San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Nine Democrats are vying to stop Cruz’s second reelection
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is running for reelection for the second time since first being elected in 2012.
While Cruz was considered a potential presidential contender again in 2024, he announced last year he was seeking reelection and is bracing for national Democrats to spend big to help defeat him.
“After Donald Trump, there is no Republican in the country that Democrats want to beat more than me,” Cruz said last year.
After narrowly surviving his 2018 campaign against Democrat Beto O’Rourke, the Houston Republican is awaiting the results of the March 5 Democratic primary to see who he’ll be battling in November.
Cruz, a 53-year-old from Houston, has his own Republican primary to get through first.
However, neither of his opponents has much name recognition or money, and neither has campaigned much.
The main contenders
Nine Democratic candidates are vying to take on Cruz, including four candidates who have past elective experience.
Among those is U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a three-term Dallas Democrat, who played four seasons in the NFL before a careerending injury in 2010.
Allred, 40, is a civil rights attorney who has pitched himself to voters as a bipartisan leader who will work across the aisle to get things done.
“I’ve shown in my time in Congress that it is possible to work across the aisle — I’m the most bipartisan member of the Texas delegation — while also standing up for my values,” Allred said in a recent debate.
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who runs a San Antonio immigration law practice, has been in the Texas Legislature since 2008 and has become a leading gun control advocate after the school shooting in Uvalde.
The 53-year-old former San Antonio City Council member has countered Allred, saying Texas needs a more progressive Democratic voice to go against Cruz.
Gutierrez said Texas has a lot of problems that need fixing and it won’t get done by “grabbing onto the Republican mantle.”
Then there’s the rest of the field in the Democratic primary.
State Rep. Carl Sherman has been in the Legislature since 2019 and before that was the mayor of DeSoto in Dallas County.
He has a history of fighting for criminal justice reforms including pushing for legislation to install air conditioning at state prisons.
Former two-term Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez is leaning into his unorthodox background as a selfproclaimed “Mexican biker lawyer covered in tattoos.”
Other candidates in the Democratic primary include Thierry Tchenko, a Houston resident who briefly worked for the White House Office of Management and Budget in the Biden administration; and Steven Keough, a Navy veteran who teaches law at St. Mary’s University Law School.
Also running are tax consultant Meri Gomez, businessman A. Robert Hassan and entrepreneur Heli Rodriguez Prilliman.
A possible runoff
With nine candidates in the race and no clear-cut runaway favorite, the race could be heading for a runoff.
Texas election law says that in races where no candidate gets 50% of the vote, the top two advance to a runoff election.
This year, that runoff election will be on May 24.
Cruz’s tenure in office
Cruz won his seat in 2012 after battling through a crowded nine-person GOP primary battle.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was the top vote-getter, but because he didn’t hit 50%, he and Cruz, who finished in second place, headed to a runoff where Cruz won.
Cruz easily won the general election and quickly made a national name for himself by becoming a leading critic of the Affordable Care Act, which included an all-night speech where he at one point read “Green Eggs and Ham” on the Senate floor as part of an effort to defund the program.
In 2016, he lost to Donald Trump in the presidential election before running for reelection to the U.S. Senate.
Cruz beat O’Rourke by fewer than 3 percentage points, the closest a Democrat has come to winning statewide office since the 1990s.
An easy primary
Cruz faces two lesser-known Republicans in his primary reelection bid.
Rufus Lopez lists himself as a San Antonio attorney and has raised $200 for his campaign.
Holland “Redd” Gibson, who lists himself as a Houston retiree, hasn’t raised any money for his campaign, according to the Federal Election Commission.