George W. Bush Thinks Ted Cruz Rival Colin Allred Is ‘Great’—Bill Clinton

Former President Bill Clinton said in a video circulating on social media that former President George W. Bush told him he thinks Senator Ted Cruz’s political rival, Rep. Colin Allred, is “great.”
Allred, a former professional football player currently serving Texas’s 32nd district as a first-term Democrat representative, is challenging Cruz, a Texas Republican who has held the Senate seat since 2013, in this year’s election.
In a video shared by Allred’s campaign manager, Paige Hutchinson, of Clinton stumping for the Harris-Walz campaign, the former president praised Allred for going to law school after a football injury ended his NFL career.
“He got injured and it ended his career and instead of folding, he went back to law school, became a voting rights lawyer and became somebody that anybody would be proud of,” Clinton said.
Clinton said Allred is “universally admired,” adding that one of his constituents, George W. Bush, “told me, he said, ‘this guy is great!'”
Allred became Bush’s congressman when he defeated GOP incumbent Pete Sessions in the 2018 election.
Newsweek reached out to Cruz and Allred’s campaigns as well as the George W. Bush Presidential Center via email for comment Sunday morning.
It will be an uphill battle for Allred to win Cruz’s Senate seat in the red state. Then-Representative Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, got close during the 2018 election, but Cruz ultimately won by more than 200,000 votes.
Recent polling shows Allred a few points behind Cruz.
A Morning Consult poll conducted from October 22 to 31 found Cruz with 47 percent of support among likely voters and Allred with 44 percent. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2 percent.
Meanwhile, a Cygnal poll conducted between October 26 and 28 has Cruz leading Allred 49 to 45 percent. The poll surveyed 600 Texas likely voters.
A poll conducted by ActiVote from October 21 to 27 found Cruz with 52 percent of support among 400 Texas likely voters and Allread with 48 percent. The poll’s margin of error is 4.9 percent.
Meanwhile, pressure has been mounting on Bush to make a public statement about the presidential election between Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, and former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, as several people personally and politically close to him have come out in support of Harris.
Former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, an anti-Trump Republican who has endorsed Harris, said in a conversation with David Remnick at the New Yorker Festival on October 26: “I can’t explain why George W. Bush hasn’t spoken out, but I think it’s time, and I wish that he would.”
Cheney’s father Dick Cheney, former vice president to Bush, has also endorsed Harris, calling Trump, a “threat to our republic.”
Over 200 of Bush’s former staffers have openly endorsed Harris, including former Bush White House communications director Nicolle Wallace, who told MSNBC on November 1 that she hopes her former employer has a “change of heart,” after his office previously said that he will not be endorsing anyone in this race.
Correction: 11/3/2024, 1:36 p.m. ET: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Paige Hutchinson’s first name.