DALLAS – He was once a rising Democratic star who could shape his party’s future. Now, his political future depends on a strange situation created by Republicans.
Thanks largely to Texas’ newly redrawn map, Democratic Rep. Julie Johnson and former Rep. Colin Allred are fighting for political survival in a head-to-head primary runoff election in a recently redrawn district — likely to be decided by just a few thousand voters the day after the holiday season.
Johnson is the first LGBTQ+ congressman to be elected from a Southern state. Allred is an ex-NFL player, three-time Congressman, and two-time U.S. Senate candidate who abandoned his second statewide bid to run for the remainder of his old seat. But despite their substantial bios, the two Democrats’ political careers will be determined by a system designed by Republicans who have run the state for decades: Because of the GOP’s new gerrymander, two-thirds of the voters in the new district have never been represented by Allred or Johnson.
Runoff elections are already low-turnout affairs, and there is no weekend early voting. It is scheduled for the day after Memorial Day, the end of the public school year, when many Dallas residents leave the city for summer vacation.
And it’s a decision that thousands of voters are still frustrated after the Dallas County GOP canceled countywide voting in the first round of the primary or had their votes invalidated in the primary. Democratic voters were adversely affected.
“This is a deliberate strategy of voter suppression,” Johnson said of the last round of chaos. “You can go to your favorite restaurant 100 times, and then as soon as you go back and you have a bad experience, you don’t necessarily want to go back.”
First round’s unpredictability could be repeated: Former Dallas County GOP Chairman Allen West Resigned after facing opposition To allow voters to cast ballots at any polling place throughout the county in the primaries, and Republicans are Sue to maintain the same structureWhich spread anarchy at the primary level.
Both Allred and Johnson have focused as much on voter outreach in the month remaining before the May 26 vote as on educating voters about when, where and how to vote, as well as convincing them to turn out.
Johnson recently held a regional hearing Discussing voters’ experiences in the primary. And Allred says he’s monitoring potential court challenges that would affect the way voters cast ballots in the runoffs.
“We have to spend some of our time and energy not just on saying ‘vote for me,’ but on how to vote, which is always frustrating,” Allred said.
Still, the election has plenty of shades of the traditional, nuts-and-bolts Democratic primary. Both campaigns ultimately see this as a test of turnout, considering that only a fraction of the more than 70,000 voters who voted in March — part of a record wave Thanks for a high-profile, competitive Senate race – will be back.
Allred was ahead by ten percentage points in the first round, and says his main focus is on bringing back those voters. He also received endorsements from Zeeshan Hafez and Carlos Quintanilla, two primary candidates who failed to make the runoff, which could help him win over those candidates’ supporters, including Latino voters who make up the majority of the district’s population.
Johnson, who is a freshman in Congress after a six-year term in the Texas House of Representatives, acknowledges that Allred has had the benefit of name ID, because of her two statewide campaigns for the U.S. Senate. She argued that her not winning outright in the primaries was a sign of weakness – and that she viewed the runoff as a lifeline: “This runoff is giving us more time to get to know people, giving people more time to get to know me.”
Allred has criticized Johnson for accepting super PAC money and stock trading, saying he is “in the top 2%” of traders in Congress. (Johnson, in response, says this is a “very disingenuous argument” because “all my stuff has always been managed by a third party, Merrill Lynch.”) And Johnson criticized Allred by saying that he has “no record of achievement” in Congress; Allred’s campaign points to her work to secure $135 million in federal funds for her district.
But the quirks of runoff have taken center stage. On a recent Saturday, Johnson gathered with supporters at a rally in Dallas’ Casa View neighborhood, a part of Johnson’s current district that has been incorporated into the new district. As voters and campaign staffers mingled over hors d’oeuvres and wine, the conversation quickly turned to the absurdity of the runoff. Supporters complained about the lack of a five-day early voting window, which included zero weekend days, unlike the first round, which had 10 consecutive days. And they complained about the new boundaries — and the challenge of helping neighbors know who represents them.
“Y’all, I’m tired of being redistricted,” said Kelly Drake, a longtime Johnson supporter who hosted the event at her home. “I’m almost fed up with it. Every time I turn around, I’m in a new district.”
Meanwhile, Allred dabbled in local small businesses, trying his hand at welding at an auto shop and wearing gloves at a boxing gym. He also heard frustrations over redistricting: “People ask me all the time: Am I in your district? And I look forward to them,” he said.
During an event at CWA Local 6215, a labor union in Dallas, Allred surprised union members with a special guest: Russell Maryland, a three-time Super Bowl champion with the Dallas Cowboys.
“I’ve spent 10 years in the league, and I know the difference between guys who show up when things are easy and guys who show up when things are tough and tough,” Maryland said. “Colin Allred always shows up when it’s tough, when things are tough.”
But bringing out voters is the main concern of the candidates. Supporters of both candidates acknowledge that voter fatigue is real. Allred says he will be knocking on doors between now and March 26, pleading for his supporters to come out. There is a list of zip codes for the redrawn district on their website. Johnson is urging his voters to download the Reach app, a progressive organizing tool that allows users to upload their contact list and send messages to everyone registered to vote in their district.
Others are taking more innovative measures to involve their friends and family. Samuel Sanchez, a Johnson supporter, said, “One thing I found that works really well is to bring (the poll) if we’re driving somewhere.” “Because there’s no place for them to go.”
