Eight years before their heated congressional runoff, Colin Allred and Julie Johnson both rode into political office on the blue wave of the 2018 midterms.
Allred, an NFL linebacker-turned-lawyer, ousted the powerful Dallas Republican Congressman Pete Sessions. Johnson, an attorney from Farmers Branch, toppled the divisive firebrand Matt Rinaldi en route to the Texas House. They both served as rather middle-of-the-road Democrats in Washington and Austin, respectively, rather than flashy ideologues. When Allred decided to run for the U.S. Senate against Ted Cruz in 2024, Johnson ran for—and won—his open congressional seat.
Now, Allred and Johnson are locked in a contentious runoff against each other for the newly redrawn deep-blue 33rd Congressional District, which was moved out of the longheld domain of Fort Worth Democratic Congressman Marc Veasey and will now be centered in Dallas County. In the four-way primary for the majority-minority seat, Allred fell 6 points short of the requisite 50-point victory mark, while Johnson pulled in 33 percent of the vote. Veasey decided not to run for reelection after GOP state legislators redrew the congressional map at the behest of President Donald Trump. Allred was initially running again for the Senate, but backed out in favor of the run for U.S. House after fellow Dallas Democrat Jasmine Crockett entered the Senate primary. His and Johnson’s old district, the 32nd, was gerrymandered into a deep-red district that stretches into East Texas.
