2 weeks Ago
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is projected to win reelection to his U.S.
Senate seat after fending off a challenge from Democrat Colin Allred. Cruz presented himself as a bipartisan compromiser despite his past as a partisan warrior, instigator of government shutdowns and election objector. And Cruz campaigned heavily on the idea that Allred supported allowing boys in girls sports, echoing the anti-transgender message emphasized by former President Donald Trump in his bid for a second White House term.
Most polls in the closing weeks of the campaign showed Cruz running behind Trump, however, and leading Allred, a congressman who represents the Dallas area, by only a slim margin. It’s the second time Cruz has had to fend off a strong Democratic opponent since he first came to the Senate in 2013. Allred highlighted his background as a former NFL linebacker and portrayed Cruz as an out-of-touch elitist, frequently reminding voters of his 2021 getaway to Cancún while more than 200 Texans froze to death in a freak winter storm.
Cruz sought to turn Allred’s background to his own advantage , and a group backing Cruz even ran an ad that showed an Allred lookalike in a football uniform violently tackling a young girl. “Can you imagine having an NFL linebacker tackle your daughter?” Cruz said at a rally in Wichita Falls last month, dubiously claiming Allred had voted to allow boys to tackle girls. It’s an imaginary threat: Texas has already banned transgender athletes from participating in high school and college sports, and Cruz couldn’t come up with any examples of it happening when HuffPost asked .
On policy, Allred made reproductive freedom a major focus of his campaign, pointing to multiple examples of women with troubled pregnancies fleeing the state for life-saving abortion care after Republicans on the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion in 2022, allowing Texas Republicans to ban the procedure. Other news outlets have retreated behind paywalls. At HuffPost, we believe journalism should be free for everyone.
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During a debate last month, Allred said Cruz used transgender scaremongering to distract voters from abortion: “What he wants you thinking about is kids in bathrooms so you’re not thinking about women in hospitals, because it’s indefensible, indefensible that we have Texas women being turned away from hospitals, bleeding out in their cars and later being found by their husbands.” Abortion has been one of Democrats’ strongest issues, but it wasn’t strong enough for a Democrat to win statewide office in Texas for the first time since 1994 . See full results from the Texas Senate election here .
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