stood out.
Those candidates — Colin Allred, Roland Gutierrez and Carl Sherman Sr. — were the only ones invited to take the stage at a Democratic primary debate in Austin in January. But Sherman has struggled to break beyond single-digit support, and the primary election will likely come down to Allred and Gutierrez, who are trying markedly different strategies in their efforts to appeal to Texas voters.
Colin Allred, a U.S. Congressman from northeast Dallas, heads into March with a commanding lead in the field. Allred was first elected to the U.S. House in 2018, when he defeated longtime Republican incumbent Pete Sessions.
In his six years in Congress, Allred has frequently called for bipartisanship while also remaining a reliable vote on key Democratic legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. But beyond a few sparse remarks on the House floor and the occasional press release, Allred represents something of a blank slate for primary voters.
State Senator Roland Gutierrez has represented his hometown of San Antonio for more than a decade in the Texas legislature. He spent 14 years in the Texas House, from 2008 to 2021. In 2020, he ran for and won the race for Texas Senate District 19, a sprawling district that stretches from San Antonio out to the rural borderland regions of West Texas.
After keeping a low profile in the Texas House, Gutierrez has emerged as a key opposition figure in the conservative Texas Senate. In contrast to Allred, he’s pitched himself as an ardent progressive.
One issue has defined his term in the Texas Senate more than any other: guns. The 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde struck the heart of Gutierrez’s district. Ever since, the senator has been a constant advocate for stricter gun regulations, including as the author of the Robb Elementary Firearm Safety Act, which would have raised the minimum age for purchasing a range of semiautomatic rifles if it had passed. (It did not.)
While Gutierrez’s strong stance on gun control has garnered him support among progressives, it has the potential to turn off moderate and conservative-leaning voters — including on-the-fence Republicans that a Democratic candidate may need in November.
At the primary debate in January, Allred highlighted his bipartisan bona fides. Earlier this month, he joined with Republicans as an early supporter of the Senate’s bipartisan immigration bill. Controversially, that bill made reference to President Joe Biden’s so-called “open-border policies.”
If Allred wants to appeal to voters across the aisle, Gutierrez instead wants to fire up the Democratic base in Texas. At the debate, he harshly criticized Allred for his support of that immigration bill.
A Democrat can win in November not by “moving to the middle” but by “inspiring every Democrat in this state” to come out and vote, Gutierrez said. Allred apparently views the race differently, retorting that “I’ve built broad coalitions in my campaigns” and “that’s how you win tough races.”
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