Colin Allred’s understated campaign strategy draws mixed reviews from fellow Democrats

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Six years after Beto O'Rourke’s electrifying Senate campaign set the standard for Texas Democrats seeking statewide office, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred is taking a completely different approach in his own bid to oust U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

Allred, a third-term Dallas congressman, has been far less visible on the campaign trail, opting for events with smaller and more curated audiences in the major cities and select suburbs, rather than the casual town hall-style rallies O'Rourke held in every corner of the state. And instead of O’Rourke’s unapologetic liberal stands which activated legions of young voters, Allred has adopted a more calibrated message aimed at winning over moderates. He’s running ads that portray him as "tough" on the border and willing to work across the aisle, while keeping his distance from his party's standard-bearers, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Allred's sharp divergence from O'Rourke's more active and freewheeling style has stirred dissent and even signs of panic among a segment of Texas Democratic activists who say Allred should be holding more rallies, small-dollar fundraisers and other publicly accessible events. The more buttoned-up approach, they argue, is unlikely to inspire the sort of grassroots energy that helped O'Rourke build a juggernaut volunteer turnout operation and come within three points of ending Texas Democrats’ statewide drought.

“I'm going to vote for him as the nominee but don't really feel compelled to do anything else for him,” said Jen Ramos, a member of the Texas Democratic Party’s governing executive committee, who warned that Allred is taking his base for granted by catering to moderate voters and showing tepid support for Harris.

“It's very much taking advantage of a base that exists,” Ramos said. “The opportunity to mobilize and engage a base is there, but the fact that he hasn't done so, it just feels short-sighted.”

Cruz, meanwhile, has blasted Allred for "hiding in his basement" and accused the Dallas Democrat of trying to conceal a liberal record that belies the moderate image he is trying to project.

Allred's allies note this is a different election than O’Rourke’s 2018 midterm fight. His was the marquee race that year, while Allred will benefit from Democratic turnout driven by the presidential election and his base’s contempt for former President Donald Trump — freeing up Allred to focus more on swing voters who could decide a close election, his supporters argue.

A recent statewide poll recorded Allred trailing Cruz by 2 percentage points, within the margin of error and ahead of Harris' 5-point deficit to Trump.

Allred has also raised money at an eye-popping clip — easily outpacing O’Rourke’s then-record haul from the same point six years ago — and his supporters argue he is deploying it efficiently by focusing his ads and campaign events in large urban areas, where most voters live. The fundraising boon allowed Allred to start running TV ads for the general election in May, earlier than usual for a statewide Democratic campaign and three months ahead of when O’Rourke first went on TV in 2018. Allred has swamped Cruz on the airwaves thus far, outspending him nearly 10-to-1 on ads as of last week, according to the media-tracking firm AdImpact.

While he has not been as active on the stump, Allred is not exactly camping out in his basement. Over the weekend, he held a “women for Allred” rally in Dallas, attended by some 850 people, where he touted his support for abortion rights and accused Cruz of trying to avoid talking about Texas’ abortion ban, which does not exempt cases of rape or incest. Allred has also held a number of smaller public events in places like Galveston, Plano, Corpus Christi, Tyler and others over the last month or so.

Paige Hutchinson, Allred’s campaign manager, said Allred is “building a winning campaign that will beat Cruz and give Texans the leadership they deserve in the Senate.”

“In the last six years, Ted Cruz has made himself more vulnerable than ever,” Hutchinson said in a statement. “By championing a statewide abortion ban that forces women to flee their state for lifesaving health care, abandoning Texans during a statewide freeze for a Cancun vacation and voting no on capping insulin costs — Texans know they can’t count on Ted Cruz.”

Allred also has made a number of stops at predominantly Black churches in the Dallas and Houston areas as part of a concerted faith outreach effort that, his supporters say, may be less visible to online critics.

Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, gave Allred’s strategy some credit. For all its acclaim, he said, O’Rourke’s campaign-everywhere approach failed to make a dent in the GOP’s lopsided margins in rural Texas, which remained a bright red firewall in 2018 and again in 2022, when Republican Gov. Greg Abbott defeated O’Rourke by a comfortable 11-point margin.

"My sense is that [Allred] has concluded that Texas is not a retail politics state," Wilson said. "It's sprawling, it's diverse. You can't shake enough hands in diners and kiss enough babies to win a statewide race in Texas."

Ginny Goldman, a senior adviser for O'Rourke's 2018 campaign, said Biden’s exit from the presidential race offers a chance for Allred to recalibrate his strategy to “ride the freedom and joy wave,” referring to the surge of momentum surrounding Harris’ presidential bid. With two Black candidates atop the Democratic ticket in Texas, Goldman said, Allred should be trying to maximize turnout among blocs like the nearly 3 million Black Texans who are eligible to vote but are not registered or have little to no voting history.

“There’s tremendous enthusiasm among young voters, women voters and Black voters due to Kamala’s campaign,” Goldman said. "We’d love to see Colin barnstorming in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and East Texas and embracing the messaging that fires up folks who would otherwise sit home in November. There’s no benefit to focusing on the illusive swing voter.”

So far, Allred has failed to recreate the energy that surrounded O’Rourke’s 2018 candidacy at the grassroots level, Ramos said, describing how that campaign “inspired people to open up offices in their homes” and “kind of take on the burden.”

“It was almost like the Obama model. If you want to get involved, you can. People will give you the basic steps to do it,” Ramos said, referring to former President Barack Obama’s robust ground game from his 2008 and 2012 campaigns. “That [level of] infrastructure has not been developed for the Colin Allred campaign.”

Allred’s campaign has pointed to the $1 million he raised in the 24 hours after his convention speech as a sign of grassroots enthusiasm. In a press release announcing the haul, the campaign noted that more than 443,000 individual contributors had donated to Allred, with an average donation of under $36. Allred also launched a coordinated campaign with the Texas Democratic Party to organize phone-banking and block-walking volunteer events around the state.

David Wysong, who ran O’Rourke’s 2018 campaign, said he thinks Allred’s team is probably taking the right approach this year and should not feel obliged to re-run the 2018 playbook, given the inherent differences between midterm and presidential election cycles. He noted that in 2018, O’Rourke faced his own share of criticism from those questioning why he was not trying to appeal more to moderate voters — the flip side of the criticism now being lobbed at Allred.

“Those are calculations you make,” said Wysong, who now oversees O’Rourke’s voter registration PAC, Powered By People. “We made a calculation of trying to turn out as many Democrats as humanly possible who typically didn't vote, and they're playing more to moderates. … They're certainly going to have to outperform the presidential [ticket], so that undoubtedly is going to involve persuasion.”

Cruz, asked to compare 2018 to this year’s race, offered a rare note of praise for his vanquished 2018 rival.

“Beto O'Rourke and Colin Allred are very different candidates,” Cruz said after a campaign rally last week in Waco. “Beto O'Rourke was charismatic. He was tireless. He campaigned all over the state, and he became a phenom. He went viral. Colin Allred, by contrast, is running a Joe Biden basement campaign.”

Still, Cruz acknowledged the race is “very, very dangerous” for him, in part because coastal Democratic donors have made “money rain in from the sky” to back Allred’s campaign.

“Look, it's not complicated. If you're a really partisan left-wing Democrat, after Donald Trump, there is nobody in the country you want to beat more than me,” Cruz said, citing the chants of “Beat Ted Cruz” that erupted throughout the Chicago convention hall after Allred’s speech last week, in which he voiced his most explicit support yet for Harris.

Cruz’s campaign has spent the last several weeks raising tongue-in-cheek questions about Allred’s whereabouts and accusing him of evading questions from voters and the media — likening it to Harris’ 39-day spell without a press conference or interview after she began her presidential campaign. (Allred has not held nearly as many press conferences as Cruz, though he has fielded numerous media interviews throughout the campaign, including with the Texas Tribune after events this month.)

Wilson, the SMU political science professor, said Cruz may be fighting an uphill battle trying to tie Allred to Biden — and now Harris — with the “basement campaign” jab.

“It's much harder to make that stick to Colin Allred, because Allred is not elderly and infirm, and people don't have concerns about his physical or mental capacity for the job,” Wilson said, adding that whenever the White House is up for grabs, “people are so focused on the presidential race that it's hard to cut through that noise and make attacks stick” further down ballot.

Disclosure: Southern Methodist University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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