Ted Cruz started wetting his pants over his reelection chances last spring, raising the alarm on Fox News about how George Soros and Chuck Schumer were allegedly “flooding money” into Texas for a chance to topple him.

The unpopular senator was going full-blown conspiratorial, and the general election was still roughly nine months away.

Fast-forward half a year, and we are now in the stretch run of the campaign. And Cruz’s lead over his Democratic opponent is shrinking… fast!

A new poll from Emerson College/The Hill shows Colin Allred within the margin of error, forecasting a tighter race than previously projected. The Dallas-area congressman has been running on his bi-partisan credentials, and has a chance to be Texas’ first Democratic senator since 1993. (Cruz only beat Beto O’Rourke by less than 3 points in 2018.)

From a fundraising statement, it’s apparent that donors buy into Allred, a former Baylor University football standout who played linebacker in the NFL. With strong gridiron credentials, the Texas-born pol seems to be out of central casting.

As of July, Allred had raked in $42 million in fundraising, compared to Cruz’s $40 million. Then over the weekend, Allred also picked up a full-throated endorsement from Liz Cheney, who cited his leadership and backstory.

With Cheney’s backing, Cruz’s attacks on Allred as some sort of “radical left-winger” fall even more flat…

“You might not agree on every policy position, but we need people who are going to serve in good faith. And in this race, it is Colin Allred. And I’ll be working on his behalf,” she said at the Texas Tribune festival.

Always seeking cheap publicity, Cruz has long been one of the most unpopular members of Congress, which is quite a dubious distinction. And people from his past keep reemerging to remind voters the bloviating senator has always been a social repellent!

It doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats, like his old college roommate, Craig Mazin, or fellow Republicans, such as political operative Reed Galen. Cruz turns off people of all persuasions!

As Lindsey Graham once put it: If somebody killed “Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”

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Cruz’s unpopularity is so well-established, his bad vibes seemingly rub off on those around him, including his favorite sports teams! The Cruz Curse is in full-effect, most recently impacting Texas A&M in their season opener against Notre Dame (the Aggies lost 23-13).

Since 2017, sports bettors are 16-2 when betting the money line against teams that Cruz shows up to support in person.

A frequent embarrassment, one of the most shameful moments of Cruz’s political career came just three years ago, when he jetted off to Cancun while Texas faced a catastrophic winter storm that killed 246 people and left millions without power.

History appeared to repeat itself this past summer, with Cruz bracing for Hurricane Beryl’s landfall in… Southern California?

Given Cruz’s harsh rhetoric against “California liberals” and the like, it may seem hypocritical that he was vacationing in SoCal. But for someone who loves bashing coastal elites, Cruz sure enjoys spending time with them!

Leaked docs show that Cruz often hobnobs in New York and D.C. with potential billionaire donors. He rips them to the cameras, and then wines and dines them at fancy steakhouses and establishments in supposed “enemy territory.”

Though Cruz is running for a third term, it often seems like he’s happier spewing verbal diarrhea into microphones than legislating. Fittingly, his thrice-weekly podcast is at the center of a burgeoning scandal, involving a Super PAC and $1 million.

Overall, polls still indicate that Cruz is ahead in his race. But his margin of error is now gone, and momentum seems to be riding in the opposite direction as we head towards Election Day.

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