Q&A: Senate Hopeful Colin Allred Says November Election Is ‘Larger Than Our Own Problems’
Depending on the poll, Colin Allred is either the 6-point underdog in his U.S. Senate race against incumbent Republican Ted Cruz, or he’s neck and neck.
The attorney and former NFL player has been here before, he argues. In 2018, he bested incumbent Pete Sessions for the District 32 congressional seat. Sessions had been in Congress since 1997, first in District 5, and moving to the then newly created D-32 in 2003. When Allred kicked off his campaign to represent his hometown, Sessions was one of the most powerful Republican members of Congress, running the National Republican Congressional Committee for two successive campaign seasons and leading the House Rules Committee.
Sessions was expected to win, as usual. (He drew 71 percent of the vote in the 2016 election, and Allred had to escape a runoff election with Lillian Salerno in the 2018 Democratic primary.) Instead, Allred would beat Sessions, 52.2 percent to 45.9 percent.
“You believed in us when all the pundits didn’t, when the experts said it wasn’t possible,” Allred told his watch party gathered at Dallas’ Magnolia Hotel Park Cities that night.
Last May, Allred announced his candidacy for Senate with a video that highlighted some of Cruz’s actions in the past couple of years, including the junior senator’s infamous flight to Cancun while most of the state sat in the cold thanks to power outages from Winter Storm Uri.
“We don’t have to be embarrassed by our senator,” he said. “We can get a new one.”
In the March Democratic primary, he faced eight opponents, including state Sen. Roland Gutierrez and state Rep. Carl Sherman. Allred avoided a runoff with 60 percent of the vote, placing him directly in the path of Cruz in November. The last time the Democrats won a statewide race was 30 years ago, in 1994, when Bob Bullock won the lieutenant governor seat with 61 percent of the vote.
Last week, just days after President Joe Biden told Dallas supporters to “elect Colin your next senator,” Allred sat down for a quick chat about his campaign so far. Our conversation, edited for length and clarity, is below.