Ted Cruz on his possible Democratic opponent for 2024: "Allred is too extreme for Texas"

After running against all odds in the 2012 primaries, Ted Cruz defeated his Democratic opponent to win the Senate. Six years later, he won a second term after defeating Beto O'Rourke, and in the run-up to 2024, he has already begun to get to know his rivals. Colin Allred announced that he will seek to unseat the Republican, and the reaction from Cruz was swift.

Allred was a former soccer player who served as a civil servant in the Obama Administration, arriving in the House of Representatives in January 2019, and is now looking to move up a rung to the Senate. "I'm running for U.S. Senate because Texans deserve a Senator whose team is Texas. Ted Cruz only cares about himself," he wrote in his launch tweet, in which he also attached a video criticizing Cruz's years as a legislator.

"Some people say a Democrat can't win in Texas. Well someone like me was never supposed to get this far. I've taken down a lot tougher guys than Ted Cruz. So let's get on the field and find out," he added in the film, which has more than one million views.

Allred is currently the only prominent Democrat to enter the Democratic primary, where Roland Gutierrez and Joaquin Castro, brother of the 2020 presidential candidate, are also expected to compete.

Ted Cruz's response

The senator responded through his spokesman, Nick Maddux, who painted the congressman as a puppet of Nancy Pelosi and associated him with radical ideologies. "Democrats have once again turned to a far-left radical to run for Senate. Not only does Colin Allred vote with Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time, but his voting record is completely out-of-touch with Texas," he said.

"Bottom line, Allred is too extreme for Texas. Thankfully, the Lone Star State has a tireless champion in Sen. Ted Cruz. For over a decade, Sen. Cruz has been leading the fight for jobs, freedom, and security in Texas," he added, elevating Cruz's candidacy.

According to the Republican campaign, the potential Democratic challenger wants men to compete in women's sports, to take guns away from law-abiding Texans and plans to ignore the crisis at the southern border.

"As Senator for Texas, Sen. Cruz will continue to do everything he can to bring more jobs to Texas, fight out-of-control government spending, and support the oil and gas industry from the attacks of Democrats like [President] Joe Biden and Colin Allred," Maddux concluded.

Cruz had difficulty securing his second term in 2018, given that he was severely outspent financially. According to the National Elections Commission, O'Rourke's campaign raised $80 million, almost twice as much as Cruz's. On Election Day, the former Texas attorney general won with 50.90% of the vote, against 48.33% for the Democrat, who would then proceed to run again, first for president in 2020 and then for governor in 2022.