Convenience Big Store: Day 5: The players headed to DC

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Important dates

🗳️ Key election dates:

• Early voting period: Oct. 21 to Nov. 1
• Last day to request a mail ballot: Oct.25
• Election Day: Nov. 5

📋 Catch up quick with our voter guide.

This is Day 5 of our elections course. We're moving on to races for U.S. Congress, the delegation of 40 Texans we send to Washington. That includes the U.S. Senate race between Ted Cruz and Colin Allred and all 38 House seats. Plus, we'll do a quick roundup of the presidential election.

This is Isaac Yu with the Austin bureau, by the way, closing out our week with the fifth and final installment in our elections course. If you've read this far, thank you for staying with us. We hope you learned something new about our state and feel more prepared as you head to the voting booth.

None of this work is possible without our subscribers. If you'd like to become one and get access to all our work, you can do so here. If you're already a paying subscriber, thank you for your support.

Heading to Washington, D.C.

First stop: the Senate

Balance of power: Democrats currently have a razor-thin majority in the Senate, with 51 of 100 senators in their caucus. But they are on track to lose at least two seats in red states — Montana and West Virginia — and are looking to states like Texas as an offensive opportunity.

The history: Texas hasn't had a Democratic senator for over three decades. But in 2018, Democratic former congressman Beto O'Rourke came within 3 percentage points of defeating Cruz.

Republican: Cruz is seeking his third term as the state's junior senator. A conservative firebrand, he is typically seen as a member of his party's right flank and is nationally popular with right-wing activists.

Read More: With his Senate seat on the line, Ted Cruz is selling a softer side.

Democrat: Allred joined Congress in 2019 after flipping a U.S. House district in the Dallas suburbs. His profile as a former NFL player, civil rights attorney and moderate House member made him an attractive candidate in this year's Democratic primary.

Read More: Colin Allred's no-frills approach helped win football games. Now, he's hoping it will oust Ted Cruz.

What does a senator do, anyway? The U.S. Senate writes federal legislation. They also have the sole power to confirm or deny federal judges, from U.S. Supreme Court justices to circuit court judges in Texas. That's in part why Allred has focused on abortion, pointing out Cruz's support for the three Trump appointees to the Supreme Court who helped overturn Roe v. Wade.

Going deeper: Cruz has been trying to build a different brand this time around as an effective, bipartisan lawmaker to win over independents. He notably received an endorsement from Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat who lost her primary for reelection this spring.

Flip side: That hasn't stopped Allred from hammering Cruz on his controversial Cancun trip during the 2021 freeze and opposition to fellow Texas Sen. John Cornyn's bills on semiconductors and gun safety. Allred himself is keeping his party's new leader, Kamala Harris, at arm's length as he runs a traditional, understated campaign compared to O'Rourke's 2018 bid.

Is this the year Texas turns blue? Recent polls have been all over the place, but they all have Cruz on top – albeit with a sizable slice of undecided voters.

Money, money, money: This race has become most expensive Senate campaign in Texas history. Allred significantly outraised Cruz in the latest quarter from July to September, $30 million to $21 million.

The House: Rio Grande Slam

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that our attention is on South Texas races this year. That's true for Congress, too.

What do representatives do? The House writes legislation, just like the Senate, and its members are often trying to be breadwinners, driving federal money to their own districts. It also has sole power to impeach federal officials, including the president.

Digging deeper: Remember that South Texas was unexpectedly competitive in 2020, swinging hard to the right. Experts attribute the shift to Latino voters increasingly backing Trump's brash style and economic populism, voting more like rural white counterparts in similarly religious, culturally conservative regions.

Republicans hoped to build on that 2020 momentum with a "red wave" in 2022, but came away with less than expected, flipping one seat but losing another. That said, the region will be highly watched this fall.

The state of play in these races:

A map of Texas House Districts 28, 15 and 34 in South Texas.

De La Cruz v Vallejo

2020: Trump +3 | 2022: De La Cruz +8

Republican Rep. Monica De La Cruz shocked political observers when she came within 3 points of winning in 2020. Two years later, she flipped her heavily-Latino McAllen seat by 8 points. De La Cruz has since become an important voice in Republican efforts to continue gains with Latino voters.

Her 2022 opponent, Michelle Vallejo, ran a progressive campaign but received little funding from national Democrats. De La Cruz, meanwhile, saw historic investment from her party and now has three times more cash in the bank as of July.

Gonzalez v Flores

2020: Biden +14 | 2022: Gonzalez +9

Mayra Flores is making a comeback bid. She won a low-turnout special election in 2022 but lost her bid for a full term six months later to Democrat Vicente Gonzalez, whose home was redrawn into the 34th district. The district includes Brownsville and Corpus Christi.

Gonzalez is among the most conservative Democrats in the U.S. House and is seen as a strong fundraiser. But Flores has so far outraised him, and national Republicans recently bought $800,000 in advertisements to support her.

Cuellar v Furman

2020: Biden +7 | 2022: Cuellar +13

Laredo has backed Democrat Henry Cuellar time and again since he was first elected to Congress in 2004. His closest call was in 2022, when he barely beat a progressive candidate in the primary before comfortably winning the general election.

The only reason the seat is seen as potentially competitive is Cuellar's federal indictment on charges of bribery, money laundering and illegally working for the Azerbaijani government. Cuellar has denied wrongdoing and will face a trial in Houston in 2025. National Republicans added his seat to their list of blue-to-red targets, seeing an opportunity in Navy veteran Jay Furman of San Antonio.

Managing expectations: It would not be too surprising if all of these upset challenges fail. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report currently has the incumbents in each of these races favored. And all of them won reelection in 2022 by comfortable margins of 8 or more points, meaning a flip would require a big swing.

Sheila Jackson Lee

This November will also see two elections to replace Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who died in July. The seat will first go to her daughter, Erica Lee Carter, who is the only Democrat running in a special election to finish Jackson Lee's ongoing term – a posting that will last just a few weeks.

In January, former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner will take over for a full term. He has pledged to be a "bridge" to the next generation and only serve two terms in the House, or four years.

Harris County, Trump State

Lastly, let's check in on the presidential election. The campaigns of both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump recognize that despite the activity in other races in Texas, the state is likely to remain in the Republican column, with red exurbs and rural areas outweighing blue cities.

2020 hindsight: Joe Biden lost Texas by 5.6 points. Four years earlier, Hillary Clinton lost by 9 points. So Democrats will be eager to see if they can build on the momentum and shrink their loss margin even more. The most recent polls have Trump winning Texas by between 3 and 8 points.

Still, while the race is centered in swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, there are plenty of Texas connections:

Harris: the Democratic nominee has leaned on Texas voices to help her with Latino voters. That includes El Paso Rep. Veronica Escobar and Houston Rep. Sylvia Garcia. A pair of young Texas social media influencers is also boosting the campaign: Olivia Julianna and Carlos Eduardo Espina.

Tim Walz: The VP pick from Minnesota attended classes at the University of Houston in the 1980s and briefly served in the Texas National Guard.

Trump: The former president is receiving millions from several Texas oil billionaires, hoping he will undo the Biden administration's clean energy policies.

J.D. Vance: The Ohio senator and Republican VP nominee has some in the Texas business committee worried over his divergence from traditional free-market principles.

That's it — you're all caught up! Thanks for staying with us through this elections course. If you're a Houston Chronicle subscriber, you can also find all of this content online here. To learn more about Texas politics and stay updated as we get closer to Nov. 5, check out the Texas Take newsletter, written by my colleague Jeremy Wallace.