This year’s Texas Senate debate took place on October 15 in Dallas, and Republican Ted Cruz and Democrat Colin Allred went head-to-head on a variety of key topics. As the 2024 presidential election approaches, voters in Texas watched as Cruz and Allred clashed over issues surrounding Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Cruz accused Allred of emulating Harris’ policies, saying at one point, “Congressman Allred and Kamala Harris are both running on the same radical agenda,” according to the Associated Press. For Allred’s part, he insisted that he leans more toward the moderate side and described Cruz’s demeanor as “anger-tainment, where you just leave people upset and you podcast about it, and you write a book about it and you make some money on it, but you’re not actually there when people need you.”
Keep reading to see all the highlights from the Texas Senate debate below.
Cruz’s Cancun Vacation
Allred went on the offensive by recalling Cruz’s vacation to Mexico during Texas’ past winter storm.
“When the lights went out in the energy capital of the world, he went to Cancún,” Allred said, before noting, “On January 6, when a mob was storming the Capitol, he was hiding a supply closet. And when the toughest border security bill in a generation came up in the United States Senate, he took it down. … We don’t have to have a senator like this.”
Views on Transgender Issues
When it came to their stances on transgender rights and issues, such as in sports, Cruz pointed to Allred’s former football career, saying, “Congressman Allred was an NFL linebacker. It is not fair for a man to compete against women.”
“I don’t support boys playing girls’ sports,” Allred clarified.
Abortion
Allred said, at one point, that it was “laughable” that Cruz could ever attempt to make himself “the protector of women and girls” when he “thinks it’s perfectly reasonable that if a girl is raped by a relative of hers, a victim of incest, that she should be forced to carry that child to term and give birth to it.”
Cruz responded by noting that Texas’ abortion law should be “a decision that will be made by the state Legislature.” He also pointed out, “In Texas, we overwhelmingly support that parents should be notified and have to consent before their child gets an abortion.” Furthermore, Cruz noted that in the state, they “overwhelmingly agree that late-term abortions in the eighth and ninth months, that’s too extreme.” He later added that a majority of Texans “overwhelmingly agree that taxpayer money shouldn’t pay for abortions.”