Colin Allred needs Democratic turnout for US Senate race; Biden debate did him no favors

As painful as it was for Democrats to watch President Joe Biden's shaky debate performance against former President Donald Trump on Thursday night, it must have been doubly agonizing for Colin Allred.

As the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in the red state of Texas, Allred's best shot at pulling off an upset is to have his party's base energized and motivated. And that typically comes with a boost from the top of the ticket. But energy was in short supply on the debate stage Thursday in Atlanta for the Democratic standard-bearer.

Allred, a three-term congressman from Dallas who is giving up a safe U.S. House seat to take on Republican incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz in the Nov. 5 election, faces the twin challenge of turning out every Democratic voter under the Texas sky and figuring out a way to peel off north of a half million voters who will cast ballots for Trump or a third-party candidate in the race for president but might not be keen on awarding Cruz a third six-year term in the Senate.

If that seems like a heavy lift, it is. But recent and not so recent Texas history offer plenty of examples of robust ticket-splitting. Let's go back to Cruz's last campaign in 2018. He squeaked out his victory over Democrat Beto O'Rourke, a former congressman from El Paso, by just under 215,000 votes out of about 8.4 million total votes cast. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, meanwhile, clobbered Democrat Lupe Valdez by more than 1.1 million votes in the same election.

The governor also received nearly 400,000 more votes than Cruz got, which suggests there were about that many Abbott-O'Rourke voters in 2018. Go back 20 years before that, and Republican Gov. George W. Bush got a whopping 68% of the vote. The next race on the ballot was for lieutenant governor, and Republican Rick Perry eked out his victory with barely 50%.

Heading into Thursday's debate, Allred could take comfort in knowing that in 2018, Trump, who was then two years into his presidency and facing his first midterm election cycle, was a giant motivator for Democrats to turn out to the polls. And so was Cruz, whose first term in the Senate was marked by him helping lead a government shutdown over his opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

This election cycle, Cruz likes to boast about how he's worked a time or two with Senate Democrats to get things like highway funding passed. A less polarizing Cruz makes it all the more important to Allred for Biden to motivate the Democratic base in Texas.

During and after the debate, which was sponsored by CNN and broadcast from Atlanta, Allred posted nothing on X, formerly Twitter, to highlight Biden's performance or to mock Trump. The Texas Democratic Party posted a photo of the president smiling in his trademark aviator sunglasses and declared him the winner, but many of the comments the post drew were brutal.

"I and the average person with at least a semi functioning brain beg to differ," one X user replied.

"I’m a Democrat. He needs to be replaced," posted another.

It's important to note that the debate was held in late June, and the election is not until November. That means Biden has time to rehab his performance, perhaps by doing TV interviews or responding to an unexpected crisis. Trump, who has made a career out of being mercurial, also has time to undo his comparatively measured debate performance, which some fact-checkers have noted was riddled with untruths and exaggerations.

It's also important to note that so far the race for U.S. Senate in Texas has been comparatively quiet. Sure, money is being raised on both sides, and Allred and Cruz are looking for ways to get their names and messages in front of voters.

Polling suggests Allred has a steep uphill climb. He is trailing Cruz by double digits, according to the Texas Politics Project's poll that came out in mid-June, and 4 of 10 voters said they've yet to form an opinion about Allred. He's not yet found a way to generate excitement about his race against Cruz to motivate Democrats, much less carve off some of the votes that Trump, and possibly Robert F. Kennedy Jr., will get.

Biden did Allred no favors Thursday. So that means he's on his own, at least for now.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Can Colin Allred motivate Texas Democrats in the 2024 US Senate race?