Wasn’t Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke available this time? Even O’Rourke, a perpetual candidate, isn’t going to challenge Senator Ted Cruz in the 2024 election when Cruz will be running again. It’s very difficult to unseat an incumbent. Former NFL player and current member of the U.S. House of Representatives Colin Allred (D-Dallas) thinks he is the man to do it.

Texas State Senator Roland Gutierrez, (D-San Antonio) is also expected to get into the primary race. In 2018, O’Rourke cleared the primary field early but that won’t be the case in this race.

Colin Allred, a Congressman who endorsed Julian Castro in the 2020 Democrat primary, before supporting Biden, has already launched his campaign. He is raising money at a pretty good clip. I was getting text messages from his campaign begging for bucks so frequently that I had to put a stop on it.

Will Texas Democrats unite around one candidate in order to take Cruz out this time? Beto came closer than most Republicans expected but he still came up short. O’Rourke was a flash in the pan. The coastal elites went nuts for him and raised a lot of money for his campaigns – the majority of his campaign contributions were from outside of Texas – and Hollywood was active on social media for O’Rourke. The problem was that they weren’t Texas voters so it all ended with a thud for their guy Beto. Them’s the breaks.

Can Colin Allred capture that kind of enthusiasm? That remains to be seen. Allred isn’t afraid to go on FOX for an interview and he does seem to have a good personality but they all put their best foot forward when the cameras are on. Gutierrez is big on gun control and that never plays well in Texas primary races.

#Republican lawmakers had the chance to save young lives from the grips of gun violence, but they put their political future over the well-being of our teens & children. We won't forget their inaction, and we won’t let them. #GunControlNow

— Senator Roland Gutierrez (@RolandForTexas) June 12, 2023

Today a super PAC is coming to the rescue for whoever is the nominee. The super PAC is called Lose Cruz.

On Wednesday, a group of Texas Democratic operatives is launching a super PAC effort called Lose Cruz that will focus on defeating the incumbent regardless of who their party’s nominee is. Those involved include Sean Haynes, Matt Angle, Sawyer Hackett, Olivia Julianna and Abhi Rahman.

“Regardless of who faces Cruz next year, the PAC will focus on building a winning coalition of voters by exposing his dangerous extremism, his deeply unpopular positions, and the harmful consequences of his record,” a news release said.

It remains to be seen how much financial firepower the effort will bring. Organizers are promising to spend “millions” to target voters and run TV and digital ads, among other things. It is a project of a super PAC called Sensible Americans that does not have to disclose its initial funding until the end of July.

Looking at the names of the Democrats involved, one name jumped out at first glance – Sawyer Hackett. Does that name sound familiar? He’s a Democrat operative who is a senior adviser to Julian Castro. He is the operative who began the false allegations against Border Patrol agents whipping Haitian migrants as they came on shore on the Texas side of the Rio Grande River. That lie turned into Whipgate. Border Patrol agents were taken off their assignment in the horse patrol and lost wages. They were exonerated during the investigation yet they have not received apologies for the lies that dragged them down.

I don’t think this is an accurate description of the left and right as groups.

Much like Sawyer Hackett’s lie that Border Patrol was whipping migrants wasn’t an accurate description of this photo of them using reins to guide horses.

Seems like Sawyer Hackett lies a lot. https://t.co/xUa1Av53fY pic.twitter.com/0w1n5MOpZi

— Our Friend Max (@MaxNordau) April 28, 2022

Who knows what kind of hoax the super PAC will be willing to start to try to bring down Cruz. Anything is possible from Democrats, after all they were willing to promote a phony Russia, Russia, Russia story that they knew was a lie for the duration of the Trump years. None of those Democrats have been held accountable.

Cruz is running for his third term in the Senate. He decided to run for re-election rather than run for president again in 2024. Texas Democrats have not won a statewide office since 1994. That said, 2024 is a presidential election year. Democrats are counting on the top of the ticket bringing voters out and supporting down ballot candidates. If that candidate is Joe Biden, I’m not so sure he’ll be their savior in 2024. Cruz isn’t particularly popular in Texas and he hasn’t been in the past, yet he wins elections. Democrats hope he is vulnerable and they can take advantage. Some Republicans may not be enthusiastic Cruz supporters but Texas Republicans will unite and work to re-elect Cruz to keep the Senate seat.

The operatives in the super PAC have political experience but it takes more than that.

The operatives who joined Lose Cruz bring recent experience in high-profile statewide campaigns. Haynes, the effort’s founder, worked for the past two Democratic nominees for attorney general, while Rahman worked for O’Rourke when he ran for governor last year and previously worked for the state Democratic Party.

Hackett, meanwhile, is best known for working for Julián Castro, the former U.S. housing secretary and San Antonio mayor, when he ran for president in 2020. Julianna is an abortion rights activist with a massive social media following, including nearly 386,000 followers on Twitter, and Angle is a veteran party strategist who currently runs the Lone Star Project, a Democratic research group.

Notice anything? There is no mention that Hackett was behind the Whipgate hoax on Twitter. I guess the Texas Tribune isn’t concerned about that little tidbit. I’m happy to let the Democrats battle it out in the primary. The Senate battleground next year is extremely favorable to Republicans and I expect Cruz to win re-election. The question is, how close will the race be? Will the candidate be stronger than O’Rourke was in 2018 because he will have to be. Stay tuned.