Who is Colin Allred? A native of Dallas, he received a scholarship to play for Baylor as a linebacker. He was signed by the NFL Tennessee Titans in 2006 and played in less than half their games between 2007 and 2010. After a serious injury in that final year, he left the NFL and attended the leftist UC Berkeley School of Law. He then worked for Obama's Department of Housing and Urban Development and moved on to the controversial Perkins Coie law firm, who were involved with the notorious Steele dossier.
In 2018, he ran for Congress and defeated GOP incumbent Pete Sessions. From 2019 to 2023, he voted with Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time and then with Biden after her term ended as Speaker. In 2019, he co-sponsored the Women's Health Protection Act, which would have made no restrictions on abortions into Federal law. Minnesota Congressman Tim Walz also co-sponsored the bill as well as Senator Kamala Harris in the Senate, but it died there in committee.
In 2021 and 2022, he co-sponsored and voted for the Act again, along with Walz, but in 2022 it only failed in the Senate because of the 60-vote filibuster, which then-Vice President Kamala Harris promised (but failed) to get 51 votes to eliminate the long-standing rule in order to pass the bill.
Allred's opponent, incumbent Senator Ted Cruz, has always expressed his opposition to abortion, but has never supported a total ban. In 2017, even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade five years later, Cruz co-sponsored a 20-week abortion ban with Lindsey Graham, but it failed the next year. Allred's campaign, with the aid of millions of dollars of TV ads (which have eroded Cruz lead) have tried to imply Cruz was responsible for the 2021 Texas Heartbeat Act, passed by the state legislature, banning abortion after the sixth week except for the safety of the mother.
Allred has not only voted twice for no exceptions on abortion, but more troubling is his vote in 2023 against the Born-Alive Survivors Protection Act, also known as the "Born Alive Act," which would have required a health care practitioner to provide care for any child born alive after a failed abortion attempt. It's currently in limbo in the Senate. Walz had cruelly voted against the bill in 2015 when it was first proposed, and Kamala Harris did in 2020 (just months before becoming Vice President). It passed the House that year but died in committee in the Senate.
As for the Southern border, Allred has always supported keeping it open, and even vowed to tear down that "racist wall." But after the Biden/Harris White House proposed an election-year border bill, which was doomed to failure because it would have allowed nearly two million to cross into the country each year (and even two of its three co-sponsors voted against it) Allred now attacks Cruz and Trump for its failure to pass.
And before their recent debate earlier this month, Cruz's campaign correctly pointed out that Allred had voted for (and publicly supported) same-sex sports in schools. Suddenly, four days before the debate, Allred's campaign claimed he did not support that (in spite of his record) and his campaign is now running ads with Allred falsely claiming he never supported same-sex sports and saying Cruz is lying and "is full of it."
With recent polls showing Cruz holding onto a narrow lead, the future of the Senate is at stake, with the GOP expected to retake control with 51 votes. Any GOP incumbent loss could mean the Democrats could overturn the filibuster; move to pass no restrictions on abortion; pack the Supreme Court; pass the trillion-dollar New Green Deal and add more Democrats to the Senate by giving statehood to Puerto Rico and DC.
The future of the direction of the country could literally hang on the result of the Cruz/Allred Senate race.