DALLAS (Nexstar) — Former U.S. Congressman Colin Allred officially launched his campaign for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.
The former NFL player said his campaign will focus on “lowering costs and fighting the corrupt politicians rigging the economy against hardworking Texans,” according to the news release announcing his campaign.
“Everything’s backwards. Folks who play by the rules and keep the faith just can’t seem to get ahead,” Allred said in his campaign launch video. “But the folks who cut corners and cut deals – well, they’re doing just fine.”
This will be Allred’s second attempt at the U.S. Senate after a high-profile campaign in 2024 against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Cruz defeated Allred by almost a million votes in November. In the video, Allred compared his long-winded path to the NFL to his second attempt at running for Senate.
“I’ve been a lot of things in life, but I’ve always been a fighter,” Allred said. “I went undrafted, I got a chance to go to training camp, where I played well, but I still got cut. In a lot of ways though, I was undrafted in life too. Raised by a single mom on a teacher’s salary, I never had the option to give up. So I came back to Dallas and took a job at the YMCA. I picked up towels. I swept the floors. And when my shift was done I stayed late to put in the work in the weight room. And when I got another chance, I didn’t just do our team workouts, I did my own workouts at night too. I made the team.”
Allred said he will roll out a series of plans in the coming months during the campaign. The first plan is what he calls an “anti-corruption plan.”
“It’ll be the first of many steps we’re going to take to finally get Texans the leadership that we deserve,” Allred said.
Allred is running for the seat currently held by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. The incumbent is already facing a difficult challenge in the Republican primary against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Allred’s entry into the race has drawn immediate criticism from Paxton, who posted on X: “Welcome to the race, Colin! Texans have already rejected your liberal values once…now it’s time for Texas voters to say no to your vision and your values one more time.”
In a follow-up post, Paxton criticized Allred’s record on transgender military service, youth sports participation and border security, writing: “Transgendered military, Boys in girls sports (he flipped flopped a few times) and stood against securing our border from illegal immigration, calling the border wall racist. <- That is Allred’s record. Can’t wait to see Texans reject his radical ideas again.”
The Cornyn campaign also responded to Allred’s announcement. “Crooked Ken is a fraud and walking talking ethics disaster. John Cornyn has voted with Trump 99 percent and is the only candidate conservatives can trust to beat progressive Colin Allred,” said Matt Mackowiak, Cornyn campaign senior adviser.
Allred joins Terry Virts, a former astronaut and fighter pilot, in the Democratic primary.
“I wanted to welcome Colin Allred into the race. His entrance should be celebrated because democracy is awesome,” Virts said in a video on X. “I wish Texas had elected him, but we didn’t. Congressman Allred ran against one of the worst senators in the country, and Texas chose Ted Cruz by over eight points. That’s the hard truth.”
The final Democratic field for the Senate race is expected to be crowded, with several prominent figures considering runs. Former El Paso Congressman Beto O’Rourke addressed the strategic challenge facing Democrats in positioning their top-tier candidates across multiple races.
“My concern is making sure that everyone is in the right position,” O’Rourke said, citing the need for candidates in governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general races. He also emphasized the importance of fielding Democrats in every congressional and state legislative district to help drive turnout for statewide candidates.
Jim Henson, who directs the Texas Politics Project at The University of Texas, noted that Allred brings both advantages and disadvantages to the race. “One thing that Colin Allred can say, and he’s already saying, is that he’s done this. He knows the ropes. He’s a proven fundraiser. He knows what it takes to campaign, and he’s learned from his experience,” Henson said.
However, Henson also pointed to potential challenges. “He has run statewide, but he lost, and he lost by a lot in a year that people came out of the 2024 race with kind of a bad taste in their mouths about Democrats,” he said. “The general sense of 2024 was a big losing year for Democrats and anybody that ran that year has a little bit of a whiff of that failure on him, and he’s going to have to shrug that off.”
A recent Texas Politics Project poll found neither Paxton nor Cornyn were polling favorably among Texas voters. The poll of 1,200 registered voters showed 29% of Texans had a favorable opinion of Paxton while 43% had an unfavorable opinion.
Cornyn’s numbers were even worse in the same poll, with only 23% saying they had a favorable opinion of the current U.S. Senator while 46% had an unfavorable opinion.
A recent report from Punchbowl News said a poll from the Senate Leadership Fund, which supports Cornyn’s reelection, found Cornyn was down 10 points to Paxton in May. That same poll also showed Paxton trailing Allred by one point in a general election.
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