On a late summer afternoon, Colin Allred, the Democratic challenger to U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, mingled his way through a barbershop in a historically Black neighborhood of Houston.
As he did so, a barber confessed that he had never heard of Mr. Allred, a Dallas congressman and former N.F.L. linebacker, until he was told the candidate would be coming by the shop. Neither had his client.
“Everybody knows Ted,” said the barber, Christopher Williams. “He’s not giving nothing up. It’s going to be a fight, and I love a good fight.”
In recent weeks, the race the for U.S. Senate in Texas has grown increasingly competitive, with negative ads appearing with every channel flip and public polls showing a contest within single digits. Mr. Cruz, who is running for a third term, has been leading, but he attracts less support than former President Donald J. Trump does.
So what may have seemed like a sure thing for Republicans in the Republican-dominated state has some party officials in Texas concerned.
“The current reality is that Texas is too close for comfort,” Matt Mackowiak, head of the Travis County Republican Party, said in a letter to state party leaders.
The race is on track to be one of the most expensive in state history. But among Democrats, it has still not generated anything like the fervor or attention of 2018, when another little-known congressman, Beto O’Rourke, barnstormed his way to nearly defeating Mr. Cruz.
Mr. O’Rourke’s near victory is still frequently mentioned by Texas Democrats, the what-could-have-been moment that, in other elections since, they have been chasing and failing to replicate. A Democrat has not won statewide in Texas in 30 years.
But the near defeat has fueled Mr. Cruz’s determination not to let Republicans get overconfident this time. He has been trying to pull off a difficult political trick for a politician whose name ID is nearly universal: to remake his firebrand persona into something more approachable.
“They’re going to tell you I am a horrible creature who devours kittens at sunrise, which is ridiculous,” Mr. Cruz told campaign volunteers earlier this year, joking about his image in the media months before Republicans began accusing migrants in Ohio of eating pets. “Everyone knows you eat kittens at night.”
The senator’s campaign has worried that a close race down the stretch could invite new rounds of investment from Democrats, and that some middle-of-the-road Texas voters, unsatisfied with either Mr. Trump or his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, may nevertheless vote in the Senate race.
That has led to a big fight over voters in the middle. Both candidates have tried to claim the mantle of bipartisanship. Both have rolled out endorsements by members of the opposite party.
Liz Cheney, the former Republican representative from Wyoming, is backing Mr. Allred. Kim Ogg, the Democratic district attorney for Harris County, which includes Houston, has been vocal in her support for Mr. Cruz.
Mr. Allred has demonstrated an ability to raise money to bombard the airwaves with ads and a willingness to go on the attack against Mr. Cruz.
Perhaps never has a race for Senate included so many mentions of Cancún, Mexico, where Mr. Cruz went vacationing during a 2021 winter storm in Texas that left more than 200 people dead. Mr. Allred finds ways to bring it up whenever possible, including in an ad about Social Security and Medicare.
Mr. Allred, 41, played linebacker for the Tennessee Titans before becoming a lawyer. In 2018, he defeated a Republican incumbent in a close race to win his congressional seat in Dallas.
“Change can happen quickly in Texas,” Mr. Allred, who is Black, said in an interview in which he talked about the diversity of the state. “What we have to do in Texas is embrace who we actually are, which is that diversity and that complexity that comes with it. Instead of being afraid of it.”
A first debate in the race is scheduled for Oct. 15.
Like many Democrats in 2024, Mr. Allred has made reproductive rights a central part of his campaign. He has also stressed his work on local projects, like getting a veterans hospital for the Dallas area. And he has tried to separate his race from the presidential contest, endorsing Ms. Harris while mostly not talking about her as he campaigns.
But Mr. Allred remains far less known than Mr. Cruz, even among voters in historically Black areas like Houston’s Third and Fifth Wards. Mr. Allred will need high turnout in such areas, and among Democrats in the state’s growing suburbs, to win.
It has not always appeared to be forthcoming.
“I’m not really into voting this year,” said Michelle Morris, 66, a resident of the Fifth Ward. She said she had heard of Mr. Allred, describing him as “pretty honest and pretty decent,” but said she remained frustrated by other Democrats who she felt had not followed through on their promises.
Her concerns were not about abortion or the border but the lack of grocery stores or good services in her neighborhood.
The Cruz campaign still sees the race as a very close one.
In an interview, Mr. Cruz said that Republicans had learned from the narrow victory over Mr. O’Rourke in 2018 not to take anything for granted.
“It is easier now to convince people that there is a real threat,” he said.
Mr. Cruz, 53, rose to prominence as a partisan warrior, part of the insurgent Tea Party wave. But recently he has stressed his record of working with Democrats in the Senate on bills, including addressing explicit “deepfake” imagery and creating new bridges for commercial traffic to and from Mexico.
At the same time, Mr. Cruz, who is the son of a Cuban immigrant, also blamed Democrats for the surge in migrants at the border, which he called an “invasion” and a deliberate attempt to increase their partisan advantage.
“They see future Democrat voters,” Mr. Cruz said.
The border with Mexico, which runs 1,254 miles in Texas, is a big issue for the state’s voters, many of whom experience the surges in arrivals firsthand.
This month, Mr. Cruz helped spread the baseless idea that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, had been eating household pets, posting an image of cowering kittens.
Mr. Allred, for his part, has distanced himself from the Biden administration on immigration and has tried going on the attack, airing ads with border sheriffs and constables highlighting Mr. Cruz’s opposition to a bipartisan border deal this year.
In response, Mr. Cruz has resurfaced comments that Mr. Allred made during the Trump administration calling a border wall “racist.” Mr. Allred said his description had been taken out of context.
Mr. Allred has tried to focus instead on the effects of Texas’ total ban on abortion, which does not provide exceptions in cases of rape and incest. He supports a national law to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade. Mr. Cruz said the matter should be left to individual states.
“Questions like that are decided by the voters,” Mr. Cruz said.
Elsewhere, the Allred campaign has attacked Mr. Cruz for a deal he has with iHeartMedia, which hosts his thrice-weekly “Verdict With Ted Cruz” podcast. Though Mr. Cruz is not paid, iHeartMedia has transferred nearly $800,000 of what it said was “advertising sales revenue” to a super PAC supporting the senator’s re-election. (Candidates are limited by law from soliciting more than $5,000 for super PACs.)
Mr. Cruz said that the podcast was “integral to the job” of talking to voters.
The vastness of Texas, with around 18 million registered voters, makes reaching voters costly and time consuming. Both candidates plan to sprint around the state in the closing weeks.
During his visit to the Houston barbershop, Mr. Allred spoke with Mr. Williams, the barber, describing his modest upbringing by a single mother and his determination to fight hard in the election. Mr. Williams appeared to be won over.
“I wasn’t going to vote before y’all came,” Mr. Williams said to the candidate.
But Mr. Cruz, too, has attracted new supporters. Michael Manuel, a clothing store owner from Beaumont, said he became politically involved after the pandemic, when business closures and violent protests against the police drove him to support Mr. Trump.
At an event in Houston, Mr. Manuel displayed his support for Mr. Cruz with a large “C” on his shirt.
“I wasn’t a registered voter before 2021,” Mr. Manuel said. “I went from zero to 100.”
As Mr. Cruz spoke at the event, a protester began shouting over him about his support for Israel. The crowd quickly drowned out the protester, with some chanting “Ted! Ted! Ted!”
A similar scene played out at a rally for Mr. Allred a week earlier. As the candidate spoke, a protester began yelling about Israel’s actions in Gaza. Mr. Allred responded by leading the crowd in a chant.
“Hope! Hope! Hope!” the Democrats said together.
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