Sen. Ted Cruz (R) and former Rep. Collin Allred (D) squared off on Tuesday of their solely debate earlier than Election Day, sparring over the border and abortion amid indicators of a surprisingly aggressive race that would assist resolve management of the Senate this fall.
Allred, a three-term congressman and former NFL participant, has been constructing momentum within the purple state, giving Democrats a glimmer of hope for a pickup alternative as they brace for the potential lack of susceptible incumbents elsewhere.
Cruz, looking for his third time period within the higher chamber with former President Trump’s endorsement, remains to be the favourite to win. However he’s main by simply 2.8 factors, in keeping with a median of Texas polls from The Hill/Resolution Desk HQ.
The controversy showdown comes simply after The Cook dinner Political Report shifted the Senate contest into toss-up territory, and as Democrats develop more and more bullish concerning the race.
Debate will get feisty
Sparks flew repeatedly in the course of the hour-long debate because the rivals poked at one another’s information and clashed over key points like abortion.
Allred swung a number of occasions at Cruz’s 2021 journey to Cancun as Texas confronted energy outages and freezing temperatures, an ill-timed tour that has dogged his reelection bid and bolstered Allred’s bigger message that he’s unreliable. Cruz repeatedly directed viewers to a web site critiquing his competitor’s “All-Radical Record.”
At one level throughout a dialogue over the Southern border, Allred used his time to direct a query to Cruz, grilling the incumbent on why he didn’t help a border safety invoice earlier this 12 months.
“It’s a great question,” Cruz mentioned, earlier than asking Allred to cede his time so he might reply it. (Allred declined.) When it was his flip to have the mic, Cruz accused Allred of getting “memorized his lines well.” He later mentioned the congressman had “snarled at me” after one significantly tense alternate about Cruz’s “hiding in a supply closet” in the course of the Jan. 6 riots, which Allred argued the senator had helped provoke.
“The far left,” Cruz mentioned. “They’re so angry right now. There’s so much hatred.”
Candidates paint one another as excessive
With as a lot as 11 % of the voters nonetheless undecided in keeping with a ballot final week, each candidates sought to play to the middle, casting themselves as affordable males with bipartisan instincts and their opponent as a harmful radical.
“Congressman Allred wants to destroy what we’ve got in Texas, because he shares Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris’s values — and I will fight to keep Texas Texas,” Cruz mentioned in his closing assertion.
All through, Cruz sought to forged Allred, with out proof, as an ally of Islamic terror, an opponent of the Texas oil and fuel trade and a supporter of unlawful immigration and of the compelled sterilization of youngsters.
And he emphasised his personal bipartisan bona fides — particularly freeway payments with Sens. Rafael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.).
Allred, in flip, referred to as Cruz a “threat to democracy.”
“We’re all Americans, we’re all Texans: We need a leader who will bring us together around our shared values. That’s what I’ve tried to do in my six years. That’s the exact opposite of what Sen. Cruz has done — whatever he says tonight,” Allred mentioned in his closing remarks.
Partly, this was a dig at Cruz’s starring position in Trump’s problem to his decisive 2020 election loss to Biden. (Within the debate, Cruz declined to deal with whether or not he believed that election had been stolen.)
Nevertheless it was additionally a part of a extra pervasive Allred critique, which was additionally wrapped up within the repeated “Cancun” references: that Ted Cruz, whether or not you agree together with his insurance policies or not — and Allred claimed widespread floor with Cruz on matters from LNG exports as to if he helps “boys playing girls sports” — is a show-boater out just for himself.
“If you don’t like how things are going in Washington right now, well, you know what? He is singularly responsible for it,” Allred mentioned in his closing.
Cruz dances across the abortion query
Republicans’ weakest problem in Texas is abortion. About 80 % of voters assume it ought to be allowed in some type, however in 2021 the Republican-dominated state legislature handed a invoice banning all abortions after six weeks — a interval when most girls have no idea they’re pregnant, and that ends lengthy earlier than many severe or life-threatening medical situations emerge.
That invoice took impact in 2022 after Trump-nominated Supreme Courtroom justices gave the important thing votes to overturn federal abortion protections, plunging Texas docs right into a authorized no-man’s-land the place they confronted fines of as much as $100,000 and life in jail for making the mistaken name on whether or not an abortion had been medically mandatory.
Requested about his coverage on abortion, Cruz dodged with a solution centered on state’s rights.
“You wouldn’t expect Texas’s laws to be the same as California. You wouldn’t expect Alabama to be the same as New York,” he mentioned.
Allred spoke about watching his spouse undergo being pregnant: “You don’t know what they’re going to say, but I can’t imagine that the doctor comes in and says, ‘So there’s a problem with the baby — or a problem with Allie — but there’s nothing I can do because Ted Cruz thinks he knows better.’”
“I don’t serve in the state legislature. I’m not the governor,” Cruz snapped. “He is aware of that, however he is attempting to deceive everyone.”
“Every Texas family watching this has to understand that when Ted Cruz says he’s pro-life, he doesn’t mean yours,” Allred mentioned.
Allred tacks proper on border, trans rights
Moderators requested Allred to reply to Cruz’s two principal strains of assault towards him, the border and medical take care of transgender youth.
On the primary subject, Cruz accused Allred of being a part of a conspiracy by Democrats to open the borders, import thousands and thousands of undocumented immigrants and provides them citizenship — “that would turn Texas blue, and every statewide elected official in Texas would be defeated in the next election.”
On the second, he sought to forged the congressman as overly supportive of transgender youth athletes — or as Cruz put it in a latest advert, of “boys using girls locker rooms.”
“Congressman Allred was an NFL linebacker. It is not fair for a man to compete against women,” Cruz mentioned.
In each circumstances, Allred forged himself as one thing like an affordable conservative on the mannequin of mid-Nineties George W. Bush: conventional, Christian however basically compassionate.
“I don’t support boys playing girls’ sports,” Allred mentioned, a line that LGBTQ journal The Advocate referred to as “anti-trans” when the congressman unveiled it final week. However he added that “what I think is that folks should not be discriminated against,” earlier than pivoting into abortion — framed, fastidiously, across the picture of the girl exercising her proper not simply to decide on, however to not die of a preventable situation.
“What he wants you thinking about is kids in bathrooms, so you’re not thinking about women in hospitals,” Allred mentioned.
That method was evident too in his posture on the border. When moderators pressed the Democrat on why he beforehand opposed Trump’s border wall however supported President Biden’s latest plans to develop it, Allred cautioned towards taking “something out of context from seven years ago.”
In distinction to his first-term remarks concerning the “racist” wall, Allred on Tuesday repeatedly hit Cruz for not being robust sufficient on immigration, and particularly for voting in February towards a restrictive Senate border deal.
“Sen. Cruz treats our border communities like he’s going on some kind of a safari. He comes down, he puts on his outdoor clothes, he tries to look tough.” After which, Allred mentioned, Cruz “goes again to Washington and does nothing to assist.”
In one other Bush-era throwback, Allred additionally promised to repair “our broken legal immigration system.”
Trump an asset, Harris a legal responsibility
Cruz all through the controversy touted his ties to Trump, whereas Allred saved the highest of his personal social gathering’s ticket at arm’s size and declined to assault the previous president, whom Democrats elsewhere have used as a bogeyman.
This largely displays Allred’s slim path to victory in what stays a really purple state: whereas the presidential race in Texas has grown tighter, Vice President Harris is 5.5 factors behind Trump within the Lone Star State, in keeping with the DDHQ averages.
That’s twice the present distance between Allred and Cruz, which signifies that for Allred to win, he should persuade tons of of hundreds of Trump voters to dump Cruz. Whereas he has endorsed Harris and even hyped her up in a speech on the Democratic Nationwide Conference this summer season, he’s been cautious to maintain Harris at a distance as Cruz hammers the comparisons.
Cruz, in flip, has far much less have to be conciliatory to Harris supporters. “Understand this,” he mentioned. “Kamala Harris is Colin Allred. Their records are the same.” Each, he mentioned, have been “running on the same radical agenda.”
“When Donald Trump was president, I labored hand in hand with President Trump to safe the border, and we achieved unimaginable success,” Cruz mentioned at one level. At one other, he spotlit his counsel to Trump on Israel, a difficulty that fired the senator up maybe greater than some other introduced up in the course of the debate.
“When President Trump was president, I urged him to maneuver our embassy to Jerusalem. He did, and …. When President Trump was president, I urged him to tug out of the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. He did,” Cruz mentioned.
Trump on Tuesday highlighted his “full and whole endorsement” of Cruz forward of the controversy.
