‘This Guy Burned Every Bridge’: Colin Allred Mocked After Texas Black Democrats Chapter Endorses His White Primary Opponent

Screenshot via Julie Johnson on Facebook/AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

Colin Allred never fumbled the ball during his four-season NFL career with the Tennessee Titans, but many Texans were pondering if he had fumbled his political career Tuesday after the Dallas Chapter of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats passed him over for an endorsement.

Allred represented Texas’s 32nd congressional district from 2019 to 2025. He unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in 2024, outperforming Vice President Kamala Harris in the state but still falling short with 44.6% of the vote to the Cruz’s 53.1%.

For the 2026 election, Allred was originally going after Texas’s other senate seat, currently held by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), but dropped out after Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) entered the race. Texas State Rep. James Talarico (D-TX) is also running in the Democratic primary.

Allred instead decided to seek re-election to Congress, but this time in the newly-redistricted 33rd congressional district, facing off against Rep. Julie Johnson (D-TX), who currently represents the 24th congressional district, plus two other candidates.

Things got messy earlier this month when Allred posted a video on his social media claiming that Talarico had called him a “mediocre Black man” and endorsing Crockett in the Democratic Senate primary. Talarico denied the accusation, calling it “a mischaracterization of a private conversation” in which he said he “described Congressman Allred’s method of campaigning as mediocre — but his life and service are not.”

Allred got some blowback for the video, with critics saying he had been too hasty to launch such an accusation without more evidence or talking to Talarico first, and the entire controversy was swiftly intertwined with the voracious — sometimes viciously bitter — debate over whether Crockett or Talarico would be a stronger opponent against the eventual Republican nominee.

On the GOP side of the Senate race, the incumbent Cornyn is facing challenges from Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX).

Early voting in Texas for all the primaries started on Tuesday and runs through Feb. 27, with Election Day on March 3. If any race has no candidate with a majority of votes, the runoff elections will be on May 26.

This week, Talarico got a jolt of energy after he was supposed to be interviewed on The Late Show but Stephen Colbert said CBS brass wouldn’t let him air it, so it was posted on YouTube. That clip has since racked up millions of views and significantly raised Talarico’s profile on the national stage and caused other Democrats to rally to his side. The whole kerfuffle was generally viewed as a big dose of free earned media for Talarico on the first day of early voting, to the detriment of Crockett.

Allred took his own hit on the first day of early voting too, with the Dallas Chapter of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats endorsing Johnson, who shared the news in a tweet saying she was “[p]roud and grateful to earn the endorsement” and touting the “broad coalition” her campaign had built.

Johnson has also scored endorsements from numerous other groups including EMILYs List, Equality PAC, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, LGBTQ Victory Fund, Elect Democratic Women, AIPAC, and the New Democrat Coalition Action Fund. Her website lists 52 current Democratic members of Congress who are supporting her, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and dozens of legislators and other local elected officials. Allred’s website does not have an endorsement section but a Texas Tribune article from last December listed two state representatives and a county commissioner who were backing him.

(That same Tribune article noted that the primary battle had “already grown contentious,” noting that Allred did not call Johnson before he filed to run against her and a PAC that endorsed Johnson blasted Allred’s entry into the race as “[u]nconscionable” for “try[ing] to unseat the first openly LGBTQ Member of Congress from Texas.”)

Reaction to the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats picking Johnson over Allred came quickly, and was often brutal.

“Oh man, this is a shiner for Colin Allred that Julie Johnson, who is white, got the support of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats,” wrote the Independent’s DC bureau chief Eric Michael Garcia. “The guy burned every bridge.”

A sampling of addition reactions is below.

This article has been updated to reflect that it was the Dallas Chapter of the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats that issued the endorsement of Rep. Julie Johnson, not the statewide organization. According to a spokesperson for the TCBD, individual local chapters “may independently endorse candidates,” but the statewide organization “has not issued any endorsement in this primary” thus far.

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