Texas Democrats hope to unseat Ted Cruz, but which candidate is best poised for the fight?

The overarching questions for Texas Democrats heading into the final weeks before the March 5 primary is whether the nine-candidate race for the U.S. senatorial nomination can be settled without a runoff, and who is best poised to go toe-to-toe with Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican incumbent seeking a third term.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio, who likes to boast that he is "unapologetically progressive," is hoping his low-budget but travel-heavy campaign can rally the Democratic Party's liberal base. Meanwhile, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas is hoping that his prodigious fundraising and his support from the national Democratic establishment imbues his candidacy with the air of inevitability that brings a majority of Democratic voters in line.

A poll released just before Tuesday's start of early voting suggests that Allred is entering the homestretch of the campaign with the wind at his back. A poll of self-identified registered voters by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas showed Allred with 52% support from Democratic respondents compared with 14% for Gutierrez. Five of the remaining candidates were stuck in the low single digits, while two of the others floundered at zero.

The same poll showed Cruz ahead of both Democrats with 46% to Allred's 32% and 45% against 31% for Gutierrez.

In an interview with the American-Statesman, Gutierrez acknowledged that he's playing catch-up to Allred, in both the polling and in raising the money needed to make his case in a state with 20 broadcast media markets and a land mass second only to Alaska.

"We raise money every day and try to do the best we can in that department," said Gutierrez, who has been in the state Senate for three years and served in the Texas House from May 2008 to January 2021. "I think our message is getting out. Just about every progressive group across the state has endorsed us."

Allred, a former NFL linebacker who worked as a civil rights attorney when he ousted Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Session from his Dallas congressional district in 2018, is using his campaign war chest — which stood at $10 million to start the year — to reach voters through TV and digital ads.

In his ads and at campaign appearances, Allred all but ignores his rivals for the Democratic nomination, instead focusing solely on targeting Cruz.

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In a mid-February video on his campaign Facebook page, Allred made no mention that the start of early voting for the primary was just days away, and that the primary itself was coming up in two and a half weeks. Instead, he reminded viewers that Cruz had taken a trip to Cancun in February 2021 while nearly all of Texas was blanketed by one of the deadliest winter storms in state history.

"On Nov. 5th, let's give Ted Cruz a permanent vacation," Allred said, skipping ahead to the date of the general election.

So far, Allred has purchased television time for two campaign ads and has done several interviews with Texas and national broadcast outlets, including one last week with Rev. Al Sharpton on MSNBC in which he accused Cruz of "callousness and arrogance" for riding out the deep freeze in the Mexican resort city.

Gutierrez's campaign is on something of an extended road trip with recent stops in Tyler, Austin, Laredo and Uvalde — the city in his state Senate district that has become the symbolic cornerstone of his campaign after the May 24, 2022, mass shooting at Robb Elementary School. He often tears up as he recalls meeting the victims' families in the hours after the massacre and watching the police body-camera video of the bodies of the dead children being carried from their classrooms.

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"I'm going to talk about it forever," Gutierrez said as he made the case for banning the sale of military-style rifles like the one used by the 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde. "Maybe one day when politicians in Washington and everywhere else are made to look at pictures like I've seen, maybe, then we'll get real change."

The winning Texas Democrat will face an uphill climb

During the only debate of the primary campaign, hosted by the AFL-CIO in Austin, Allred said he wants to be a consensus builder in a Senate presently gripped by partisan gridlock.

"I'm proud that I am the most bipartisan member of the Texas delegation," said Allred, who later won the labor group's endorsement. "Because, when you are raised by a single mom, you don't have time for theoretical ideas that are never going to become law. You actually have to get things done."

Democratic activist Jen Ramos of Austin said Gutierrez's passion and retail approach to the campaign not only resonates with progressive Democrats, but he could inspire more of them to vote and perhaps deliver results that are not evident in polling. She also warned that Allred could pay a price by communicating largely through the filter of TV and video and less so in personal appearances.

"TV can be important, and money is a necessary evil in campaigns," said Ramos, who is a member of the State Democratic Executive Committee. "But I say this as a highly involved and as a highly tuned-in Democrat as you can get, you can't convince me to pick up a clipboard and go knock on doors for you if you don't show up."

Randall Bryant, the chairman of Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce who got involved in politics while still in grade school as a campaign volunteer for former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk in the late 1990s, said he worries that the party might lose the loyalty of one of its key pillars: Black men, particularly Black men who are successful in business.

The nomination of Allred, who could become the first Black U.S. senator in Texas history, would likely make it more difficult for Republicans to lure away Black men this cycle, he said. But more importantly, he's a candidate who promotes a pragmatic message focusing on economic issues.

"If Colin were to win, the nominee would do a great job at the top of the ticket to reach African American voters," said Bryant, who has not made a formal endorsement in the primary. "But I think that a (business-minded) messaging strategy from the Democratic Party is more important, no matter who wins the nomination."

Even though the Texas Politics Project Poll shows Allred running strong, it also shows that neither he nor Gutierrez have locked in their voters. More than 35% of Democratic respondents either have not heard of or had not yet formed an opinion about Allred. For Gutierrez, that number stood at 45%. Nearly 2 in 10 Democratic respondents were either undecided or would have liked to have someone else in the Senate race for whom to vote.

Cruz is heavily favored to win in the Republican primary where he faces two political newcomers, retiree Holland "Redd" Gibson of Houston and San Antonio attorney R.E. "Rufus" Lopez.

Early voting in the primary runs through March 1. Election day is March 5.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas elections: Colin Allred, Roland Gutierrez in race to battle Cruz