The Texas Senate race is white hot. Republican internal polling shows the race neck-and-neck, with incumbent Republican Ted Cruz sporting a razor-thin 1-percentage-point lead over Democrat Colin Allred, who is currently a congressman representing the Dallas area.
If Cruz hoped to stem that momentum at Tuesday’s debate, then: mission not accomplished.
If Cruz loses in November, it might very well be due to Texas’ extreme abortion ban. And Allred came to the debate prepared.
ALLRED: Sen. Cruz just looked into a camera and lied to Texans about my position. Let's be very clear. You should look into the camera and speak to Kate Cox, who's watching right now, and explain to her why you said that this law that you said is perfectly reasonable, why she was forced to leave her two children behind and flee our state to get the care that she needed.
Or look into the camera and talk to Amanda Zurawski, who's watching right now, and explain to her why it's perfectly reasonable that because she had a complication in her pregnancy and was denied care so long that she may never be able to have children of her own. Or to the 26,000 Texas women who have been forced to give birth to their rapist’s child under this law that you call perfectly reasonable. It's not.
This is not freedom. I trust Texas women to make their own health care decisions. You know, Aly and I have had two baby boys here in Dallas in the last five years.
You're scared the entire time. You don't know what they're going to say. But I can't imagine that the doctor would come in and say, “There's a problem with the baby or a problem with Aly, but there's nothing I can do because Ted Cruz thinks he knows better.”
Allred scored a direct hit on Cruz’s past support for a “personhood” amendment, which would make fertility treatments like in vitro fertilization illegal. He slammed Cruz for calling himself pro-life, saying, “It’s not pro-life to deny women care so long that they can’t have children anymore. … To every Texas woman at home and to every Texas family watching this, understand that when Ted Cruz says he’s pro-life, he doesn’t mean yours.”
Cruz refused to say he opposed abortion exceptions for rape and incest. And in a zinger for the ages, Allred said, “He wants you thinking about kids in bathrooms so you're not thinking about women in hospitals.”
Wow. And how about this one?
“When Cruz starts talking about team sports, you gotta watch out because the only position he ever played was ‘left out.’ I’m not trying to be mean but sit this one out, please,” Allred said. And he would know about sports given that he was a linebacker for the Tennessee Titans for four seasons.
Here is Allred calling Cruz “a threat to democracy”:
And here he is humiliating Cruz for “hiding in a supply closet” during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection after having been an architect of trying to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.
“Do not put Ted Cruz back in a position of authority,” Allred said. “Because he’s done it once before, he’ll do it again.”
Allred neutralized Cruz on the border and immigration and hit him hard on his disaster-time Cancún vacation: “[Cruz is] also only focused on himself. That's how you can go to Cancún when millions of Texans need you and hundreds are dying. The truth is we don’t have to be embarrassed by our senator. We can get a new one.”
Allred closed the debate calling Cruz out for his “angertainment.”
Listen, we're all Texans. My idol John Lewis used to say that we might have come here on different ships, but we're on the same boat now.
We're all Americans, and 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 in Congress.
That's the exact opposite of what Sen. Cruz has done. Whatever he says tonight, you've seen it for 12 years. He's been one of the most divisive senators in the entire country.
If you don't like how things are going in Washington right now, well, you know what? He is singularly responsible for it. He has introduced this new kind of angertainment where you just get people upset and then you podcast about it and you write a book about it and you make some money on it, but you're not actually there when people need you. Like when the lights went out, when 30 million Texans were relying on a senator to spring into action, he went to Cancún.
That's who he is. If you give me the chance to be your United States senator, I'll never abandon you.
This is a real race, and while debates may not be decisive in races like this one, any hope Cruz had of arresting Allred’s momentum went up in smoke.
Donate now to stop Republicans from snatching the Senate!