Democrat Colin Allred challenging Cruz for Senate seat raises over $6 million in 2 months

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) is up for reelection in 2024 and his seat is being challenged by Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), who is running for the Democratic nomination, and has raised more than $6 million during the first two months of his campaign.

The numbers obtained by The Texas Tribune show that since the Dallas area representative announced his run for Cruz's seat on May 3rd, until the end of the second quarter on June 30th, he has acquired $8.6 million in campaign funds. Of that total, $2.4 million is from his House of Representatives account, and the other $6.2 million was raised in that less than two month period. 

Allred’s campaign reportedly said that the $2.4 million transferred from his House account comes from sources such as direct funds and in-kind contributions to even include non-monetary contributions like goods and services.

The Allred campaign had already stated that $2 million of the $6.2 million was raised in just the first 36 hours after announcing his run. The campaign's unifying message seems to be that of a mission which is bent on taking down Cruz.

"Since day one this campaign has been about bringing people together to beat Ted Cruz and give this state the leadership it deserves," Allred's campaign manager Paige Hutchinson said in a statement on Wednesday.

"We're amazed at the outpouring of support and more confident than ever that we will have the resources to win next November and send Ted Cruz packing."

Allred's campaign has reported that the $6.2 million raised has come from over 97,000 unique donors. 

After the first quarter Cruz has $3.3 million, but he has still not released his Q2 fundraising, which is due by July 15th. 

A University of Texas at Tyler poll from mid May shows that Cruz has a five point lead over Allred, with 15% still undecided.

Though Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) was an excellent fundraiser, Cruz still defeated him by a narrow 2.5 points in 2018. It took O'Rourke nine months to raise the same amount of money that Allred has thus far.

A Democrat has not held a U.S. Senate seat from Texas in 30 years.