2 High-profile Texas Democrats Try To Keep Their Careers Alive After Gop Gerrymander

DALLAS — They were once rising Democratic stars who could shape the future of their party. Now, their political futures hinge on a bizarre circumstance of Republicans’ making.

Thanks in large part to Texas’ newly gerrymandered 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 a holiday.

Johnson is the first LGBTQ+ congressperson to be elected in a southern state. Allred is an ex-NFL player, a three-term congressperson and a two-time U.S. Senate candidate who dropped his second statewide bid to run for the remnants of his old seat. But in spite of their substantial bios, the two Democrats’ political careers will be determined by a system designed by the 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 either Allred or Johnson.

Runoff elections are already low-turnout affairs, and this one features no weekend early voting. It is scheduled for the day after Memorial Day, the end of the public school year when many Dallas residents skip town for summer vacation.

And thousands of voters are still upset after being turned away or having their votes invalidated in the primary after the Dallas County GOP ditched countywide voting in the first round of the primary, a decision that disproportionately affected Democratic voters.

“That’s a designed voter suppression tactic,” Johnson said of the last round’s chaos. “You can go to your favorite restaurant 100 times, and then the minute you go back and you have a bad experience, you don't necessarily want to go back.”

The unpredictability of the first round could be reprised: Former Dallas County GOP Chair Allen West resigned after facing backlash for allowing voters to cast ballots at any polling site across the county in the primary, and Republicans are suing to keep the same structurethat sowed chaos in the primary.

Allred and Johnson have both focused their voter outreach in the month remaining before the May 26 runoff as much on educating voters on when, where and how to vote as on convincing them to turn out.

Johnson recently held a field hearing to discuss voters’ experiences in the primary. And Allred says he is monitoring potential court challenges that would influence how voters cast ballots in the runoff.

“We're going to have to spend some of our time and energy not just on saying ‘vote for me,’ but how to vote, which is always frustrating,” Allred said.

Still, the election has plenty of shades of a traditional, nuts-and-bolts Democratic primary. Both campaigns view it ultimately as a test of turnout, recognizing that only a fraction of the over 70,000 voters who cast a ballot in March — part of a record wave thanks to a high-profile, competitive Senate race — will come back.

Allred led in the first round by ten percentage points, and he says his top focus is getting those voters back out. He also scooped up endorsements from Zeeshan Hafeez and Carlos Quintanilla, the two primary candidates who failed to make the runoff, which could help him win over those candidates’ supporters, including the Latino voters who make up a plurality of the district’s population.

Johnson, who is a freshman in Congress after a six-year stint in the Texas House of Representatives, acknowledges that Allred has a name ID advantage, thanks to his two statewide campaigns for U.S. Senate. She argued that his not winning the primary outright was a sign of weakness — and she sees the runoff as a lifeline: “This runoff is just giving us more time to get to know folks, more time for people to get to know me.”

Allred has lambasted Johnson for accepting super PAC money and for her stock trading, noting she is “in the top 2%” of Congressional traders. (Johnson, in response, says it’s a “very disingenuous argument” because “all my stuff has always been managed by third party, Merrill Lynch.”) And Johnson slams Allred by saying he “has no record” of achievement in Congress; Allred’s campaign points to his work securing $135 million in federal funds for his district.

But the oddities of the runoff have taken center stage. On a recent Saturday, Johnson huddled with supporters at a meet-and-greet in Dallas’ Casa View neighborhood, part of the chunk of Johnson’s current district that is roped into the new one. As voters and campaign staff mingled over hors d'oeuvres and wine, the conversation quickly turned to the absurdity of the runoff. Supporters groaned about the shortness of the five-day early-voting window, which includes 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 about tired of being redistricted,” said Kelly Drake, a longtime Johnson supporter who hosted the event in his home. “I'm about fed up with it. Every time I turn around, I'm in a new district.”

Meanwhile, Allred popped around to local small businesses, trying his hand at welding at an auto shop and lacing on gloves at a boxing gym. He, too, heard frustrations over redistricting: “People ask me all the time: Am I in your district? And I look it up for 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 spent 10 years in the league, and I know the difference between someone who just shows up when things are easy and those who show up when things are hard and tough,” Maryland said. “Colin Allred always shows up when it's hard, when things are tough.”

But getting voters to show up is the candidates’ chief concern. Voter fatigue is real, both candidates’ supporters acknowledge. Allred says he’ll be knocking doors between now and March 26, begging his supporters to turn out. He has a list of the ZIP codes in the newly redrawn district on his website. Johnson is urging her voters to download the Reach app, a progressive organizing tool that allows users to upload their contact list and send messages to everyone that is registered to vote in their district.

Others are taking more innovative measures to get their friends and family to turn out. “One of the things that I found that works really well is bringing [the election] up if we're driving somewhere,” said Samuel Sanchez, a Johnson supporter. “Because there's nowhere for them to go.”