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Colin Allred is dropping out of the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and pivoting to run instead for the Dallas-based 33rd Congressional District.
Allred, a former Dallas congressman, was the party’s nominee for Senate in 2024, losing to Sen. Ted Cruz. In July, he launched a 2026 bid for Texas’ other Senate seat, but his path to the nomination was complicated by the September entry of state Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, and an expected run from U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a fellow Dallasite who is hosting an announcement event later Monday.
Allred’s swerve came on the last day for candidates to file for Texas’ 2026 primaries. In a statement, he said he was deciding to exit the Senate race because he wanted the party to avoid a runoff — a likely outcome if Crockett decided to run — and maximize its chances of winning in November. The nominee will face the winner of a three-way GOP primary between U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt of Houston.
“In the past few days, I’ve come to believe that a bruising Senate Democratic primary and runoff would prevent the Democratic Party from going into this critical election unified against the danger posed to our communities and our Constitution by Donald Trump and one of his Republican bootlickers Paxton, Cornyn, or Hunt,” Allred said. “That’s why I’ve made the difficult decision to end my campaign for the U.S. Senate.”
Instead, Allred said he will run for Congress in Texas’ newly drawn 33rd Congressional District, one of two winnable seats left for Democrats in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area after the U.S. Supreme Court last week allowed the state to use a new GOP-friendly map crafted earlier this year. The district contains about a third of the residents from Allred’s former congressional district, which he represented for six years after flipping the seat in 2018.
Texas’ 33rd District is currently represented by U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, but the new boundaries remove his hometown and political base of Fort Worth. He plans to run instead for the 30th District — currently represented by Crockett — if she gets into the Senate race as expected, a source familiar with the matter told the Tribune.
To capture the 33rd District, Allred will need to defeat his successor, Rep. Julie Johnson, a former state lawmaker who won the race to replace Allred when he gave up his seat to run for Senate in 2024. Johnson has represented the 32nd Congressional District since January, but the district was dismantled by Republicans in their mid-decade redistricting this summer. Now, both Allred and Johnson are running in the new 33rd Congressional District — an amalgamation of three current Democratic seats in the Metroplex.
“The 33rd district was racially gerrymandered by Trump in an effort to further rig our democracy, but it’s also the community where I grew up attending public schools and watching my mom struggle to pay for our groceries,” Allred, who lives in the new 33rd Congressional District, said in a statement. “Veterans in this district have access to the Garland VA hospital that I made a reality when I served in Congress. I have also secured over $135 million in federal resources for affordable housing, public transportation and health care for this district.”
The pivot brings an end to Allred’s Senate campaign after just over five months. He entered the race with high name recognition from his past statewide run and was found to be ahead of Paxton in multiple public polls of the general election. And he had the bona fides of having flipped a Republican-held House seat in 2018 and outperforming Vice President Kamala Harris by about 5 percentage points last year — though he lost to Cruz by a still-resounding 8.5 points.
But Crockett and Talarico are both viral sensations who have raised millions as nationally recognizable personalities — Crockett from quick-witted clapbacks against Republicans and frequent appearances on cable television, and Talarico as a progressive Presbyterian who blends his Christian faith with populist politics.
An October poll of a hypothetical primary between Allred, Crockett, Talarico and former Congressman Beto O’Rourke found Allred in last.
As Crockett’s entry into the Senate race became more likely, Texas Democrats began to fret — publicly and privately — about the damage that a bruising primary could bring.
The fear was not a new one. Over the summer, Allred, Talarico, O’Rourke and San Antonio Rep. Joaquin Castro met to try to form a slate for various statewide offices — such as Senate, governor and attorney general — rather than all run for the same position. But the Senate race represented too big a draw for them to work out a deal.
Ultimately, only Allred and Talarico launched Senate bids. But as Crockett publicly declared her interest in the race, the firebrand House member, with a little over a week until the filing deadline, tried to do what the four men had failed to do earlier in the year — create a slate of candidates for statewide races rather than having everyone run for Senate. CNN reported that Crockett asked Allred to run for governor; the former congressman had already endorsed state Rep. Gina Hinojosa in that contest.
Allred’s decision to exit the Senate primary raises the odds that the contest will be settled in the March primary, rather than the May runoff that would be required if no candidate reaches 50% in the first round. Avoiding a runoff means the eventual Democratic nominee will spend less time and money on the intraparty fight and can start stockpiling sooner for the fall general election.
But the congressional primary, though much smaller in scale, could prove to be messy, pitting the incumbent Johnson against her predecessor.
Johnson had already endorsed Talarico in the Senate race — the only Texas Democrat in Congress to do so. And Equality PAC, which backs LGBTQ+ candidates, warned last night that “the last thing a Democrat should do is try to unseat the first openly LGBTQ Member of Congress from Texas,” referring to Johnson, who is the first lesbian to serve in federal office from any Southern state.
Former state Rep. Domingo Garcia, who formed an exploratory committee over the summer, may also run in the 33rd Congressional District.