Texas Democrats are trying the “throw Ted Cruz in a locker” strategy – Mother Jones

One of the most important moments of Tuesday’s U.S. Senate debate in Texas centered on high school sports. For months, Sen. Ted Cruz and other Republicans have accused Democratic Rep. Colin Allred of allowing “boys in girls’ sports” — citing a vote he cast last year against the Protecting Women and Girls in Sports Act that aimed to do just that , to defund school sports programs that allowed transgender athletes to compete as a gender different from that assigned to them at birth. Republican outside groups have spent almost unimaginable sums on this line of attack. A current one New York Times The story revealed that they had spent at least $65 million on various anti-trans ads in key states. Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown alone was the target of $37 million in anti-trans attacks.

If you are a supporter of trans equality, the statement about boys playing girls’ sports is not the case technically This is true because it is based on a false and malicious premise – opponents cheat people who are actually competing. But everyone in both camps understands who and what is at stake and what exactly the Republicans in Washington want to do about it.

In the last week, Allred, a supporter of the Equality Act, which would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, has begun to push back more aggressively, if sometimes confusingly. On Friday, he responded to the outpouring with a direct-to-camera ad in which he said he doesn’t support “boys-on-girls sports or any of that ridiculous stuff Ted Cruz says.” And on Tuesday night, the former NFL linebacker used his previous professional experience to pin the issue back on Cruz. After Cruz compiled a long list of voices in which Allred appeared to show troubling levels of support for trans rights, Allred fired back:

I stand here as a representative for millions of Texans who are fed up with this act. When Cruz starts talking about youth sports, you have to pay attention because the only position he ever played was left out. I don’t mean to be mean, Senator, but please wait. Listen, I don’t support boys playing girls’ sports. I don’t. In my opinion, people should not be discriminated against. And what Sen. Cruz should try to explain to you is why he thinks they should do it. But ultimately he’s trying to play a little game called distraction, to distract you from his past of abandoning us when we need him most. Not being there when we need him. That’s what he’s trying to do. And that’s why he spends so much time on it.

These are, in short, the two competing theories about what could be the closest Senate race in the country right now: Cruz says Allred is a liberal; Allred says Cruz is a loser.

As my colleague Serena Lin reported earlier this month, Allred is running a very different campaign than Beto O’Rourke did in 2018. O’Rourke was willing to say almost anything and go anywhere. Allred is much more careful with his message, but spends much more money on television advertising to spread it. He is pushing for far more centrist policies when it comes to the federal government’s role at the southern border.

But Allred also has an even more extensive list of things Cruz has done over the last six years to piss people off. While Cruz returned to the issue of trans rights frequently during the debate, Allred repeatedly spoke about the inherent issue Smallness from the man standing next to him – and portrays the junior senator as illegitimate, a coward and lackey.

Twice during the January 6, 2021 debate, Allred brought up Cruz’s very specific whereabouts in what seemed like an obvious attempt to emasculate the former Princeton debate champion. Here is one of those moments:

The officials locked all the doors, we locked the doors through which the president passes to deliver the State of the Union with furniture we normally use to store papers, and I wrote to my wife, Ally, who is seven months pregnant and was home with our son Cameron, a text message to our son Jordan, who wasn’t yet two years old: “Whatever happens, I love you.” And I took off my suit jacket and was ready to go up the floor of the house to defend against the mob. At the same time that this mob came, Senator Cruz was hiding in a supply closet, having spread lies about the election across the country, having been the initiator of the attempt to overturn that election.

“And that’s fine – I don’t want him to get hurt by the crowd, I really don’t,” Allred said with a smile. But he added: “This election is about responsibility.”

Cruz shook his head as he did so, but Allred was right: Cruz was indeed hiding in a supply closet. In fact, the anecdote comes from Cruz’s own book: Justice corrupts.

“He’s never there for us when we need him,” Allred said elsewhere, linking the riot to another infamous episode in Cruz-lore. “When the lights went out in the energy capital of the world, he went to Cancun. On January 6, when a mob stormed the capital, he hid in a storeroom. And when the toughest border security bill in a generation came up in the US Senate, he rejected it. We don’t need a senator like that.”

As this exchange makes clear, this line of attack is not necessarily partisan or left-right. Allred hopes to appeal to at least some people who agree with Cruz on transgender equality. He needs the voices of some people calling for tougher policies on the southern border and has adjusted his messaging accordingly. But more importantly, he assumes that Democrats could easily flip this seat if enough people put aside their differences and agree on one thing: Ted Cruz is kind of a loser, right?