Colin Allred buys TV ad to highlight abortion rights bona fides ahead of Texas primary

Democratic U.S. Senate hopeful Colin Allred, pressing his mammoth cash advantage heading into the March 5 Texas primary, started airing television ads in the Austin and Rio Grande markets Tuesday, highlighting his support for abortion rights.

Allred, a three-term, Dallas-area congressman, ignores his Democratic primary opponents in the ad and aims his criticism at two-term Republican incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz in the 30-second spot titled "Freedom," which will also appear on digital platforms.

"In Texas we believe in freedom, keeping government out of our personal lives," Allred says in the video. "But our state’s extreme abortion ban lets politicians like Ted Cruz decide what care women get not their doctors."

A poll released this month by the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs showed Allred leading his closest Democratic primary rival, state Sen. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio, 40% to Gutierrez's 12% among Democratic respondents. None of the other seven candidates in the Democratic field registered more than 2% support.

Among all Texas voters, Cruz leads Allred by 9 percentage points and Gutierrez by 10, according to the poll. Early voting in the primary starts Feb. 20 and ends March 1. The last day to request a mail-in ballot is Feb. 23.

Allred's latest ad is his second of the primary season. Gutierrez has not yet bought a TV spot, but he plans to do so, a campaign aide told the American-Statesman but did not specify when. Meanwhile, Gutierrez is running a retail primary campaign that's heavy on traveling the state and making personal appearances.

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Campaign finance reports tallying the final three months of 2023 showed Allred pulling in more than $4.8 million in political donations compared with Gutierrez's $433,000 haul. The other Democrats in the race lagged far behind. Allred also outraised Cruz during that period and had $10 million in the bank while Cruz’s balance was $6.2 million.

Allred — whose first TV ad was largely biographical and highlighted his upbringing by a single mother and his career in college and pro football and later as a civil rights lawyer — targeted abortion because of the issue's ability to motivate Democratic voters after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade case, reversing nearly 50 years of federal constitutional protections to terminate a pregnancy.

State legislatures are now allowed to set their own abortion restrictions, and Texas has banned the procedure except to save the life of a pregnant patient or if the patient risks “substantial impairment of a major bodily function." Texas' abortion bans do not offer exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

After the high court reversed Roe v. Wade, Cruz called the ruling "nothing short of a massive victory for life."

"The decision reverses one of the most egregious departures from the Constitution and legal precedent the United States has ever seen, and one that has resulted in the deaths of 63 million American children," Cruz said.

In his TV ad, Allred said that if he's elected to the Senate, he'll "keep fighting to protect women's access to abortion."

Gutierrez is also staunchly in favor of abortion rights, but Allred's cash advantage gives him the larger megaphone to claim the issue before the wider Democratic audience.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas elections: Colin Allred attacks Ted Cruz over abortion rights