And so Colin Allred’s three-year journey through the wilderness of ambition ends more or less where it began.

Three years ago, the NFL player-turned-civil rights attorney left behind a deep-blue U.S. House seat composed largely of Dallas County residents. On Tuesday night, he effectively won a deep-blue U.S. House district composed entirely of Dallas County residents. In ordinal terms, he budged an integer: from the 32nd to the 33rd. 

In between, he established himself as a politically mercurial, occasionally perplexing figure in Texas Democratic politics—the final avatar of statewide liberal hopes in those murky middle ages between Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 near-win and this year’s (projected) blue wave of possibility. 

His 2024 campaign for U.S. Senate is generally discussed as a cautionary tale, his overreliance on TV ads and weak reach among even the Dem base treated as missteps to be avoided this time around. This is what today’s Democratic Senate hopeful, James Talarico, referred to earlier this year as “mediocre” (more on that in a moment). 

One could see this narrative as unfair; after all, Allred did run 5 points ahead of Kamala Harris by margin of defeat. But, when your opponent is Ted Cruz, you’ll simply always be held to a higher standard, and a 9-point loss just can’t be spun into a moral victory. That, and, well, the vibes were what they were.

In his fruitless bid, the flat-affected Allred dutifully moved to the right where the consultant class had deemed it necessary. He came out against trans youth participation in athletics, in a confusing and bloodless way; he voted for a mendacious GOP resolution against “open borders” and even praised the announcement of new border wall under President Joe Biden—somehing the president himself had described as an unfortunate legal inevitability. Six years prior, when first campaigning for the House, Allred had called the border wall “racist” and said his generation would “tear it down.” 

It all amounted to little at the polls, even after he raked in a record-breaking fundraising haul. The following year, when he announced he was trying again for the Senate, the reception was sufficiently lukewarm that Talarico, an unseasoned state House representative from Austin, was undeterred from jumping in—as was Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who stepped over Allred and into the race herself on the last possible day, a move that caused Allred to begrudgingly lower his sights and aim to recover a spot in the House.

He took with him the money from his Senate bid, which helped give him a significant cash advantage over Congresswoman Julie Johnson—who had succeeded Allred in his old district before last year’s Trump-mandated gerrymandering yanked the seat from under her. Johnson was less than pleased with Allred’s last-minute entry, and she tried to paint him as a parachute candidate, but she was defeated by about 10 points in the runoff nomination contest Tuesday. The general election will be a formality.

The stakes and meaning of the Allred-Johnson runoff were exquisitely murky. “This is not a classic progressive versus moderate war the way that it used to be in the Democratic Party, but there are definitely shades of a more centrist coalition-focused Democrat like Allred, who is challenging a more progressive activist-oriented Johnson,” an oft-cited political science professor told an Observer reporter last month. 

Indeed, these “shades” bordered on invisible. If Johnson was the progressive—and she did rightfully hit Allred for his reactionary posturing on immigration—she was a progressive amply supported by AIPAC who’d trade shares in Palantir. And if Allred was the moderate, he was a moderate who now said things like: “ICE has to go. I think we should get rid of ICE, abolish ICE, whatever you want to call it”—while being backed by the Texas AFL-CIO and by Crockett, who in her own convoluted primary, which ended cleanly in March, found herself painted as the progressive.

Somewhere back in the haze of all this, after Allred switched seats but before Talarico won his Senate nomination, Allred also engaged in perhaps the most interesting and pointless of his political interventions over the past three years. Clearly aggrieved at the party’s passing him over, he latched in early February onto comments made by an influencer, who had relayed that Talarico had privately called Allred a “mediocre Black man” (to which Talarico has responded that he simply referred to Allred’s campaign as mediocre.) 

In a straight-to-camera broadside, Allred told Talarico, referencing the latter’s frequent deployment of liberal Christianity: “You are not saving religion for the Democratic Party or the left. We already have Senator Reverend Dr. Raphael Warnock for that. We don’t need you.”

He endorsed Crockett, called Talarico a “hater,” and advised: “Don’t come for me unless I send for you.”

Recall: This was a candidate who seemed to be studiously unstimulating, to the dismay of many Democrats, throughout the 2024 cycle. It was an (admittedly entertaining) outburst almost impossible to fit with what came before, and it amounted to little—as Talarico prevailed a month later. Allred has since, though without much enthusiasm, said that he will back the Democrat for Senate after all.

So it is that the pursuit of power can make any of us seem a bit silly, and yet victory releases us from the past. Now is not the time for relitigation; it is the time for shielding one’s eyes from the blazing dumpster fire that is the Republican side of these runoffs, and for acknowledging a man who left his haters, whoever they may be, behind. 

You can’t go home again, but Colin Allred came close Tuesday night.

The post The Eternal Recurrence of Colin Allred appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The Democratic establishment successfully thwarted Maureen Galindo and her increasingly unhinged and conspiratorial tirades against American Zionists—which were roundly denounced as antisemitic—in the runoff for the newly redrawn 35th Congressional District in South Texas. Johnny Garcia, an official with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, easily beat Galindo by around 20 points Tuesday night. 

Galindo, a sex therapist, tenant organizer, and first-time candidate, had come in first in the March primary. 

Garcia’s decisive win comes after the Texas Democratic Party and national Democratic leaders roundly denounced Galindo for her antisemitism. On social media, Galindo said that she would “turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers.” She added that it would become a “castration processing center for pedophiles, which will probably be most of the Zionists.”

Last week, Texas Democratic Party Chair Kendall Scudder and the 35th District’s four county party chairs issued a joint statement that said: “Antisemitism and hateful rhetoric have no place in the Democratic Party or in our communities. Maureen Galindo’s comments do not reflect our values as Democrats or as Texans.”

Prior to the increased attention and controversy over Galindo’s comments, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—the national party’s congressional campaign arm, known as the DCCC—was already taking a safe bet on Garcia’s “old-school” Democrat values. On May 4, the DCCC added Garcia to their “Red to Blue” program, opening him up to a network of funding and party resources. 

The district—which is under its current boundaries represented by progressive Austin Congressman Greg Casar—is one of five Texas Republicans recently gerrymandered into likely Republican seats. Under its new boundaries—which now include part of San Antonio and Bexar County, extending into a handful of deep-red rural counties in South Texas—Trump would’ve taken the district by 10 points in 2024.

Galindo’s campaign, in which she branded herself as an unabashed progressive, also raised suspicion as a Republican-connected PAC poured over $900,000 into promoting her. GOP operatives said they believed her untamed radicalism and antisemitic comments would ensure them victory in the general election.

Instead, the battle will come down to a standoff between Garcia and Carlos De La Cruz in November. De La Cruz beat state Representative John Lujan handily in the Republican runoff for the seat. He’s the brother of Congresswoman Monica De La Cruz, who has represented some of the counties that now reside within the 35th. He is an Air Force veteran and founder of a kickboxing gym in San Antonio who notably won the endorsement of President Donald Trump, vowing to be his “wingman” in Congress.

Garcia’s platform focuses on lowering costs by ending Trump’s tariffs, renewing Affordable Care Act subsidies, and expanding Medicaid. He says he believes in creating orderly pathways to citizenship while protecting communities from gun violence and crime. As a young man, he worked in construction and plumbing before joining the Bexar County Sheriff’s office “to keep the lights on.”

Throughout the race, Galindo frequently targeted Garcia’s law enforcement background. The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office oversees one of the deadliest jails in the state and entered into a limited 287(g) agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in January. Garcia has asserted that he brought more transparency to the department as its public information officer, but investigations by the San Antonio Express-News accuse the jail of being a “black box” with “public information scattered across multiple agencies.”

Still, Garcia believes his nearly two decades in law enforcement taught him to put people over politics.

“When I was responding to a call for service in my community, I never asked dispatch once whether that home I was headed to was Democrat or Republican,” Garcia said in an interview with KSAT 12. “I responded like lives were on the line—and we know in this midterm election cycle, lives are on the line.”

Garcia was also backed by the Blue Dog Democrats, which spent over $1 million boosting his campaign. In nearby Congressional Districts 28 and 34—which are also in South Texas—Blue Dog incumbent Congressmen Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez are also hoping to hold onto their seats in the face of Republican gerrymandering. They are considered among the most conservative Democrats in the U.S. House, and they managed to defeat Republican challengers in recent years. Just two weeks after an ICE agent killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, they both voted with Republicans to approve funding for the Department of Homeland Security.

In debates, Garcia sounded ideologically somewhat distant from typically conservative Blue Dog policy stances on matters like abortion and immigration enforcement. He said he was adamantly pro-choice, and he wouldn’t accept ICE attacking and dividing his community. Still, he proudly accepted the Blue Dog PAC’s endorsement.

“I’m a proud Blue Dog Democrat because I’m ready to get to work and deliver common-sense solutions for hard-working Texan families,” Garcia said.

Like District 35, the new boundaries for 28 and 34 would have handed a victory to Trump by 10 points in 2024. The 70-year-old Cuellar has held his seat since 2005, but he may face a unique challenge in this general election warding off Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina, who represents the core base of the district. Gonzalez will face Eric Flores, an Army veteran and lawyer from Mission. 

If they’re lucky, Garcia may find himself joining the ranks of those two remaining Texas Blue Dogs in Congress—but it will be an expensive uphill battle to avoid being swept aside in what is now more favorable red terrain in November.

The post Blue Dog Dem Fends Off Maureen Galindo in Wake of Anti-Zionist Tirades appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The highly dramatic—if not as thoroughly entertaining as advertised—U.S. Senate Republican runoff between Ken Paxton and John Cornyn ended about as soon as counties started reporting their early vote totals Tuesday night, with the attorney general challenger leading by around 20 points—effectively skunking the incumbent. 

This, of course, was little surprise by the time it came to pass—after President Donald Trump made a late endorsement for Paxton in the race last week. The political winds were always at Paxton’s back, while running headlong against Cornyn, who was irreparably tagged as an anti-Trump RINO, a squishy moderate in an era that demands battle-hardened “warriors”—those whose total fealthy to Trump is unquestioned. 

Cornyn had hoped to pull off a rare incumbent runoff victory as Trump stayed on the sidelines through much of the race. But the well-over-$100 million that he and his allied GOP groups pumped into ads blasting out Paxton’s numerous and varied scandals—from letting a charged child sex offender off with a sweetheart deal to his alleged self-dealing while in office, to his sordid extramarital affairs and on and on—did nothing but line the pockets of local Texas TV affiliates. 

Cornyn had repeatedly stated that Judgement Day would come for Paxton on runoff night. And the judgement that came was that the base of the party wants: more Ken Paxton. 

So down goes Cornyn, the silver-haired senior senator from Texas who spent nearly 40 years in elected office in the Lone Star State, riding into power as a district court judge, Supreme Court Justice, and state Attorney General—as the GOP built up its majorities and disassembled the Democratic Party—and meticulously built upon that power. 

He got to the U.S. Senate almost 25 years ago, serving through five presidencies and four presidents. He was an emblem for the sort of country club, Chamber of Commerce conservatism that helped Republicans win power in Texas and nationwide, then waned as Trumpism and right-wing hardliners ascended. 

Paxton, meanwhile, has been a key tribune of that hardline ascendancy in Texas. His political career has been prematurely eulogized with some frequency over the course of his 11 years as state AG: when he was first indicted on state securities fraud charges; when his top aides blew the whistle to the FBI accusing him of official corruption; when he was primaried by well-heeled challengers in 2022; when he was impeached by Republicans in the Texas House; when he was put on trial in the Texas Senate; when rumors of coming federal indictments swirled and swirled; when his wife and state Senator Angela Paxton publicly divorced him on “biblical grounds,” citing his repeated infidelity just as he began to launch his Senate bid; when his right-wing big donors in Texas declined to finance his Senate run; when Cornyn performed strongly in the March primary and Trump was rumored to be throwing his endorsement behind the incumbent. And on and on. 

Ken Paxton has repeatedly proven himself to have the politician’s equivalent of nine lives; he’s the Kevlar Ken to Teflon Don. 

Now, he will face off in what will be a very high-profile, very expensive general election contest against Democratic nominee and Austin state Representative James Talarico. National politics observers are already handicapping the race to benefit Democrats because of Paxton’s unique weaknesses as a candidate. And there may be some truth to that. Surely Talarico has a much better chance of pulling off a generational upset in Texas against Paxton rather than the staid Cornyn. 

But those who bet against Paxton do so at their own peril. As he’s proven time and time again, his perceived weaknesses have repeatedly morphed into political strengths. 

His victory Tuesday marks the final, if somewhat superfluous, nail in the coffin of the so-called Bush era of Republican politics in Texas.

Republican state Representative Mitch Little, who ascended to office after serving as one of Paxton’s defense attorneys in the AG’s impeachment trial, tweeted Tuesday evening the poem “Ozymandias”, which muses on the grandiose hubris of rulers and the fleeting nature of their power. 

Paxton’s celebratory watch party up in Plano was attended by troves of enthusiastic supporters. The only ones who showed  up for Cornyn’s impending political funeral were, apparently, members of the media. 

In his somber farewell address in downtown Austin, Cornyn mentioned Paxton not once, saying only that he’d support the Republican ticket writ-large. Bidding adieu, Cornyn went with a quote from Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech. 

Prior to that, however, the senator did get in some final ribbing shortly before the polls closed. Asked about his decision not to pull his negative ads against Paxton, he told CNN: “He’s gotten away with so much for so long and not been held accountable for it, but I think he is an embarrassment … and he’s completely unrepentant.” 

The post Judgement Day Comes for John Cornyn appeared first on The Texas Observer.