Former Texas Rep. Colin Allred is making another run for the U.S. Senate after the Democrat lost to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz just eight months ago.
Allred is looking to challenge for the seat of Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who is facing his own challenge from within the Republican Party from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Allred announced his return to the political arena with a campaign video released Tuesday, in which he took shots at both Cornyn and Paxton, describing them as “too corrupt to care about us and too weak to fight for us.”
A former NFL linebacker and attorney, Allred retold the story of how he went undrafted in the NFL but worked hard enough to eventually turn pro and buy his mom a house.
TEXAS AG KEN PAXTON ANNOUNCED RUN FOR US SENATE
“The truth is you shouldn’t have to have a son in the NFL to own a home,” Allred said.
“Everything is backwards,” he continued. “Folks who play by the rules and keep the faith just can’t seem to get ahead. But the folks who cut corners and cut deals — well, they’re doing just fine.”
Allred pledged to run on an “anti-corruption plan.”
“I know Washington is broken,” he said. “The system is rigged. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In six years in Congress, I never took a dime of corporate PAC money, never traded a single stock.”
Chris Gustafson, communications director at Senate Leadership Fund, the top super PAC supporting Senate Republicans, released a statement regarding Allred’s entrance into the race in Texas.
“Colin Allred is an out of touch Washington, DC liberal who supported Joe Biden’s open borders, biological men competing against our daughters, and even said it would be ‘better’ if the Second Amendment had never been written,” Gustafson said in the statement. “Texas voters have already rejected Allred for the radical liberal he is, and they’ll do it again next fall.”
Allred’s announcement comes just eight months after he lost by nearly 9 percentage points to Cruz. That race was one of the most expensive in the country last cycle, with Democrats spending more than $130 million trying to unseat Cruz.
Allred played four seasons in the NFL, all with the Tennessee Titans, after being undrafted out of Baylor University. He entered Congress by flipping a Republican district in Dallas in 2018.
Former astronaut Terry Virts also entered the U.S. Senate race as a Democratic candidate.
Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who narrowly lost to Cruz in 2018 and later unsuccessfully ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination and was defeated by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in the 2022 Texas gubernatorial election, is mulling another Senate run next year.
Also expressing interest is Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro, who for over a decade has represented a congressional district in and around San Antonio.
In the race for the Republican Senate nomination, three-term Rep. Wesley Hunt, a rising MAGA star who represents a Houston area district, is also mulling a Senate run. Sources confirmed to Fox News earlier this year that Hunt had made his case to President Donald Trump’s political team that he’s the only person who can win both a GOP primary and a general election.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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