PrintMay 4, 2024
Ted is Cruzin' to victory
The campaign will start in a few weeks or after the runoffs are completed.
Based on the last poll, Sen. Ted Cruz is up 13 points against his Democrat challenger, Rep. Colin Allred. Overall, the RCP average has Cruz plus 8 based on the polls this year.
So what's going on? Sen. Cruz will cruise to victory if he follows the very successful "paint him a liberal" playbook that Texas's Gov. Greg Abbott used against Beto O'Rourke. In other words, the Abbott strategy reminded the voters that O'Rourke was too liberal for Texas. It worked because O'Rourke had a lot of videos and comments that were used against him on the campaign trail.
Painting Allred a liberal won't be hard, but will require a skilled campaign. My point is that Allred does not have all of those YouTube videos about taking away your AR-15s, but he does have a legislative record that "rhymes" with Pelosi. Sen. Cruz is off to an early start:
“Let me tell what this election is going to be about: It’s going to be about my record, and it’s going to be about Colin Allred’s record. Colin Allred is an extremely liberal Democrat congressman whose first four years in Congress he voted 100% with Nancy Pelosi,” said Sen. Cruz.He continued by sharing what he believes has been the consequences of Rep. Allred’s voting record.“He’s voted in favor of open borders over and over and over again. He’s voted in favor of releasing violent criminals over and over and over again. Just a few weeks ago, he voted with Joe Biden in favor of his stopping new permits to export liquid natural gas. Every one of those votes hurts the people of Texas,” said Sen. Cruz.
Allred went on defense from that, talking about his bipartisan votes, but did not really challenge what Cruz said.
So Cruz seems poised to win again. Cruz is also lucky that President Trump is on the ballot or driving up turnout.
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Image: Gage Skidmore, via Flickr // CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED
