Former Democratic Texas Rep. Colin Allred announced on Tuesday morning that he is running for the Senate in 2026 via a video released by his campaign.
Allred is looking to unseat Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn who has served in the upper chamber for over two decades. The former congressman — who represented a Dallas-area House seat from 2019 to 2025 — previously ran against Ted Cruz in the 2024 election, decisively losing by 8.5 percentage points, despite raising over $80 million.
Allred is seeking to turn Texas, a state that President Donald Trump won by nearly 14 points in the 2024 election, blue at the federal level for the first time in decades. The Democrat, who previously played as a linebacker for the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, is looking to become the first member of his party since 1988 to win a Senate seat in the Lone Star State.
“Texans are working harder than ever, not getting as much time with their kids, missing those special moments, all to be able to afford less. And the people we elected to help? Politicians like John Cornyn and [Republican Texas Attorney General] Ken Paxton are too corrupt to care about and too weak to fight for us,” Allred said in the video.
In order to make it to the general election, Cornyn must first survive a heated primary challenge from Paxton. The incumbent has been trailing by wide margins in multiple recent polls — with one Paxton-allied super PAC poll, showing the Texas attorney general with a commanding 19-point lead over Cornyn. Trump has not yet endorsed a candidate in the race.
Allred, like Cornyn, also faces a competitive Democratic primary. Former NASA astronaut Terry Virts, a first-time candidate, announced he was entering the Senate race as a Democrat in late June.
“Collin Allred is an out of touch Washington, DC liberal who supported Joe Biden’s open borders, biological men competing against our daughters, and even said it would be ‘better’ if the Second Amendment had never been written. Texas voters have already rejected Allred for the radical liberal he is, and they’ll do it again next fall,” the Senate Leadership Fund said in a statement released to media outlets.
When asked for a comment, Allred’s campaign referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to a press release that included a transcript of the candidate’s announcement video.
“Allred said in the coming months that his campaign will roll out a series of plans, starting with an anti-corruption plan, to lower costs for Texas families,” the release added.
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