Fast, Feisty and Plenty of Cancún: Takeaways From the Senate Debate in Texas

Senator Ted Cruz and his Democratic challenger, Representative Colin Allred, packed a lot of attacks, mostly about policy, into a quick and combative hourlong debate.

Listen to this article · 6:55 min Learn more

Share full article

Senator Ted Cruz, right, and Representative Colin Allred during a debate on Tuesday in the contest to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate.

The fast and fiery debate on Tuesday night between Senator Ted Cruz and his Democratic opponent for U.S. Senate in Texas, Colin Allred, was something of a political throwback: a largely substantive clash over voting records and policy positions with few personal attacks.

In a back-and-forth that lasted just under 60 minutes, each candidate tried to portray the other as more extreme on issues of abortion, immigration, the economy and, in one of the longer exchanges of the night, transgender athletes’ participation in sports.

Mr. Cruz, a two-term incumbent, presented himself as defending Texas as it has long been, under decades of Republican control. Mr. Allred, a U.S. representative from the Dallas area, offered a vision of Texas that he portrayed as largely the same, but a little more inclusive, with more support for “working families,” and abortion rights restored.

Mr. Allred made sure no one forgot that Mr. Cruz fled to the beach resort city of Cancún, Mexico, during a deadly winter storm and power grid failure in 2021.

Here are takeaways from the debate:

Cruz is a talented debater, but Allred held his own.

The meeting was the first and most likely the only time the two candidates will meet face to face. Mr. Cruz, a former solicitor general for the state of Texas, is a fierce debater with a crisp delivery honed in courtrooms and more than a decade in the U.S. Senate.

Mr. Allred, a former N.F.L. linebacker and lawyer first elected to Congress in 2018, has had fewer such clashes. But he largely matched Mr. Cruz as they sparred repeatedly. Though Mr. Cruz at one point suggested that his opponent was delivering canned lines, Mr. Allred was mostly nimble in his responses, only appearing to trip up with an awkward and seemingly canned joke about how Mr. Cruz had not played sports.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.