The News
Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico officially launches his Senate bid on Tuesday, and his campaign will be anything but ordinary.
In an interview with Semafor, the state legislator and aspiring preacher said that he had not yet decided whether to support Sen. Chuck Schumer for Democratic leader, that he would like to hold town halls with Republicans so they can engage in “a real dialogue,” and that he’d support eliminating the filibuster.
“If the people of Texas entrust me with this responsibility, I’ll sit down with all the candidates for majority leader to hear about their plan to curb the influence of the ultra-wealthy in our politics and center the Democratic Party’s priorities around working people,” Talarico said when asked about voting for Schumer.
The filibuster, he said, hurts voters’ ability to “make a judgment in the next election” about how their legislators have done since taking office and amounts to a disruption in “that feedback loop in the democratic process.”
Talarico, whose plans to run were reported last week but made official on Tuesday, gained popularity as Democrats in his state began fighting a GOP gerrymandering push. He got even bigger name recognition following an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
“It gave me the opportunity to get in front of a lot of people that I normally wouldn’t meet,” Talarico, 36, told Semafor. “We’ve had 10 years of Trumpian politics, politics as blood sport, politics as professional wrestling. Now, it feels like there’s a hunger for the opposite of that, like civility and honesty and compassion and sincerity.”
Republicans have held both of Texas’ Senate seats since the early 1990s, and Democrats have come close to winning one just once since then — in 2018, when Beto O’Rourke lost to Sen. Ted Cruz by 2.6 points. The party lost some ground in Texas, especially with Latino voters, in subsequent elections.
The possibility of Attorney General Ken Paxton beating Sen. John Cornyn for the GOP nomination has given Democrats some hope of toppling Paxton, shown by polls to be a weaker general election candidate. Talarico will now give them an alternative to former Rep. Colin Allred, who ran ahead of Kamala Harris in Texas last year but lost decisively to Cruz.
The rest of this conversation between Talarico and Semafor has been edited for clarity.
In this article:
The View From James Talarico
David Weigel: You think the state is ready for more humane politics. Why are you in a better position to deliver that than Colin Allred, or anyone else who might run?
James Talarico: I really like Colin already, personally. I was probably his most active surrogate in 2024. If he’s the nominee, I’m 100% onboard. But I do think I’m tapping into something that’s a little deeper than typical politics. I’ve said before that I think that the root of a lot of our problems are not political, but spiritual. To make a democracy work, there has to be a bond between people, even people who are different, people who disagree. There’s a social contract, and it feels like that is fraying and eroding, like there’s something very broken — not just in our institutions and our systems, but also in our relationships with each other at a very fundamental level.
Politics is tearing apart families and ending friendships, making us all feel terrible and angry all the time. So I think, because of my background, because of my work in the church and as a seminarian, talking about some of the spiritual stuff, I can speak to that hunger in a way that maybe other candidates haven’t and can’t.
How will you campaign? Are you going to walk the length of the state?
Maybe not that, but you’re remembering how in 2018, I ran a very unconventional campaign, a very aggressive campaign, and the walk across the district and holding town halls showed how we were doing something different. I really want this campaign to be unlike any other campaign people have seen. I would love to do a town hall with a Republican Tea Party group, so we can have a real dialogue, across our differences. I don’t think an orthodox campaign is going to cut it in Texas.
The biggest shift against Democrats since you ran in 2018 has been in the Rio Grande Valley. Allred lost ground there even though he’s from there. What’s your strategy for gaining back ground with Texas Latinos?
My family’s from South Texas. My public service started in the classroom as a middle school teacher on the west side of San Antonio. And so, based on my experiences, I honestly think that pandering is not going to work. Tejanos have the same concerns that every Texan has. They want a safe neighborhood, a good paying job, high quality, well-funded public schools, and the ability to see a doctor when they need one. That’s what Tejanos want to hear about, and so I’m going to aggressively compete for their votes, just like I’m going to aggressively compete for everyone’s vote.
The first time I thought you might be running was when Politico reported that you’d taken PAC money from Miriam Adelson. Do you have any limits on what money you’d take in this race?
I’m the only member of the Texas legislature who has a self imposed ban on corporate PAC money. And it’s painful. Here at the state level, our campaign funds are how we support our staffs and support our offices, and how we, obviously, run for reelection. I’ve literally had to put checks back in the mail from Walmart, from Chevron, from Hewlett Packard — I mean, the list goes on and on because of that self-imposed ban. But that will remain true for a Senate race.
Last week, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said that the notion of rights coming from God, not government, is “what the Iranian government believes.” Ted Cruz, who’d be your colleague if you win, went after him for that. What’s your answer? Do our rights come from God?
I do believe that our freedoms and our rights come from God. They don’t come from a president. They don’t come from a Caesar or a pharaoh. They come from something deeper. I don’t mean that to be a sectarian statement, to be clear. When I use the word God I’m talking about that mysterious source that we all come from. In my religious tradition, my scriptures say that no one has seen God. This is a mystery we’re talking about, but is the grounding of our being. You don’t have to be religious to believe that our rights come from something beyond our governments and our leaders.
It’s a little strange, because I am a huge admirer of Tim Kaine and not a huge admirer of Ted Cruz. But on this issue, I have to agree with my senator.
Last year, Cruz hammered Allred over LGBTQ issues. You spoke out on that in 2021, when Republicans were first introducing legislation on trans issues in Austin. You said, during those debates, that “God is nonbinary.” What did you mean? Because I imagine Republicans will ask.
That speech was meant to be a little provocative, but what I was saying is not theologically controversial, that God is beyond gender. Maybe the way I phrased it, I can understand why it would get some people upset. But I would think that all of my fellow Christians would agree with that statement, that God is beyond gender, or, as the Apostle Paul says: In Christ, there is neither male nor female. That’s not me, that’s Ephesians.
At the time, you said that “some things are more important than perfectly fair competition in sports.” Is that your position now?
I think that all sports should be fair and safe. I think that’s a common ground that everyone can agree on, and that’s going to look different at different age levels, with different athletes, in different sports. I trust the sports leagues, the conferences, to make these decisions, sport by sport, athlete by athlete.
When we get in trouble is when politicians make these sweeping statements to try to score political points rather than actually solve this problem.
Notable
- Politico’s Adam Wren was first to report that Talarico would enter the race, and looked at his post-Rogan visibility in July.
- In the Texas Tribune, Gabby Birenbaum reported on just how much reach Talarico got when Democrats left the state to slow down the mid-decade GOP gerrymander. “He logged 25 interviews in the first 24 hours of the quorum break and reached 9.8 million viewers around the country.”