Colin Allred urges voters to back Kamala Harris at DNC

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CHICAGO — U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, urged Democrats to elect Vice President Kamala Harris during the final night of the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, giving his most explicit support for the candidate since she took over the Democratic ticket.

“I’m so proud to be here to support our next president, Kamala Harris,” Allred said in brief remarks from the main stage.

Allred, who is challenging U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, this year in one of the Senate Democrats’ top flip targets this year, has so far run his race largely independently of Democrats outside the state, focusing on Texas issues rather than yoking his candidacy to the presidential ticket. During an address to the Texas delegation on Thursday morning, Allred leaned heavily into attacking Cruz without mentioning Harris.

Allred’s remarks Thursday night were brief relative to other convention speakers, and his endorsement remained relatively muted. He focused most of his 3-minute address on beating Cruz and former President Donald Trump, whom he derided as “me-guys.”

“You know, the type to talk a big game, only care about themselves, but you don’t want to get stuck with them at a barbecue,” Allred said. “We’ve got a message for the me-guys. ‘We’ is more powerful than ‘me’.”

“We will restore reproductive freedom. We will secure the border. We will protect Medicare and Social Security,” Allred continued. “And we will turn the page and write a new chapter for this country and elect Kamala Harris to be the next president and beat Ted Cruz.”

Allred garnered sustained chants of “Beat Ted Cruz,” a senator who himself says he is the most reviled Republican among Democrats behind Trump.

After Allred spoke, a Cruz spokesperson said, “Can’t comment Colin showed Texas tonight who he really is” and added, “Colin Allred is a far left radical who wants open borders, boys in girls bathrooms, and our police defunded.”

Allred shared the stage with other House Democrats in competitive Senate races, including Michigan’s Elissa Slotkin and Arizona’s Ruben Gallego. Michigan and Arizona are both considered more competitive than Texas. He spoke shortly before Harris was set to take the stage to close out the convention.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, chaired the convention on Thursday. Kim Mata-Rubio, whose daughter was killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting, was included in a group conversation with others impacted by gun violence. Mata-Rubio ran unsuccessfully for Uvalde mayor last year.

Harris’s campaign has proven to be something of a double-edged sword for Allred. On the one hand, her historic candidacy appears to be boosting Democratic enthusiasm that could help down-ballot candidates like him. But he’s also been reluctant to show too much enthusiasm for the Democrat, as he tries to court independent voters in a red state.

As a result, he’s kept her at an arm’s length. He did not join her for any of her half dozen appearances in Texas in July. And his initial endorsement of her was murky. He has not officially posted a campaign statement endorsing her, but his campaign has told reporters that he is backing the vice president.

“I want to both run for this office the way I plan on serving in it, which is that I’m focused on Texas,” Allred said in an interview Thursday morning. “We have a very singular choice, which is who’s going to serve us for the next six years. It’s going to be until 2030, past the … term of the next president.”

Allred acknowledged that voters he is trying to court may not be as supportive of Harris, who was a much more progressive lawmaker during her time in the U.S. Senate. Allred has voted against his party on recent messaging bills, including on the administration’s handling of the border.

“What I’m trying to do in this campaign is make sure that the Texas I know gets the representation that it deserves, and so yes that, of course, will mean that we’re going to try to be reaching out to folks who maybe won’t be the same targets as some other campaigns,” Allred said.

A poll released Thursday by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs showed Allred 2 points behind Cruz. It’s a closer margin than Cruz’s 2018 reelection against Beto O’Rourke, where Cruz won by just under 3 points.

The Harris campaign does not consider Texas a battleground and does not plan to invest in the state. The short runway for the campaign, which launched after President Joe Biden stepped down from the ticket last month, has forced the campaign to be laser focused on its most attainable states.

“At the end of the day, our responsibility as a presidential campaign is to ensure we get to 270 [electoral votes],” Harris campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said at a DNC event on Tuesday. “I would love to get to a bigger number than that, but that is all we care about.”

Allred wasn’t concerned Harris’ campaign wasn’t focusing more on Texas. His Senate campaign — like all Democratic statewide campaigns in Texas — largely planned its strategy without expecting an influx of resources from the top of the ticket. Texas Democrats launched last month the first coordinated campaign led by a Senate candidate in decades, bundling resources for candidates across the ballot.

“There are important things that will be happening up and down the ballot, especially at the presidential level,” Allred said during his interview. “I understand that. But for us, we have a very singular choice, which is who’s going to serve us for the next six years.”

Disclosure: University of Houston has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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