Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Houston on Friday with U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, the Dallas Democrat challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, for a rally that will mark the duo's first joint appearance on the campaign trail this election cycle.
The surprise visit, Harris' first trip to Texas since she officially clinched the Democratic presidential nomination more than two months ago, comes in the closing weeks of a campaign that has seen the vice president largely focus her efforts on other states seen as more competitive. Her appearance with Allred signals national Democrats’ renewed interest in the Texas Senate race, which Democrats see as one of their few viable options to pick up a seat in the upper chamber.
The location of Harris’ rally has yet to be announced. It is slated to take place at some point between 3 and 8 p.m. Friday, according to a Democratic National Committee event page.
As early voting kicked off Monday, Cruz remained favored to continue Texas Republicans' three-decade winning streak in statewide elections, with an average lead of about 4 percentage points, according to FiveThirtyEight’s rolling average of recent public polls. But Allred has fueled optimism among Democrats by consistently outraising Cruz and narrowing the polling gap in recent weeks, attracting multimillion-dollar investments from national Democratic groups and prompting two leading elections forecasters to shift their outlook for the contest from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.”
Throughout the campaign — and especially in the final weeks — Allred has leaned into Texas' abortion ban, running ads that seek to tie Cruz to the ban's lack of exception for cases of rape and incest. A spokesperson for Allred's campaign said he would continue to focus on the state abortion ban at Friday's rally.
"What women in Texas are facing every day under Ted Cruz’s abortion ban is unacceptable," Allred said in a statement. "By supporting an abortion ban that makes no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother, Ted Cruz has put women at risk."
Texas' abortion ban does contain an exception to save the life of the mother, though critics say the law's language is unclear and has led to women — some of whom Allred has featured in his ads — leaving the state to access life-saving care. Cruz, meanwhile, has repeatedly declined to say where he stands on the question of rape and incest exceptions, arguing the matter should be settled at the state level.
Allred's joint appearance with Harris comes after he has spent the last couple months generally keeping his distance from the vice president. He offered a cautious embrace of Harris' candidacy after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed her, then briefly voiced his explicit support for Harris in a speech at the Democratic National Convention that otherwise focused on going after Cruz.
Allred has focused on courting moderate voters, seeking to portray himself as a centrist who would work across the aisle and take a stricter approach to border security and immigration than other Texas Democrats. Cruz has disputed the authenticity of Allred's moderate posture, often by tying him to Harris and the more liberal stances of the Biden-Harris administration.
Public polling has consistently shown Harris trailing Republican nominee Donald Trump by several percentage points in Texas, with the Allred-Cruz margin typically a few points closer. No Democratic presidential nominee has carried the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
In 2020, Trump defeated Biden in Texas by 5.6 percentage points, the narrowest margin for a GOP nominee since 1996.
A recent statewide poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that 44% of likely Texas voters view Harris favorably, while 50% hold an unfavorable view. Her outlook was markedly better in a poll from the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs, conducted around the same time, which put Harris at 49% favorable and 51% unfavorable.
In the same Hobby School survey, Trump was viewed favorably and unfavorably by an even 50-50 split.
Disclosure: University of Texas at Austin and University of Houston have been financial supporters 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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