Kamala Harris gathers in Houston a few days before Election Day

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Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling to Houston on Friday with U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, the Dallas Democrat who is challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. A rally will mark the duo's first joint appearance on the campaign trail this election cycle.

The surprise visit, Harris' first trip to Texas since she officially won the Democratic presidential nomination more than two months ago, comes in the final weeks of a campaign in which the vice president has largely focused her efforts on other states seen as more competitive apply. Her appearance at Allred signals renewed interest among national Democrats in the Texas Senate race, which Democrats view as one of their few viable options for a seat in the upper chamber.

The location of Harris' rally has yet to be announced. According to a Democratic National Committee event page, it is scheduled to take place on Friday between 3 and 8 p.m.

As early voting began Monday, Cruz remained with an average lead of about four percentage points in extending Texas Republicans' three-decade winning streak in statewide elections, according to FiveThirtyEight's rolling average of recent public polls. But Allred has fueled optimism among Democrats by consistently outdoing Cruz in recent weeks and narrowing the gap in the polls by attracting multimillion-dollar investments from statewide Democratic groups and prompting two top poll watchers to raise their prospects for to change the contest from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.”

Throughout the campaign — and especially in the last few weeks — Allred has embraced the Texas abortion ban, running ads designed to alert Cruz that the ban has no exceptions for cases of rape and incest. A spokesman for Allred's campaign said he would continue to focus on the state's abortion ban at Friday's rally.

“What women in Texas are experiencing every day under Ted Cruz’s abortion ban is unacceptable,” Allred said in a statement. “By supporting an abortion ban that makes no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother, Ted Cruz has put women at risk.”

While Texas' abortion ban includes an exemption to save the mother's life, critics say the law's wording is unclear and has resulted in women – some of whom Allred featured in his ads – leaving the state Gain access to life-saving care. Cruz, meanwhile, has repeatedly refused to express his opinion on the issue of rape and incest exemptions, arguing that the matter should be addressed at the state level.

Allred's joint appearance with Harris comes after he has generally kept his distance from the vice president in recent months. He cautiously welcomed Harris' candidacy after President Joe Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed her, before briefly declaring his explicit support for Harris in a speech at the Democratic National Convention that otherwise focused on pushing back against Cruz expressed.

Allred has focused on courting moderate voters, trying to portray himself as a centrist who operates on the other side of the ballot and takes a tougher approach to border security and immigration than other Texas Democrats. Cruz has disputed the authenticity of Allred's moderate stance, often by linking him to Harris and the more liberal stances of the Biden-Harris administration.

Public polls have also consistently shown Harris trailing Republican nominee Donald Trump by several percentage points in Texas, with Allred and Cruz's lead typically a few points closer. No Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

In 2020, Trump defeated Biden in Texas by 5.6 percentage points, the narrowest margin for a GOP candidate since 1996.

A recent statewide poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin found that 44% of likely Texas voters view Harris favorably, while 50% hold an unfavorable view. In a poll conducted around the same time by the University of Houston's Hobby School of Public Affairs, her outlook was significantly better, showing Harris 49% positive and 51% unfavorable.

In the same Hobby School poll, Trump was viewed both favorably and unfavorably by a 50-50 party.

Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. A full list of them can be found here.