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As the Nov. 5 general election gets closer, the rhetoric gets hotter and the commercials get more frequent. It’s all tied together, especially in the race for the U.S. Senate seat currently occupied by Ted Cruz.
Colin Allred is using his TV ads to fight back against claims and accusations made against him in Cruz’s commercials, which he does in “For Texas,” a commercial released since we last fact-checked an Allred commercial. It’s a rather drastic departure from that earlier clip that presented assorted law enforcement officers touting Allred’s tough stance on border security.
The commercial is split in two parts: Allred addresses Cruz’s repeated claim that the former pro football player is in favor of “boys playing girls’ sports” and of “boys going into girls’ locker rooms” in the first half, then moves on to discuss positions he says he truly favors.
In time for tomorrow’s election, here’s a fact-checking look at Allred’s “For Texas” commercial.
THE CLAIM: “You’ve seen the ads from Ted Cruz lying about my record.”
THE FACTS: When Allred issued this claim, a few headlines popped up on screen, including, most prominently, “Fox News Caught Ted Cruz Lying Again” from a 2015 article in The Nation. In the piece, the writer notes that a Cruz commercial painting him as a “truth-teller” was inaccurate because of some lies he had been caught in before that point. Because that article was from 2015, it did not reference Allred or the 2024 Senate race in any way.
THE CLAIM: “I don’t want boys playing in girls’ sports, or any of this ridiculous stuff Ted Cruz is saying.”
THE FACTS: The Cruz campaign has now released multiple commercials declaring that Allred “demands” or “wants” girls’ locker rooms and bathrooms to be open to boys, and for boys to play on girls’ athletic teams. As noted in our other fact-checking articles, the claim by Cruz is misleading in that Allred is in favor of a bill that would prohibit discrimination against LGBTQ students (House Resolution 5) and was against a bill that would keep transgender students from participating on an athletic team that aligned with their current gender identity (House Resolution 734). If the athlete in question is a male at the time, that athlete would play on a boys’ team.
THE CLAIMS: “I’ll keep fighting to protect Medicare, Social Security and to secure the border.”
THE FACTS: During his time in Congress, Allred has been a vocal proponent of the Affordable Care Act and many other ways to increase accessibility to health care, including expanding access to Medicaid. In 2023, Allred praised the new provisions to the Inflation Reduction Act that allowed Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower costs of prescriptions. In a September op-ed, Allred also noted that Cruz voted against the legislation, which he says, strengthens Medicare’s finances. Allred’s votes while in Congress show a clear, consistent alignment with the claim that he has “fought to protect” Social Security, earning him a 100% score from the Alliance for Retired Americans.
Regarding border security, things are a touch murkier when Allred’s entire history is examined, rather than only the recent past. As heard in ads for Cruz, Allred has referred to the border wall as “racist” more than once, although that was as far back as 2018, and Allred has explained in interviews during his current campaign that the comment was in connection to his belief that citizenship should’ve been expanded to “dreamers,” or DACA recipients, and not to a border wall.
More recently, however, Allred has broken with his own party by coming out for a much stronger border security program. In January, Allred was one of only a few Democrats to condemn President Joe Biden’s handling of the border. He also championed the bipartisan Senate Border Bill that was defeated by a number of Republicans, including Cruz, that would’ve provided increased funding and staffing for tighter border security measures.
