Colin Allred keeps Kamala Harris at arms length as he makes a play for the center

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On a recent appearance on MSNBC, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred was asked how Vice President Kamala Harris’ presumptive rise to the top of the party’s ticket was affecting his campaign in Texas to unseat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

Allred’s response was polite, but muted: “Vice President Harris was a member of the congressional Black Caucus and I’ve known her for some time and I support her nomination.”

That five-second comment was all the time Allred spent discussing Harris. He quickly pivoted for the rest of the seven-minute segment to attacking Cruz for blocking bipartisan border security and immigration bills, opposing abortion access and leaving the state for Cancun when millions of Texans had lost power in their homes in 2021.

Harris’s impending nomination has injected the November election with renewed enthusiasm among Democrats, who are hoping the historic nature of her candidacy as a woman of color could also boost down-ballot candidates. But in Republican-dominated Texas, Allred — who has been running his campaign as a centrist — is not flocking to her side.

Allred’s initial endorsement of her campaign was cautious and unclear — he posted from his X account on social media applauding Biden’s legacy as he announced he would withdraw from the race but it made no mention of Harris. His official endorsement came in the form of a clarification his campaign made to reporters after Biden subsequently endorsed Harris and as other Democratic lawmakers put out statements on social media and in news releases.

Harris has been to Texas a half dozen times in the past month, including two events where she targeted voter outreach at Black sororities and one in his hometown of Dallas — however, that visit was right before she announced her run. Allred has not appeared with her at any of those events.

The Cruz campaign has pounced on Allred’s difficult balancing act — both attempting to tie him to Harris’s political record and calling him out for keeping his distance from her.

“[Is] Can’t Comment Colin hiding from Border Czar Harris?” the Cruz campaign said in a statement, using a moniker the campaign has used to attack Allred. “Allred has had no issue being a rubber stamp for Kamala's disastrous open border policies for the past three years, but now he won't even be seen with her and Joe Biden in public. Why the sudden change of heart?”

For his part, Allred — who is vying to be the first Democrat elected to statewide office since 1994 — has spent the majority of his campaign appealing to the middle. He’s touted his vote condemning the Biden administration over its handling of the border, which ruffled feathers with other Democrats. And he’s actively pitched himself as a bipartisan legislator who will reach across the aisle.

“As a strategy, it’s probably wise for him to be less than vocal on the issue,” said Jason Villalba, chairman of the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation and a former Republican state representative. “If she’s able to maintain enthusiasm, he’ll probably ride that wave but he has to be careful about what happens in the next few weeks on this tumultuous campaign. He’s not taking any risks and he’s smart to do that.”

Allred’s campaign declined comment for this story.

Since Biden’s withdrawal last month, Harris has shattered fundraising records in the initial days of her campaign as Democrats unite around her with the singular goal of beating Republican Donald Trump in November. Crucially, recent polls have shown Harris faring more competitively, and even leading, in some battleground state polls where Biden appeared to have fallen irreversibly behind after his disastrous debate performance in June.

But even before the change, Allred’s campaign was projecting a close race against Cruz with some statewide polls showing a 3 percentage point lead for Cruz in July.

As a state candidate, Allred’s game plan was always to run ahead of the presidential nominee and Biden’s flagging numbers worried some Democrats, said Matt Angle, director of Lone Star Project a Democratic communications and research PAC. With Harris’ “reinvigoration” of the Democratic party, Angle said he expects her to get more than Biden’s 47% share of the Texas vote in 2020.

“If Colin can run ahead of her that could be enough to win,” he said.

Outperforming the top of the ticket will require a broad coalition that would include large portions of Hispanic and Black voters, who regularly vote for Democrats, as well as some independent and Republican voters who do not like Cruz and are open to voting for a Democrat, Angle said.

Harris’ rise will almost certainly boost turnout for Black voters, the Democratic party’s most reliable base, as well as South Asian voters, who see themselves in the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants. An increase in down-ballot votes from those constituencies would likely help Allred.

But because the coalition he is trying to build is precarious, Allred’s campaign appears to be assessing how close it wants to keep Harris during the fledgling phase of her campaign, said Mark Owens, co-director of The Citadel Symposium on Southern Politics.

It remains to be seen how far to the left of Biden Harris will run her campaign. But Owens said if she plays to the center and tries to put Texas in play, Allred would benefit. Already, however, Republicans are attacking her as more liberal than her former running mate and tagging her as a supporter of “open borders” and a ban on fracking, a policy from her 2019 presidential run that Harris has since said she would not implement. Both of those issues would be harmful to Allred in a state where fracking is big business and immigration is frequently the top concern for voters.

“There’ll be a lot of questions to figure out and they still have a lot of days to figure out their support for each other,” Owens said.

Angle said there’s nothing to figure out. Allred, he said, needs to stay focused on showing voters his bipartisan work in Congress to address issues like border security and pointing out that Cruz blocked an immigration bill drafted with Republicans this year.

Allred seems to be taking that advice, featuring in his political ads border sheriffs who say he is “standing up to extremists in both parties” and hitting Cruz for not crossing the political aisle to work on border security. He recently put out an ad with his wife, showing the two of them disagreeing on a number of household issues, but coming together as parents — in a nod to getting things done with Republicans to pass legislation.

“Colin and I don’t always agree,” his wife Aly said. “But we always work together, because that’s how you get things done,” Allred added.

That kind of campaign may have less pizzazz than Beto O’Rourke’s 2018 campaign against Cruz, which he lost by less than 3 percentage points, Angle said, but it will keep the Democratic base with him while not alienating other parts of the coalition that Allred needs to win.

“It’s better for him that Kamala is in the race and people are excited but that doesn’t change the way Colin has approached the race,” Angle said. “He’s had a common sense, straightforward way from the beginning and he’ll keep doing that.”

As Allred takes heat from Cruz for holding back on his public statements in support of Harris, his campaign has accused Cruz of similarly being uninterested in talking about Kate Cox, the Texas woman who had to leave the state to get an abortion that her doctor said was necessary for her health and future fertility. Allred has made abortion access another key issue in his campaign.

But Cruz’s campaign is intent on making the connection with Harris and forcing Allred to discuss his endorsement –- and with $12 million in his coffers as of July, Cruz has the money to keep pushing the issue.

“Will Colin Allred finally comment on his endorsement of her? Will he join her in public? Or will he continue hiding and avoiding the press?” the Cruz campaign said in a news release on the subject for the second time in as many days this week.

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