James Talarico draws largest crowd yet of his campaign in North Texas
Democrat James Talarico drew the largest crowd yet of his campaign for the U.S. Senate in Plano Monday night during his “The People vs. Ken Paxton Tour.”
Roughly 4,000 people from across the Dallas-Fort Worth area gathered at the Plano Event Center after waiting in lines wrapped around the building to see Talarico speak 155 days before Election Day. On November 3, Talarico will be on the ballot against Republican nominee and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The last time Talarico rallied in the area was February, before he beat Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic bid. A few hundred people were in Dallas’s Longhorn Ballroom under the disco ball that night.
Once everyone got inside the event center Tuesday evening, a multigenerational group of people stood and sat in the aisles surrounding rows of chairs, where older attendees took priority.
Talarico was preceded on the stage by State Rep. Mihaela Plesa, who represents part of Collin County, and gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa. He focused his message on how he would be a servant for Texans in the Senate, quoting Matthew 23:11 — “The greatest among you will be your servant.”
Talarico’s top priorities in the U.S. Senate
The first bill Talarico said he would draft as senator would be an anti-corruption bill to achieve six main goals.
The bill would overturn the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commissioner supreme court case that allows corporations and other outside groups to spend an unlimited amount of money on elections. It would also ban super PACs, bar politicians from insider trading, create term limits, overhaul the supreme court and end all gerrymandering.
Talarico said the next action would be to “unrig this economy” in order to make the American Dream attainable again.
Trickle-down economics is theft, he said. The theory suggests that financial benefits to corporations and the wealthy would ultimately benefit the working class.
Talarico said the theory allows billionaires to steal from the middle class by puppeteering politicians.
“It’s why everything sucks right now,” Talarico said. “It’s why everyone is so angry. The American people aren’t asking for a lot: a job we don’t hate, a house big enough to raise a family in, and a little left over to go on vacation every once in a while. That is harder than it should be.”
The Democrat said Paxton is the most corrupt politician in America, pointing to the fact that he was indicted for investment fraud 15 minutes up the road at the Collin County Courthouse in 2015.
“He convinced his own friends to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into a tech company. But what he didn’t tell them is that he was making a commission off their investments,” Talarico said. “He was scamming his own friends.”
The charges were dropped and the trail was canceled after 10 years because of a deal Paxton made with the prosecutors. Paxton completed 100 hours of community service, 15 hours of ethics training and paid around $270,000 to the alleged victims.
“Listen, Ken Paxton has escaped accountability. But accountability is coming on November 3,” Talarico said. “Ken Paxton is everything that’s wrong with this broken system. He does not serve us. He serves himself.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2026 at 12:07 AM.