Republicans say before summer is out, James Talarico won’t look anything like the surging Democrat who won the Texas Senate primary in March.
Instead, voters will be seeing him in a far different light thanks to a steady diet of GOP reminders about his votes in the state House and his statements that, in their view, aren’t just out of step with Texas values but are flat-out too weird to take seriously in a statewide race.
“By Labor Day, definitely by the end of October, he will be unrecognizable as a normal person — he is not,” said Dave Carney, a GOP consultant who works for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, adding that by the time Election Day rolls around, “I don’t know if his parents will vote for him.”
Republicans are not short on material. They plan to highlight Mr. Talarico’s votes in favor of gender transition procedures for minors and allowing biological males to compete in women’s sports — positions they say are disqualifying in a state where such issues have driven Republican turnout for years.
They also point to Mr. Talarico’s past statements in which he said God is “nonbinary,” that the Bible sanctions abortion, and that illegal immigrant students he taught in public school were often more patriotic than their American classmates, as well as his declaration that prisons are a form of violence.
Republicans also plan to draw attention to Mr. Talarico’s push to mandate climate-change lessons in Texas schools, and his decision to tell supporters in 2022 that he was running a “non-meat campaign” — stances they say are politically toxic in the nation’s top oil-producing state, which also lays claim to the title of America’s barbecue capital.
They also believe they can tag him with hypocrisy: Mr. Talarico campaigns as a champion of working people against billionaires, yet his campaign has drawn support from billionaires and out-of-state dark-money groups.
“James Talarico is a freak of nature and a direct threat to Texans’ way of life,” said Zach Kraft, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee. “By the time Republicans are done exposing this woke clown, he will want to enter witness protection, transition to one of his other six genders, and start going by they/them so he can enjoy his tofurkey in peace.”
Republican nominee Ken Paxton, the state attorney general, signaled the attacks to come at his election night victory party, warning that Mr. Talarico “is the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated.”
“Some people know him as ’Tofu Talarico,’ some people call him Six Gender Jimmy — I’ve even heard some people call him James Talarfreako,” Mr. Paxton said. “No matter what you call him, James Talarico is a threat to everything we hold dear in this state and this country.”
The warning shot comes as Mr. Talarico is riding a wave of early enthusiasm that has energized Democrats and caught the attention of national Republicans. Recent polls show the 37-year-old Austin Democrat leading Mr. Paxton by as much as seven percentage points five months out from Election Day.
Mr. Talarico and his allies believe he is buoyed by President Trump’s high disapproval ratings, an energized Democratic base, and a sense that independents and disaffected Republicans — fed up with high gas prices and affordability challenges — are ready for a change.
Talarico campaign spokesman JT Ennis said the Democrat is focused on pocketbook issues and has worked with Republicans.
“James has brought both parties together to pass 60 bipartisan bills — to lower the cost of housing, childcare, and prescription drugs,” he said.
In a recent interview with NBC, Mr. Talarico acknowledged that some of his past statements “missed the mark,” while accusing Mr. Paxton of “clipping some of my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption.”
Democrats came close to winning statewide in Texas in 2018, when Rep. Beto O’Rourke came within three points of ousting Sen. Ted Cruz. Republicans, though, say the circumstances were different — Mr. Cruz was at a low point in his career and Mr. O’Rourke, while charismatic, had a thin enough record that it was difficult to define him as too liberal for the state.
They say that is not the case with Mr. Talarico, whom they say has spent years supporting liberal causes in deep-blue Austin and staking out far-left positions to build his national profile.
Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, said Mr. Talarico is about to experience a level of scrutiny he has never faced before.
“James Talarico was a sort of mid-range backbencher in the minority party in the Texas House, a legislative body that meets for about five months every other year, and now he is going to have his entire life placed under a microscope in a way that it has never been placed,” Mr. Jones said.
Unlike Mr. Cruz, who has had his eye on higher office for years, Mr. Talarico, who was first elected to the legislature in 2018, did not seriously begin thinking about a Senate run until after the 2025 legislative session. Mr. Jones said he left behind a trail of votes, social media posts, sermons, public speeches and seminar participation that amount to a wealth of progressive material for the Paxton campaign and its allies to mine.
“In the period between 2019 and 2021, he was an ultra virtue signaler — whether it was related to his whiteness, to oppression, to whatever the issue, Talarico was out there in full force, posting on social media and making a wide range of statements, many of which will be replayed ad nauseam by the Paxton camp and Republicans supporting his candidacy,” Mr. Jones said.
He added that Mr. Talarico was in the vanguard of the George Floyd era and the height of the DEI movement.
“As the pendulum has swung back on many of those issues, he has found many of his statements — not from the distant past, but from recent years — are a net vulnerability,” Mr. Jones said.
The challenge for Republicans, Mr. Jones said, is that there is little they can do to improve Mr. Paxton’s standing with voters.
“You would need a miracle worker to do that — and it doesn’t exist,” he said, calling Mr. Paxton “a pretty flawed candidate and a pretty flawed human being.”
As a result, Mr. Jones said the GOP will rely on a two-pronged strategy: seeking to make the race a purely partisan vote while working to tarnish Mr. Talarico’s reputation enough to narrow the gap between the two candidates significantly by Election Day.
Mr. Talarico, who won the Democratic primary in March over Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas, hopes to become the first Democrat to win a statewide race in Texas since 1994, when Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock and several down-ballot Democratic incumbents won re-election.
Mr. Talarico and his supporters insist he has more than a puncher’s chance against Mr. Paxton, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump and is coming off a hard-fought win over Sen. John Cornyn — even after Mr. Cornyn and his allies spent tens of millions of dollars on ads hammering Mr. Paxton’s marital infidelity and portraying him as corrupt.
Mr. Ennis took the attack a step further, calling Mr. Paxton the “most corrupt politician in America.”
“He was indicted for fraud, impeached by his own party, and used his office to enrich himself and his donors at our expense,” Mr. Ennis said.
“While Ken Paxton tries to distract from his career of corruption, James will continue bringing Republicans, Democrats, and independents to fix this broken, corrupt political system that enriches billionaire mega donors and makes life more expensive for Texans,” he said.
