Things aren’t looking good for notorious Republican Party hardliner-in-a-hardline-state Ted Cruz’s re-election hopes.
The Cook Political Report has just updated its assessment of the Texas Senate race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican” amid what appear to be significant signs of momentum behind Democrat Colin Allred’s campaign.
Even among Republicans, the forecaster reports that Allred—“a Black football captain at Baylor University who played for the Tennessee Titans before working in the Obama Justice Department and compiling a center-left record as a three-term congressman from a business-minded Dallas seat”–is widely recognized as an exceptionally strong candidate.
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Although Allred ended June with $10.5 million in the bank against Cruz’s $12.7 million, his pace of fundraising is thought to have since significantly outstripped that of his opponent’s campaign, with private Republican polling reportedly now putting him within a single digit margin of victory.
It’s clear the pressure might already be getting to Cruz, who put in a Tuesday appearance on Newsmax warning that “Chuck Schumer and George Soros are flooding cash into the state of Texas” and begging his supporters to “contribute” to his campaign “because we are getting swamped.”
That’s after he didn’t so much raise eyebrows as blow them clean off in a Monday interview with Politico, when he boasted of his supposed record on “passing bipartisan legislation”—a claim perhaps only Cruz could utter with a straight face.
The Lugar Center and Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy’s index of Senate bipartisanship currently ranks Cruz 89th out of 98 senators for his staunch opposition to a seemingly endless list of cross-party initiatives.
The Texas firebrand has also repeatedly attacked Democrats for wanting to “destroy the Constitution and this republic,” as well as backing to the hilt Donald Trump’s false claims the 2020 election was stolen and refusing to say whether he’d recognize the results of this year’s presidential polls should Kamala Harris win.
In fact, the only thing bipartisan about Cruz might actually be how bipartisanly he’s detested by his colleagues. “I have Democrat friends and Republican friends,” as former GOP House Speaker John Boehner once put it. “I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a b---h in my life.”
In any case, the Texas race is far from over. The Cook Political Report notes the Democrats still have a long road ahead, and no guarantees that their significant investment in Allred will indeed see the latest swing from “likely” to “lean” Republican tip the scales over and into the blue.
