DALLAS — For the second day in a row, Colin Allred got another boost to his campaign by national Democrats, suggesting the party is now closely watching the U.S. Senate race in Texas with a little more than a month left until the November election.
The Democratic National Committee announced Friday morning that it’s giving $75,000 to the Texas Democratic Party to increase turnout in South Texas, specifically citing Allred’s campaign against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz.
The investment comes on the heels of Thursday's announcement from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that it will air TV ads in this race for the first time.
“These next six weeks are crucial, and national investment is key to fueling our ground game,” said Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa, who lives in Brownsville.
“The DNC is committed to electing Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz, and ensuring Democrats like Colin Allred, Vicente Gonzalez, and Michelle Vallejo have the resources to run competitive races across the map in red and blue states alike,” said DNC Chair Jaime Harrison in a statement. “The investment we’re announcing today in the Texas State Democratic Party shows these priorities in action.”
The DNC is flush with money right now after Kamala Harris supercharged enthusiasm in the party since taking over for President Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Still, Democrats say this is the first time the DNC has directly invested in every state and U.S. territory for electoral purposes. It is also a sign of increasing confidence the national party has in Allred.
A poll from The Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation last week showed Cruz ahead by three points but the margin of error in the survey makes the race a virtual tie. A Morning Consult poll released days before that showed Allred leading Cruz by one point. Though polls are only a snapshot in time, most of them show it is a close race.
“They’re cold blooded. They don’t do this on a whim. They make decisions on data and cold hard calculations,” said Matt Angle, a veteran Democratic consultant and founder of The Lone Star Project. “It doesn’t mean all of a sudden that Colin Allred is going to win but he has a chance, and they see that it’s prospect worth investing in.”
On Thursday, for the first time, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced it will air TV ads in this race.
“Allred has a significant financial advantage, and the Democrats are adding to it,” said Matt Mackowiak, chairman of the Travis County Republican Party.
But Mackowiak said he thinks the investment from national Democrats is actually a sign that Republicans are winning the battle for majority control of the senate.
“As the U.S. Senate map has trended in the Republican direction, Democrats have to be able to sell the possibility of keeping control of the Senate to their donors,” Makowiak explained.
Republican candidates are polling ahead of Democrats in Montana and West Virginia senate races. Ohio remains another top GOP target and one seeing a lot of investment from both parties.
The U.S. Senate race in Texas remains Cruz’s to lose. Campaigning for a third term, the hardline conservative is trying to remake his image as a bipartisan. Cruz maintains a slight edge in polling and won a second term in 2018 against Beto O’Rourke by a razor thin margin. The campaign this year is, so far, playing out in a similar way.
Ted Cruz vs. Colin Allred debate
Allred and Cruz will meet face-to-face in their first, and perhaps only, debate on October 15 at 7:00 p.m. at WFAA’s studios in downtown Dallas. In addition to airing on WFAA and being streamed at WFAA+, an app that’s available to download on smart TVs, the debate will also be available on all of TEGNA’s 12 television stations in Texas.
