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Colin Allred has the packed soccer stadium hanging on his every word.
It’s a Friday night under the lights here in Houston and the high-energy crowd is taking a break from what feels like a giant block party to hear from a string of health care providers, families who availed themselves of those doctors and nurses for abortions. Soon, Willie Nelson, Beyonce, and Kamala Harris (technically the headliner) will have turns on the stage. But for those 10 minutes the stadium is focused on Allred, a former NFL linebacker-turned-U.S. House member vying to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz, and it is like watching a rock star at his peak—because this might be the zenith for Allred’s political career.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“Everything is bigger in Texas. But Ted Cruz is too small for Texas,” Allred says to deafening cheers.
That talent, right here, is why Democrats have found hope that maybe they might deny Cruz a third term next week. To be clear, Texas is a stretch for the party. Texans haven’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office in 30 years. But Allred, a third-term House member from Dallas, has lapped Cruz in fundraising and has captured the excitement of both Texas Democrats and outside groups at a clip unthinkable even six months ago. The FiveThirtyEight polling average puts Cruz ahead by just three points, within the margin of error—but not a single projection from the quants there has ever shown Allred ahead.
Nonetheless, Republicans are clearly nervous about Texas. In a sign of how seriously they’re taking Allred’s prospects, Trump routed his plane to Austin on Friday, the same day Harris picked up Beyoncé’s public support. There was a hat-in-hand Cruz, grinning through gritted teeth aside a man who once baselessly accused Cruz’s father of playing a role in the John F. Kennedy assassination and disparaged his wife’s appearance.
“I couldn’t ask for a better summation of this campaign than Allred and Harris arm-in-arm at the same time that President Trump and I are standing together,” Cruz said at that private airfield. “That’s the clear choice Texans have, that’s the clear choice Americans have.”
Along with Trump’s coattails, Cruz is also counting on strong support from the rural parts of Texas that remain deep red and are more comfortable than the state’s fast-growing urban areas with the severe restrictions on abortion that the Harris campaign and Beyoncé held the rally to highlight. On top of that, Cruz’s allies are running an ad saying that Allred wants to let transgender student athletes compete in girls’ sports, giving them an unfair advantage. (Fact-checkers have debunked this, an Oregon school district has asked Cruz to stop running the ads that feature cisgender student athletes there, and Allred is running his own ad distancing himself from the accusations.) Cruz himself is also cruising around the state like he’s running his first campaign, although he certainly wishes he could have that blank slate again.
Since he arrived in the Senate after the 2012 elections coasting on a 16-point victory, Cruz has been something of his own creature in the Upper Chamber. A proud irritant to Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and the national party, he’s made some missteps that misread the modern GOP. His 2016 bid for the White House left him as the last person standing between Trump and his first presidential nomination. His initial refusal to bend the knee—even trying for a last-minute coup at the Republican convention in Cleveland with a protest speech from the stage—put him in the MAGA column for disloyalty. (He endorsed Trump a few weeks later.)
Cruz eventually was among those who indulged Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. That campaign culminated on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob stormed the Capitol.
“I know many of y’all probably know where you were on January 6th. I know where I was. I was on the House floor doing my job,” Allred said. “I texted my wife, Aly, who was seven months pregnant with our son, Cameron: ‘Whatever happens, I love you.’ Because when you are the only former NFL linebacker in the room and there’s a mob at the door, everybody’s like, Whatcha’ gonna’ do, Colin?”
After telling the rapt audience that he took off his suit jacket and let the muscle memory come into play should the barricaded doors break, Allred delivered the blow: “Ted Cruz was hiding in a supply closet. That’s OK, that’s OK. I don’t want him to get hurt by the mob. The point is, there shouldn’t have been a mob.”
Then, there is Cancun, Cruz’s ultimate misstep. When a freak winter storm left millions of Texans without utilities for days and killed scores of people, Cruz and his family booked tickets to Mexico. It was a move that has not faded in many Texans’ minds, and Allred knows it.
“Can you imagine having the privilege and the responsibility of representing our great state and a crisis hits our state, you think I need to go check out the Ritz Carlton in Cancun? You wouldn’t do it. If you did and you ran for office again, you’re going to lose your job.” Allred said at the campaign rally, drawing chants of “Lose Your Job” from the crowd.
Not that the crowd needed much reminding.
“There are enough people who are tired of Cancun Cruz,” says Michael Juge, a 51-year-old intelligence analyst for the government. Juge, who calls Houston home, cited Cruz’s sojourn southward even before Allred appeared on stage and points to the slow gains Democrats have made in Texas in recent cycles. “The major metro cities are not like the rest of the state,” he says, standing along the security fencing at that Friday evening Harris-Beyoncé-Allred party.
Or, as 44-year-old realtor Monica Vega, sporting a camouflage Harris-Walz hat, only half-joked: “We aren’t all riding horses. We all don’t all live in the sticks.”
Still, this is Texas.
“I’m optimistic about Colin Allred. His chances are legit,” Juge says. “If he can win this, that makes Texas the swing state for 2028.”
Many were making similar predictions six years ago when Beto O’Rourke caught fire, only for him to lose to Cruz by three points. Allred has tapped into that same anti-Cruz sentiment well enough to raise the kind of money to run a competitive race. In Texas, in particular, that’s no small feat.
“We’re three times the size of Michigan, OK? We have more people in this city than all of Arizona, right?” Allred tells me the morning after his rally. “This is an incredibly expensive state. I don’t think folks understand the scale of Texas.”
This Saturday morning, we are in an office complex not far from Rice University. About three dozen volunteers have synced up in the lobby to hear from Allred and Houston-based Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, whose office is the launching point for these local activists to go knock on doors for the next two hours. Their targets are mostly people who they believe would vote for Democrats if they just showed up to vote so they’re getting a little nudge from their neighbors to do their part in a state that is perpetually a white whale for liberals.
“There’s been this assumption that someday it’s going to happen, but it takes work,” Fletcher tells me standing on the sidewalk outside of her outpost here. Yet you can’t help but shake the feeling that this has been the case for a very long time. “That’s what you’re seeing with Colin Allred. He’s been working very hard and he’s been doing all the things he needs to do to win. And so it’s our job to make sure that we are supporting him and that we’re getting out.”
This operation—like ones before it in Texas—is all very impressive, both for its earnest nature and the political machinery behind it. But it also is creeping into strong headwinds. Trump is polling well ahead of Harris in the state, but Allred argues that all she really needs is voters in Texas’ urban areas to turn out in stronger numbers than they have in the past.
“We can win the election right here,” Allred tells the crowd about to hit the doors. “I’m not kidding. Not just Harris County, but the Houston metro can win this election on its own.”
It’s a heavy lift and a narrow path, yet not an impossible one. That’s why Democrats are rushing into the state and Cruz is campaigning like he’s never had to before, even if that means leaning on the MAGA movement for a buffer. And it’s why Democrats think Texas could, improbably, be the reason they hold on to the Senate.
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