WICHITA FALLS, Texas — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his Democratic challenger, Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), are pitching themselves to voters as defenders of ladies within the closing weeks of a Senate race that gives one of many few last-dash hopes Democrats must retain management of the U.S. Senate.
The distinction? A menace that Allred is discussing, to the protection and well being of ladies dwelling beneath Texas’ abortion ban, could be very actual, with a number of Texas girls talking out about their latest horrible experiences.
A menace that Cruz is hyping — of out transgender athletes enjoying in ladies sports activities — is uncommon sufficient that Cruz typically avoids pointing to examples of it taking place in Texas.
How Texan voters interpret these two threats might decide management of the U.S. Senate. With Republicans all however sure to select up one seat this election cycle, Democrats have to win in Texas, Florida or Montana to have a hope of holding Congress’ higher chamber. Polls have proven Cruz with a small however constant lead over Allred, although a leaked Republican polling memo confirmed him up by only one proportion level earlier this week.
Forward of a Tuesday night debate, Cruz launched a brand new TV advert accusing Allred, a former NFL linebacker, of desirous to let boys play in ladies sports activities — the most recent marketing campaign industrial in a collection that included one spot, from a bunch backing Cruz, displaying an Allred look-alike in a soccer uniform tackling a lady. It’s the third advert launched previously month that’s centered on transgender points in a bid to spice up Cruz, as many as his marketing campaign has dedicated to another subject.
In different Senate races, Republicans are deploying the identical technique, airing advertisements warning of boys enjoying ladies sports activities in Montana, Ohio and Wisconsin.
Allred countered throughout Tuesday night’s debate by suggesting Cruz is barely making an attempt to distract from Texas’ abortion ban.
“What he wants you thinking about is kids in bathrooms so you’re not thinking about women in hospitals,” Allred stated. “We have Texas women being turned away from hospitals, bleeding out in their cars, in waiting rooms, being found by their husbands.”
Shelby Tauber/Texas Tribune through Related Press
After conservative Supreme Courtroom justices, whom Cruz supported, overturned the federal proper to abortion in 2022, Texas and plenty of different Republican-led states banned the process, prompting docs to refuse to carry out abortions even when a mom’s well being is at stake. Abortion has been a serious political drag for Republicans ever since, contributing to an underwhelming efficiency within the 2022 midterm elections and varied particular elections, as Democrats preserve an enormous benefit amongst feminine voters.
“All of a sudden, the protector of women and girls is going to be Sen. Cruz? Who thinks it’s perfectly reasonable that if a girl is raped by a relative of hers, a victim of incest, that she should be forced to carry that child to term and give birth to it?” Allred stated on Tuesday. “You’re going to set yourself up as the protector of women and girls? It’s laughable.”
Hours earlier than this week’s debate, the Allred marketing campaign staged a press convention with three girls who stated they couldn’t get abortions even when problems to their needed pregnancies posed vital dangers to their well being.
“We learned our baby would never survive, and the risks to my health and a future pregnancy were growing, and the Texas abortion ban made a terribly difficult decision impossible to make in my home state,” stated Kate Cox, who wound up touring out of state for an abortion that she stated saved her capability to get pregnant once more.
“I’m pregnant today because I had access to abortion care. I wouldn’t be pregnant today if that wasn’t the case,” she stated.
Each abortion entry and opposition to transgender rights have emerged as high election points in Texas and throughout the nation, with Donald Trump’s Republican presidential marketing campaign this month releasing an advert claiming that his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, helps “sex change” operations for federal prisoners. (The Federal Bureau of Prisons not too long ago stated {that a} whole of two federal inmates have undergone gender-affirming surgical procedures, after taking the federal government to court docket.)
Harris famous in a Fox Information interview Wednesday that federal inmates had additionally obtained gender-affirming care throughout Trump’s 2017-2021 presidency as a result of federal regulation requires it. She dismissed Trump’s advert assaults as centered on a subject with little relevance to America.
“He’s has spent $20 million on those ads … on an issue that, as it relates to the biggest issues that affect the American people, is really quite remote,” Harris advised Fox Information’ Bret Baier.
As Cox and the ladies who stood along with her Tuesday can attest, abortion entry could also be a extra tangible coverage query for most individuals than gender-affirming surgical procedure for federal inmates or the uncommon phenomenon of transgender ladies competing on sports activities groups that match their gender identification.
In a short interview after a rally in Wichita Falls, HuffPost requested Cruz if he knew of any examples of transgender athletes competing in Texas. Cruz didn’t cite any particular circumstances.
“There have been multiple examples, but this issue illustrates just how far out of the mainstream Colin Allred is,” Cruz advised HuffPost. “Overwhelming majority of Texans, overwhelming majority of Americans don’t believe boys should compete in girls sports, don’t believe men should compete against women’s sports.”
Cruz claimed two males participated within the 2024 Summer time Olympics as girls, one thing that the Worldwide Olympic Committee has flatly stated is unfaithful.
Nationally, there have been just some dozen situations of out transgender athletes, whether or not male or feminine, competing in faculty sports activities over the previous decade, and even fewer situations of them displacing cisgender athletes on groups or in competitions.
A Cruz marketing campaign spokesperson famous that final 12 months in Dallas, a transgender woman gained within the under-14 ladies class of an Irish dancing competitors, prompting a backlash from some mother and father. (The competitors wasn’t affiliated with Texas public faculties, nonetheless, so it was past the attain of a state coverage proscribing trans athletes’ participation on groups that don’t correspond to the gender on their start certificates.) And in 2022, The Texas Tribune interviewed a 16-year-old trans woman who stated Texas regulation prevented her from taking part in observe meets.
Final month, a Cruz marketing campaign flyer featured a picture of Mack Beggs, a trans man and former Texas highschool wrestler who needed to wrestle towards boys within the 2010s however was required by the state to wrestle within the ladies division as a result of Beggs wasn’t assigned male at start. In different phrases, Beggs’ case was not precisely the “boys in girls sports” scenario Cruz bemoans in his marketing campaign.
Throughout his Wichita Falls rally, Cruz supporters booed when he advised them Allred had “vocally supported having boys compete in girls sports.” A number of attendees advised HuffPost it was their high situation after border safety and the financial system.
Terrie Cribbs, a retiree who lives in Wichita Falls, stated she has been more and more conscious of transgender ladies taking part in ladies sports activities over the previous couple of years.
“It’s just getting worse and worse as people are getting crazier and crazier,” Cribbs stated, including that she was not conscious of any such circumstances in Texas. “We got common sense.”
Allred has stated in TV advertisements and through Tuesday night time’s debate that he doesn’t assist boys in ladies sports activities, as Cruz has acknowledged.
“I don’t support these ridiculous things that he’s talking about,” Allred stated on the occasion, with out saying particularly that he’s towards permitting transgender ladies to take part in ladies sports activities. Allred’s feedback have drawn some hearth from transgender activists, who’ve questioned his adoption of Cruz’s framing of the problem.
Cruz has pointed to Allred’s vote in 2021 for the Equality Act, a invoice that will have prohibited discrimination primarily based on gender, and final 12 months towards the Safety of Girls and Women in Sports Act, which might minimize federal funding to schools and universities that enable “individuals of the male sex” to take roster spots on girls’s groups.
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas), talking on Allred’s behalf after the talk, advised reporters that these votes had been insignificant.
“Sen. Cruz referred a lot to the voting record, and I took the same votes at the same time and I don’t know half the things he was talking about,” Fletcher stated. “That happens a whole lot. You see in Congress all the time these votes that are kind of ‘gotcha votes.’ And then you see the campaigns and the candidates come out and talk about how there was one sentence in some bill that was about something else and that shows that they voted on something.”
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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) in 2021 and 2023 signed payments requiring pupil athletes in Texas public faculties to compete on groups akin to their organic intercourse. These established in Texas primarily the identical protections envisioned by the invoice Allred voted towards, which was handed by the U.S. Home, ignored by the Senate and by no means anticipated to grow to be regulation.
When he was requested through the debate about whether or not he supported exceptions to abortion bans for circumstances of rape and incest, Cruz prevented answering immediately, however stated it was becoming that the Supreme Courtroom had thrown out the federal proper to abortion and allowed states like Texas to enact their bans — mainly the identical setup he’s suggesting is insufficient for ladies sports activities.
“I agree with the United States Supreme Court that under our Constitution, the way we resolve questions like that, questions on which we have real and genuine disagreements, is at the ballot box, is voting,” Cruz stated. “And that’s why the state of the law now is that the Legislature in Austin sets the laws in Texas. You wouldn’t expect Texas’ laws to be the same as California. You wouldn’t expect Alabama to be the same as New York.”
