In closing days of Senate race, Cruz courts Latino voters alongside the border and Allred rallies in his hometown

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U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz spent the ultimate weekend of his reelection bid campaigning in El Paso and McAllen, taking his statewide tour to 2 of Texas’ metro areas with the most important concentrations of Latino voters as he seems to bolster his assist amongst one of many state’s key voting blocs.

The 2 border cities served as becoming backdrops for Cruz to tackle a problem on the coronary heart of his marketing campaign: immigration.

“I recognize coming to El Paso and telling you about the border is a little bit like going to Noah and telling you about the flood — you know!” Cruz stated at a Sunday afternoon rally at a jet terminal in east El Paso. “It is the worst invasion in our nation’s history.”

Hours later, at a McAllen burger restaurant, Cruz accused his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, of backing what he described because the Biden administration’s “open borders” insurance policies. However he additionally hit Allred for taking votes that ran counter to the state’s oil and fuel trade and the pure fuel fracking it depends on.

“I have spent 12 years as the leading defender of oil and gas in the United States Senate,” Cruz instructed a packed crowd at College Draft Home in downtown McAllen, the place he was joined by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro.

In the meantime, Allred used his closing days on the marketing campaign path to mobilize assist in his hometown of Dallas, one in all a number of Democratic strongholds the place he might want to maximize turnout to develop into the primary Democrat in 30 years to win a statewide election in Texas.

Making his closing pitch to voters at a packed rally on the Kessler Theater in Dallas’ bohemian Bishop Arts District, Allred forged Cruz as a self-centered, underperforming lawmaker who places his private ambitions forward of legislating.

“You don’t have to spend all of your time pitting folks against each other,” Allred stated. “That’s my biggest issue with Ted Cruz. It’s that he spent 12 years not trying to serve us, but 12 years getting attention for himself and finding the seams in our society and pulling them apart for his own benefit.”

Each candidates are making their closing arguments on the end result of a aggressive and costly race which may resolve management of the U.S. Senate and form the subsequent a number of years of Texas politics, as Allred seems to attain an earth-shattering upset and Cruz goals for a decisive win that would dispel discuss of Texas going blue.

For Cruz, the weekend stops in El Paso and McAllen — cities the place greater than 80% of residents are Hispanic — had been an indication of Texas Republicans’ more and more assertive efforts to court docket one of many state’s quickest rising and most politically fluid voting blocs. Over the past two elections, GOP candidates have made historic good points amongst Latino voters across the state, particularly in South Texas, the place Republicans have blasted Democrats’ insurance policies on immigration and oil and fuel and appealed to the massive swath of the voters that leans conservative on social points from abortion to LGBTQ rights.

At his McAllen cease, Cruz painted Allred as an extremist who was out of step with Texans on transgender rights. He reprised an assault that has featured closely in his marketing campaign’s adverts within the closing weeks, accusing Allred of supporting laws that might permit males to make use of ladies’s restrooms and boys to play in women’ sports activities.

“This is no longer a battle between Republican and Democrat, this is no longer a battle between conservative and liberal. This is a battle between sane and crazy,” Cruz stated. “We’re dealing with a world where one of our two major political parties can no longer figure out what is a woman.”

Allred has characterised the assaults as a “Hail Mary” and “desperate,” and defined that his assist for transgender rights is rooted in his perception that “folks should not be discriminated against.” He has additionally pushed again in opposition to Cruz’s assertion that he would pose a risk to vitality jobs within the Senate, looking for to reassure staff within the oil and fuel sector that he would defend their line of labor.

Latino voters have lengthy favored Democrats by snug margins in Texas, with exit polls measuring Democratic presidential nominees Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton successful the Latino vote by margins approaching 30 proportion factors. However in 2020, President Joe Biden gained the statewide Latino vote by solely 17 factors, whereas a handful of South Texas counties shifted dramatically towards former President Donald Trump, shedding their decades-old standing as Democratic bastions.

Alvaro Corral, a political science professor on the College of Texas Rio Grande Valley, stated it was smart for Cruz to spend time in South Texas in the course of the marketing campaign’s closing leg as a result of the area has develop into extra of a battleground the place he can discover persuadable voters. He stated the Rio Grande Valley is more and more turning into one of many state’s best areas.

“Both campaigns see it as a place where they can win votes,” he stated. “It’s as close to neutral ground as you can get.”

Cruz additionally campaigned final week in Jourdanton, a small city south of San Antonio in rural Atascosa County, a 66% Hispanic county the place Trump gained about two-thirds of the vote in 2020.

Allred has additionally tried to shore up his assist amongst Latino voters down the homestretch, visiting the Rio Grande Valley on Wednesday final week with stops in Edinburg and McAllen, capped by a night rally in Alamo with fellow U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, state Sen. Morgan LaMantia, and Democratic congressional candidate Michelle Vallejo.

He additionally launched a current Spanish language TV advert that argues Cruz would jeopardize Social Safety and Medicare advantages by working to boost the retirement age to qualify for advantages.

Most up-to-date polls have proven Allred main amongst Latino possible voters, although usually by a slimmer margin than 2018 Democratic nominee Beto O’Rourke, who got here inside 3 factors of unseating Cruz. Nonetheless, the polling has been everywhere in the map.

Cruz’s obvious enchancment amongst Latino voters might partly stem from Trump’s more and more sturdy standing amongst Latinos in Texas. In 2020, the then-Republican president logged historic good points in a number of predominantly Latino South Texas counties lengthy dominated by Democrats, whereas Latino voters in city and suburban areas additionally shifted proper. Some polls have proven Latino voters breaking for Trump at a document clip this cycle in Texas.

Wayne Hamilton, government director of Undertaking Purple TX, which has centered on making Republican inroads in closely Latino South Texas since 2018, stated voters within the space have responded to the GOP’s conservative message on immigration and the financial system.

“South Texas is conservative,” stated Hamilton, who ran Gov. Greg Abbott’s gubernatorial marketing campaign in 2014. “We’ve seen the Hispanic community is not a monolith like Democrats like to portray them… As a result, the South Texas community is trending more toward Republicanism.”

Hamilton stated Cruz was proper to concentrate on the financial system and the variety of vitality jobs Republican insurance policies have dropped at the area — jobs which he argued may very well be imperiled if Democratic insurance policies towards inexperienced vitality take maintain.

However immigration can be a prime challenge within the area and Cruz, who was endorsed by the Nationwide Border Patrol Council, stumped about Republican plans to stem the variety of migrants crossing the southern border.

Corral, the political science professor, agreed that immigration is a prime concern however stated Republicans must tread fastidiously on the problem lest they flip off voters who’re sympathetic to migrants trying to cross the southern border.

“It’s probably wise to put the more ethnic, race-baiting language that’s controversial aside,” he stated.

Allred concentrates on abortion

Within the closing days, Allred has centered greater than something on Texas’ abortion ban and his dedication to restoring entry to the process that was accessible earlier than the Supreme Court docket’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Allred blamed Cruz for Texas’ restrictive abortion legal guidelines, saying Cruz’s work getting extra conservative judges on the federal judiciary contributed to the choice ending the constitutional proper to abortion. Allred evoked the deaths of Nevaeh Crain and Josseli Barnica, two Texas ladies who died as a result of they may not terminate their nonviable pregnancies. Over 100 Texas OB-GYNs signed a letter Sunday saying each ladies can be alive if it weren’t for the state’s abortion restrictions, which have been challenged in court docket unsuccessfully by ladies who say the language outlining the one exception — when the lifetime of the mom is in danger — isn’t clear sufficient.

“Can you imagine going to one emergency room, being turned away, going to another, being turned away, and going to a third, where you’re starting to have organ failure, you’re finally admitted to the ICU, but it’s too late. This is happening in our state,” Allred stated, blaming Cruz for “taking away a fundamental right from Texas women and putting them in these dangerous positions.”

Cruz has fastidiously averted opining on the state’s abortion ban, saying that the laws and any future abortion coverage choices are the accountability of state lawmakers. He has supported proscribing abortion previously.

Allred additionally blamed Cruz for the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by way of his objection to certifying Arizona’s presidential election outcomes. Allred stated he can be the candidate to defend democracy, placing the declare in visceral phrases as he described making ready to bodily struggle the mob as they approached the Home chamber.

“You know, I went to DISD. If it’s going to go down, it’s going to go down,” Alred stated. “At the same time, after he’d been lying about the election, when that mob came, Ted Cruz was hiding in a supply closet.”

Allred additionally emphasised his average stances, which have shaped a core tenet of his marketing campaign. He stated he can be open to working with the opposite get together, and quoted the late Rep. John Lewis, saying, “We might have come here on different ships but we’re in the same boat now. We’re all Americans. We’re all Texans, and I’ll remind us of that.”

“We’re gonna make sure we lower your costs from your child care to your housings, your education costs, that we’re investing in the middle class from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down,” Allred stated.

Saturday’s rally was the final of Allred’s marketing campaign, delivered in his hometown to an viewers of roughly 500 supporters. It was a retread of the most important factors Allred has made all through the marketing campaign, which has gone extra on the offense in opposition to Cruz than former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 problem.

The viewers was stuffed with supporters who had already voted however urged one another to make use of the remaining few days earlier than Election Day to telephone financial institution and block stroll for Allred. Allred was joined on stage by his spouse, Aly Eber; state Rep. Jessica Gonzalez; and Dallas County Decide Clay Jenkins.