Ted Cruz already has a prominent opponent. But this Democrat might have a better shot | Opinion

Texas is mainly a Hispanic state again.

So, let me tell you what that means politically.

Nothing.

For decades, Republicans have said they can continue to remake Texas if the GOP can hold 40% of Hispanic voters.

It’s happening.

Thanks in part to Texas Democrats’ demoralized collapse and a lack of strong Hispanic candidates, Republicans are winning more votes in the former Democratic strongholds of San Antonio and South Texas.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a San Antonio Democrat, could change all that.

Gutierrez, the passionate defender of Uvalde children and families after the Robb Elementary tragedy, announced his campaign for U.S. Senate with an effective slogan: “Do something now.”

“What happened in Uvalde wasn’t about guns — it was about neglect, the neglect of rural Texas,” he said in his campaign rollout video, hinting at a direct play for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s rock-solid base of Texas rural voters.

Gutierrez, a lawyer, is running for the Democratic nomination to challenge Cruz because Texas is doing nothing but “taking care of rich people while the poor people — the working class — get screwed over,” he said, calling for voters to “turn frustration into action.”

As you’d expect, he played the Cancún card.

“When our senator goes to Cancún when Texans are fighting for their lives in a winter storm — that’s just indefensible,” he said in the YouTube.com video at rolandfortexas.com.

Gutierrez is running in the March 5 Democratic primary against a much better-funded Democrat, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred of Dallas.

But most Texas Democrats live south of Austin and have seen Gutierrez campaign endlessly on TV and in the Texas Senate in the name of Robb Elementary’s 19 murdered children and two lost teachers, for safer gun laws.

Calling today’s politics a “punching ground of insults,” he said he wants Texas to “get back to some sense of civility and civics.”

Cruz is a Houston lawyer. He has been a back-alley brawler since the 2012 campaign, when he came from nowhere to win the Republican nomination — which has been tantamount to election for 30 years — despite drawing only about 630,000 votes.

Look, this is a guy who has run for president against Donald Trump. So he punches first.

His spokesman said Gutierrez and Allred will “slug it out for who can be the most radical leftist in the state.”

Allred, a lawyer and former Baylor and Tennessee Titans football player, has already raised $6 million-plus for the campaign against Cruz.

But Texas Democrats have shown at least twice that they favor Austin or South Texas candidates.

In 2020, Dallas state Sen. Royce West took 25 years of experience and strong support from Democratic leaders into a U.S. Senate race for the nomination to challenge U.S. Sen. John Cornyn. But Austin-area Democrat MJ Hagar won the nomination and lost to Cornyn by 10 points.

Just last year, Galveston trial lawyer Joe Jaworski was set up with bipartisan support for a strong November campaign against ethically challenged Attorney General Ken Paxton of McKinney.

But Jaworski barely made the primary runoff ahead of Dallas civil rights attorney Lee Merritt and couldn’t overcome heavy South Texas runoff voting for Brownsville civil liberties lawyer Rochelle Garza.

She won the nomination and lost to Paxton by 9 points.

In other words, Allred has tremendous appeal and a huge campaign bank account.

But Dallas is the only solidly Democratic county north of Austin. Gutierrez is better known among Houston and San Antonio Democrats after his ferocious fight for Uvalde.

None of this probably matters much.

Cruz is not as vulnerable as he was in the 2018 off-cycle election against challenger Beto O’Rourke. This is a presidential election, where Texas will be expected to vote heavily for whichever Republican presidential candidate is on top of the ticket.

Cruz will be heavily favored against even a strong Democrat.

If the party can find one.

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