Republicans are making a Texas-sized bet that Democrat James Talarico isn’t macho enough to eek out a Senate victory in the meat-loving, religion-dominated Lone Star State.
Attacks on Talarico for his advocacy of veganism, his questions about God’s sex, and his support of gender transitioning treatment for children show how the GOP nominee, Ken Paxton, intends to turn voters against the “radical” Democrat in conservative Texas.
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“They’re trying to define Talarico as not only too progressive for Texas or too woke for Texas, but they’re going to use his words to kind of tie him up in knots,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based GOP strategist and the campaign manager for Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-TX) 2014 reelection.
Paxton and national Republicans are zeroing in on what Talarico himself concedes are “cringy comments” from his past after the Trump-backed state attorney general ousted fourth-term Cornyn in this week’s GOP primary runoff that was a proxy war with party leadership in Washington.
Some of those comments, which Talarico says in retrospect “missed the mark,” include saying God is “nonbinary,” there are “six biological variations” of gender, the American flag can be a “complicated symbol,” his “love” for “the trans children,” and his state House campaign was a “non-meat campaign.”
“James Talarico is a threat to everything we hold dear. This is Texas, and we will fight to protect it,” Paxton said with the release of his first general election ad that labeled Talarico “too low-T for Texas.”
The attacks are designed to cast Talarico as culturally alien in a state synonymous with the Alamo, 10-gallon hats, Stetson boots, barbecue, and the cowboys — both on the range and at Jerry World.
To that end, Republicans have donned the state Democratic representative with nicknames that include “Talafreako” and “Low-T Talarico.” White House official Stephen Miller called Talarico Democrats’s “first transgender senate candidate,” to which the Democratic National Committee’s X account responded: “shut up you ugly f***.”
The Talarico campaign, for its part, has embraced what are meant to be demeaning monikers by selling merchandise that read, “I’M A TALAFREAKO.”
Republicans have seen success at the ballot box across the country in recent cycles by focusing on culture war topics that can put Democrats on the defensive. But even with Texas’s rightward lean and President Donald Trump capturing the state by 14 points, it’s a major bet in a race where Democrats are prepared to put possibly upwards of $100 million into a competitive seat that could help them take back the upper chamber. Democratic strategists view the key to successfully countering the cultural snubs as hinging on a refocus on kitchen table economic issues and Paxton’s personal and political baggage, which include criminal indictments, an impeachment trial, and a messy divorce after admitting to an extramarital affair.
“I think this is a classic playbook that [Republicans] have been using leading up to this election, and frankly, it’s been working for them,” Texas-based Democratic strategist Dallas Jones said. “They’re running this culture war play in an economy that is failing the American people, and it’s failing Texans, and I think it’s going to be difficult for that to resonate as much when they are the party that’s in power in both this state as well as in our federal government.”
Talarico downplayed the nonbinary remarks on God, one of the many comments from years past that Republicans are now playing on an endless loop, as “intentionally provocative.”
“I’m always going to stand up for Texans who are being picked on by the most powerful, the most corrupt politicians in the country,” Talarico said in an interview with CBS News. “There are some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret. There are statements that I’ve made where I’ve missed the mark. I’ll be the first to admit that. But Ken Paxton is intentionally clipping my cringy comments to distract from his career of corruption.”
Another leading GOP dig is that Talarico is a vegan in a cattle-heavy state, pointing to prior remarks about consuming meat and advocating to limit it across society to combat climate change. The go-to response from the campaign and Democrats is to show Talarico chowing down on everything from fried alligator bites to chicken to steak, including a giant turkey leg from last year’s Texas state fair.
“I’ve been eating barbeque since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment, and this campaign basically runs on Texas barbeque,” Talarico said in the CBS interview.
One policy area that has received early attention is immigration and the push from Talarico for America to be more welcoming to immigrants. He’s said the southern border should be “like our front porch: There should be a giant welcome mat out front.”
JAMES TALARICO AND KEN PAXTON COURT THE CORNYN VOTE
Paxton will have his own baggage to defend, along with the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, which supported Cornyn and trashed Paxton as an ethically disqualifying candidate, and thus will have to develop a strategy to navigate. Talarico dubbed Paxton the “most corrupt politician in America” over his 2023 impeachment trial on public corruption charges and felony fraud indictments. In both instances, Paxton avoided conviction. And he still dominated the primary, trouncing Cornyn by nearly 30 points.
“I think he’s going to wrap himself in similar language to President Trump when he faced a lot of different prosecutions, and he’s going to say that they’re political,” said Steinhauser, the GOP strategist and former Cornyn campaign manager. “Frankly, I think that argument works well with Republicans — very well with Republicans — clearly. The question is, does that carry over to independents and moderates? That’s an open question.”
