Remember Me?
Former Texas Democratic U.S. Representative Colin Allred announced this week that he will run for the U.S. Senate again in 2026, two years after falling 8.5 points short of unseating incumbent Ted Cruz. Allred is looking to become just the fifth failed Texas U.S. Senate major party candidate – and first Democrat – to win his party’s nomination for a second time since the turn of the 20th Century. Allred would join Houston attorney T.M. Kennerly in 1924 and 1928, Brownsville attorney Carlos Watson in 1936 and 1954, Wichita Falls college professor John Tower in 1960 and 1961, and Houston drilling executive George H.W. Bush in 1964 and 1970. Only Tower was successful at winning a seat in the chamber in their second go-around. [Tower was technically not the GOP nominee in 1961’s all-party jungle special primary, but was the only Republican on the ballot].
Allred, the *fourth* unsuccessful major party nominee, would have his chance of victory be massively augmented even were Senator Cornyn (somehow) end up as the R nominee, should there be a large anti-Cornyn vote in the primary (runoff also?) balloting.
By winning that watershed by-election in then-heavily Democratic Lone Star State, John Goodrich Tower – the ‘non-nominee’ – became the first directly elected Republican US senator not just in the state but the first anywhere in the former Confederate States of America (TN and NC had elected one Republican each after Reconstruction in legislative elections, if I am not mistaken) – and he ‘owes’ that distinction to the presidential (later vice presidential) hyper-ambitions of his elected predecessor, who as floor leader could have been a master legislator for life (the former “Party of Lincoln” would have elected its members to the chamber eventually, just not in 1961).