(CN) — Texas Democrats selected Dallas Congressman Colin Allred Tuesday as their candidate to take incumbent Republican Senator Ted Cruz in November.
As results poured in across the Lone Star State, Allred maintained a strong lead over runner-up Roland Gutierrez, a state senator from San Antonio. Allred, in his victory speech, thanked voters and shifted his focus to taking on Cruz.
“Ted Cruz has had 12 years of pitting us against each other," said Allred. "It’s time we had a Senator who will bring us together."
Just after 10:30 p.m. Central Time, the Associated Press called the race for Allred with 67% of votes counted. Over 404,000 Texans cast their ballot for the congressman, while Gutierrez received 116,252 votes.
Polling in the lead-up to the primary showed Allred ahead of his competitors by a wide margin. Gutierrez held onto his runner-up status throughout the campaign. Allred managed to get a majority of votes in Texas' major urban areas including the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. In contrast, Gutierrez performed well in counties in the southern part of the state and along the Texas-Mexico border.
In his concession speech, Gutierrez took time to bring up a key issue in his campaign: gun violence. He recognized the parents of children who were killed in the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, which is part of Gutierrez’s Senate district, and said that his principal reason for running was them.
“I am telling you, right here right now, just like I talked to the congressman earlier, we need an assault weapons ban in this country,” said Gutierrez to applause. “So as the congressman moves forward, I hope that he understands that issue is important.”
None of the other seven candidates in the race were able to garner more than 10% of the vote. Coming in third, former Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez received over 60,759 votes. State Representative Carl Sherman Sr., from Dallas, was a closely watched candidate in the race, even qualifying for a January debate with Allred and Gutierrez. However, he fell far behind Tuesday, getting 21,610 votes.
Senator Cruz skated past his competition, securing 88% of the vote in the Republican primary. Little-known candidates Rufus Lopez and Redd Gibson did not offer much of a challenge to the incumbent Republican due to their lack of campaigning, which made it a challenge for voters to learn their position on key issues.
Allred’s name first became well known on the football field, rather than the field of politics. From 2004 to 2010, Allred was a linebacker for the Tennessee Titans. When his career as a professional athlete ended, he went back to school and got his law degree from the University of California Berkeley. After a brief stint working as a special assistant in the Obama administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, he litigated voting rights at the Perkins Coie law firm.
During the 2018 midterm elections, Allred was one of the many Democrats who helped flip swing districts from red to blue, delivering the House of Representatives back into their control. He took on Republican Pete Sessions, who had represented Texas’s 32nd Congressional District for 16 years.
Much like in the current U.S. Senate race in Texas, Allred cast himself as a moderate Democrat during his ascendance to the U.S. House.
Throughout the primary race, Allred has campaigned on investing in clean energy jobs in Texas, and his support for access to abortion and the LGBTQ+ community.
The congressman supports the expansion of Medicaid and the preservation of the Affordable Care Act and Children’s Health Insurance Program. On immigration, Allred has said he favors bipartisanship to “secure the border” and would like to see citizenship be granted to longtime, law-abiding residents. He joined Republicans in Congress in condemning President Joe Biden’s work on the Southern border, an act that drew criticism from state Senator Gutierrez.
Gutierrez courted more progressive voters during the race. He has been an outspoken advocate for a ban on assault-style weapons, red flag laws and raising the age to purchase assault-style weapons from 18 to 21. During the past legislative session, the state senator filed bills to enact such measures after the shooting at Robb Elementary School. Those endeavors ultimately fell short in the staunchly conservative state Senate.
On the issue of immigration, Gutierrez has supported providing a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants as well as allowing incoming migrants to find work in the United States. He has been at odds with Republican leaders in the state, namely Governor Greg Abbott, over the state’s use of billions of taxpayer dollars to fund Operation Lone Star.
Health care is another area in which Gutierrez took a more progressive position than Allred. The senator was a supporter of moving the U.S. toward a system where health care costs are paid for by the government.
With his success in the primary now behind him, Allred will begin his fight against incumbent Ted Cruz with over $8.5 million in cash on hand, nearly $2 million more than Cruz, according to the Federal Election Commission.
Democrats face an uphill battle in the reliably Republican state. In 2018, Democrats were close to denying Ted Cruz a second term when former Congressman Beto O'Rourke came within nearly 3 percentage points of becoming the first Democrat to win a statewide election in decades.
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