But the question remains, can he beat Cruz?
Polling shows that the race between Allred and Ted Cruz is nearly in a dead heat, and the Allred campaign is pulling out all the stops in an effort to elect the first statewide Democrat in 30 years. Last night’s flex: Welcoming actor and political activist Connie Britton to the campaign trail during a Dallas phone banking event.
Around these parts, Britton is probably best known for her acclaimed portrayal of Tami Taylor in Friday Night Lights, but she has also starred in Nashville, American Horror Story and HBO’s White Lotus, to name a few. Raised in Virginia, Britton calls Texas her “home away from home,” and has weighed in on the Lone Star State’s politics in elections past. In 2018, she endorsed Democrat Beto O’Rourke in the Senate race against Ted Cruz and Allred in his congressional campaign.
Returning now to Texas, she said, is an opportunity to bring attention to the “common sense” policies Allred is running on, like reinstating federal protections for abortion access.
“I grew up in a time where it was not nearly this divisive. I have a lot of longstanding Republicans in my family and I don't believe that what we are seeing now in terms of extreme right thinking is really reflective of who any of us are, Republicans or Democrats,” Britton told the Observer. “[Allred, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz] are people who, I listen to them talk and I think, ‘Oh yeah, he's saying things that I care about. And he looks like a person that I would respect and like a person with integrity.’ These are fundamental American values that we've lost sight of.”
For months, Allred has held up reproductive rights access as a cornerstone of his campaign, aligning himself with female voters in the post-Dobbs era. The coalition “Women for Allred,” — chaired by his wife Aly Eber, Wendy Davis and plaintiffs from the Zurawski v. Texas case — has honed in on Cruz’s sudden silence on abortion during campaign rallies across the state.
While Friday Night Lights ended in 2011, Britton believes her portrayal of a Texas mother, wife and community member, is one that many Texas women are able to see themselves in. She is someone who looks like, sounds like, dresses like and acts like a Texas woman — like a Texas woman who may not have voted for Allred in the past — and it’s part of what makes her a powerful messenger for the campaign.
“I think that these laws that Ted Cruz has been enforcing in Texas are completely devaluing women,” Britton said. “And if we're not careful as women, we can just let that happen. It's important for us to take this moment and say ‘I have value. I deserve to have access to health care. I deserve to have a choice about what my family is going to look like. I deserve to not bleed out when I have a miscarriage.’”
Lauren Miller from Dallas was one of the plaintiffs from the Zurawski v. Texas case, where 20 women and 2 medical practitioners sued the state after failing to receive care for medical complications during their pregnancies, who is campaigning with Women for Allred. Like Britton, Miller looks like the stereotypical Texas woman, with a family and a stable career, and yet she “still needed an abortion.” Speaking publicly about her experience of traveling to Colorado to receive potentially life-saving care is empowering both for herself and for female voters, she said.
A Gallup survey taken earlier this year showed that more and more voters are identifying as pro-choice, and abortion is rising in importance as a voting issue. Forty percent of pro-choice voters reported they will not even consider a candidate who does not share their stance on abortion, a wide breadth that Allred seems primed to scoop up.
Still, the question “Will Texas turn blue?” seems to present itself every election cycle, just to fall short.
“Just as a reminder for folks who are scared, maybe they've never voted for a Democrat before, nobody's going to see who you vote for,” Miller told the Observer. “Your vote is safe. It is your own.”
The Woman for Allred
If polling numbers aren’t something you rely on for an electoral pulse check, perhaps your head was turned by the news that Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris is landing in Houston on Friday. The National Democratic Party typically doesn’t focus on Texas during presidential elections, much less in the days away from the election, so it could be a signal that the party sees the Allred-Cruz matchup as a viable win.Harris and Allred will be teaming up to talk about reproductive rights in the rally at the end of this week, the first time the two have appeared together on the campaign trail since the vice president was announced as the new nominee earlier this year.
Aly Eber, Allred’s wife, has taken an active role in the campaign’s reproductive rights advocacy and is “looking forward” to Harris’ Texas stop, where she is expected to weigh in on the state’s restrictive abortion ban.
“She's taking this opportunity to showcase the stories of women in Texas who have been living under this abortion ban, who have been having to flee their state to get the medical care that they need, and she's really shining a light on an issue that's so important to so many Texas women,” Eber said during the campaign stop. “What we see on the ground in Texas is that so many people are feeling like the politics that they're seeing on their TV is not what they see in their friends and neighbors, and that we do have a lot more in common than what separates us.”
