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Former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred and Rep. Julie Johnson appear headed to a May runoff.
Allred had a wide margin in early voting totals posted Tuesday, but did not cross the threshold necessary to win Tuesday’s Democratic primary outright.
Johnson and Allred are competing for the chance to represent the new 33rd Congressional District after Texas Republicans redrew the North Texas seat as part of their effort to help the GOP maintain congressional control.
The seat sits entirely inside Dallas County. The county had not yet released in-person voting results from Tuesday as of 11:30 p.m. The county’s primary was dogged by chaos that ended in an order from the state Supreme Court to separate votes cast by people who arrived after 7 p.m. from the total.
The winner of the runoff is expected to head to Washington, given the makeup of the district, which is solidly Democratic.
The new 33rd Congressional District is solidly blue and would have gone to Kamala Harris in 2024 by almost 33 points. The area contains about a third of the residents from Allred’s former congressional district and is currently represented by Rep. Marc Veasey, who launched a campaign for Tarrant County judge but withdrew in December to focus on his last year in Congress.
Allred represented Texas’ 32nd District from 2019 through 2024 before launching an unsuccessful bid for Sen. Ted Cruz’ Senate seat two years ago. He initially ran in this year’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, but filed for the Dallas-based U.S. House seat after state Rep. James Talarico and U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s Senate candidacies turned that primary more competitive.
The campaign leading up to Election Day grew prickly between Johnson and Allred as he aired an attack ad targeting her investments in Palantir Technologies, a federal government contractor that has been key to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts. Johnson took shots at Allred, criticizing him as being ineffective in Congress.
Allred was backed by local elected Democratic officials — including Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, state Rep. Rhetta Bowers of-Rowlett and state Rep. Aicha Davis of DeSoto — and had a financial edge over Johnson. He reported raising $5.4 million as of Feb. 11, compared to Johnson’s $1.5 million.
Soon after Allred filed to run, Equality PAC, which works to elect LGBTQ+ candidates and includes Johnson on its board, bashed Allred for running against the first openly LGBTQ+ member of Congress from Texas. Johnson also received an endorsement from the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats and the Elect Democratic Women PAC, the latter of which issued a statement saying Congress should not be a body that “treats women as interchangeable or expendable.”
Allred is a civil rights attorney and former NFL linebacker who first entered politics in 2018, when he flipped a congressional seat and ousted Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions. Before that, Allred served in former President Barack Obama’s Department of Housing and Urban Development.
While in Congress, he served on the House Foreign Affairs, Transportation and Infrastructure and Veterans Affairs committees. He’s heavily favored to win the November general election based on the district’s left-leaning voting history.
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