For weeks now, Texans watching television, including during prime time football games, have seen ads from the re-election campaign of Senator Ted Cruz declaring: “Boys in girls sports, that’s not right.”
The Cruz campaign, like others supporting Republican candidates across the nation, has been pouring resources into attack ads that focus on transgender participation in youth sports.
Mr. Cruz’s ads do not directly address transgender youth — and mostly even avoid the term — but instead attack his Democratic opponent, Representative Colin Allred, over fairness in youth sports as well as his vote against a Republican bill last year to require participation to be based on birth sex.
A super PAC supporting Mr. Cruz has taken the same approach in an ad that portrays a hulking figure in a shirt with the name “Allred” on the back tackling a girl. The Republican Party of Texas has also been sending anti-trans mailers in Mr. Cruz’s race, as well as in other close contests, including a Republican challenge to Representative Vicente Gonzalez, a South Texas Democrat.
Advisers to Mr. Cruz said they had found that the messaging resonated with persuadable voters, particularly parents, and that it was more effective not to focus on transgender children themselves, which could engender empathy from viewers, but instead on fairness.
In interviews with Texas voters in recent days, there were some signs that the approach was having an effect.
“We want to go Democrat,” said Minerva Pedraza, 73, a retired city worker in Brownsville, Texas. “But the issue with the boys in girls’ sports, I’m not OK with.”
On Friday, Mr. Allred took the unusual step of responding directly in one of his own ads, a choice that seemed to acknowledge the potential impact that Mr. Cruz’s anti-trans messaging could be having on what has become a tight race.
“Ted Cruz is lying again, but now he’s lying about our children,” says Mr. Allred, looking directly into the camera. “I’m a Dad. I’m also a Christian. My faith has taught me that all kids are God’s kids.”
Rather than directly defend his past support for gay and transgender rights, Mr. Allred then adds: “Let me be clear, I don’t want boys playing girls sports.”
The two are likely to continue their clash when they meet on Tuesday in their first and likely only televised debate.
Mr. Allred, a former N.F.L. linebacker and lawyer who represents the Dallas area in the House, has been running an uphill campaign to unseat Mr. Cruz, a two-term incumbent in the Senate from a state that has not voted for a Democrat statewide in three decades.
But Mr. Allred, backed by significant fund-raising — more than $68.7 million so far, his campaign said — has been blanketing the airwaves and has narrowed the race. A New York Times/Siena College poll this week had Mr. Cruz leading by just 4 percentage points, 48 percent to 44 percent.
Mr. Allred has tried to win support from women by focusing much of his campaign on rejecting Texas’s near-total abortion ban, and projecting a centrist image, appearing in ads about the border with local law enforcement officers.
Mr. Cruz, for his part, has also attempted to moderate his image as a partisan firebrand, highlighting the times during his tenure when he worked with Democrats, particularly on local infrastructure projects.
Early voting begins in Texas in 10 days.
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