State Sen. Roland Gutierrez announces he will challenge Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate

AUSTIN – Seeking to end what he calls the “hate” that the Republican Party’s fringe instills in Texas and beyond, San Antonio state Sen. Roland Gutierrez is challenging Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate in 2024.

“We’ve got to get rid of the cancer,” Gutierrez said. “And the cancer isn’t Ted Cruz. That cancer is hate.”

Gutierrez announced his run Monday morning, setting up a likely competitive and high-profile Democratic primary in March between him and Dallas Congressman Colin Allred.

Whichever Democrat faces Cruz in November will have an uphill battle.

No Democrat has carried the state in nearly 30 years. And despite Cruz’s close win in 2018, embattled incumbent Republicans comfortably won in more recent elections.

Gutierrez, a 52-year-old immigration attorney, is a lifelong San Antonio resident. He is in his second term as a state senator representing a district that spans from San Antonio to Big Bend.

Gutierrez also represents Uvalde, a city that has become synonymous with a mass shooting that claimed the lives of 19 children and two school teachers.

The May 24, 2022, tragedy also redefined Gutierrez’s political career and is the main reason he is running for Senate, he said.

“If you asked me on May 23 of last year if I was going to run for the United States Senate, I would’ve told you, ‘You are crazy.’ But certainly, everything changed that day,” he said.

The failures the shooting exposed among the state’s Republican leadership and lawmakers’ lack of action in response to the gun violence galvanized him to seek out a seat in Washington, Gutierrez said. There, unlike Cruz, Gutierrez said he would focus on public policy instead of partisan punditry.

“He’s been mired in the right-wing fringe of the Republican Party for 12 years, and he’s done so little for anybody in Texas, not even his own Republican constituency,” Gutierrez said.

Cruz has said he is willing to work with Democrats to stimulate job and economic growth.

“What I’m doing each and every day is going to Washington and fighting for 30 million Texans, fighting for jobs, fighting for freedom, fighting for security,” Cruz said recently.

Gutierrez advocated for “common sense gun laws” in Texas, including raising the age of purchase for assault style rifles to 21 and emergency protective orders allowing the court-ordered seizure of firearms from people in distress.

He led efforts during this year’s legislative session to pass new gun laws in Texas but found himself stifled in the Senate even as he often emotionally pleaded with fellow lawmakers during public debate.

His ties to gun restriction laws could bog Gutierrez down with independent voters akin to what happened with Beto O’Rourke, who’s political fortunes in Texas were hurt after he said in 2019 that he would seize Americans’ assault-style rifles such as AR-15s.

Gutierrez said he is not afraid to talk about the issue, citing polling numbers that show a majority of Texans in favor of raising the age required for buying assault style rifles.

“Most Republicans are with me on this issue,” he said. “I’m not here to take your guns. I own about nine guns. But I don’t own any AR-15s, and I don’t need one. You know, we’ve got to be able to have some real common sense solutions that make sense so that parents aren’t worried about sending their kids to school.”

Still, gun laws aren’t the centerpiece of his campaign, the legislator said.

“You look at everything from education to health care to women’s rights, women’s reproductive rights. We’re going to be talking about all of it,” said Gutierrez, who is married and has two daughters.

Record at the Capitol

Gutierrez’s aggressive push for more gun restrictions and his outspoken criticism of the Texas Department of Public Safety placed him in direct antagonism to the state’s Republican leadership.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the president of the Senate, refused to let any of Gutierrez’s legislation advance after the Democrat attempted to tack gun restriction laws to other senators’ bills.

However, as the second special session of the Legislature began last month, Gutierrez got unanimous support from the Senate in adding a multi-billion dollar teacher pay raise to the Senate’s property tax relief proposal. It would give two years of $6,000 bonuses to tens of thousands of teachers, while those in the largest districts would get a $2,000 of temporary annual pay bumps.

The fate of that measure is in limbo as debate continues though a group of Democrats in the House also want to tie teacher pay increases to property tax cuts.

Other accomplishments include helping create the National Center for Warrior Resiliency at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, which focuses on treating post-traumatic stress disorder for veterans. He was instrumental in the creation of the Farmer Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Program, which has been credited with saving more than 60 lives since its inception in 2021.

Gutierrez has a record of toppling Republicans, besting incumbent Sen. Pete Flores in 2020, who later returned to the chamber representing a different district in 2023. Before that Gutierrez was elected to the House seven times and served as a member of the San Antonio City Council.

Businessman and former Midland City Council member John Love is also campaigning for the Democratic nomination. Other names that floated as possible Democratic candidates include Julian Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and former U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary, as well as Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner.

Gutierrez said his campaign will focus on getting a million registered but non-voting Latinos to the polls.

His campaign begins with a financial disadvantage. Allred’s campaign recently announced it has a $8.6 million war chest, with over $6 million raised in the past two months. Meanwhile, Cruz has raised more than any other U.S senator, with more than $34 million.

“I can beat Ted Cruz,” Allred said after launching his campaign in May. “What we’ve tried to do in my past races is appeal to as many folks as possible, try to get as many people engaged in our democracy as possible and don’t take any voter for granted.”

Gutierrez said he will not run a negative campaign against Allred.

“He’s not my opponent. Ted Cruz is,” he said. “We’ll see what the electorate does. But I can tell you what I am going to do is work hard. And we’ll raise an adequate amount of money to be able to get to the primary and beyond.”

“It’s not daunting to me. We just move forward,” he said.