Texas Senate Rundown: Are we really talking about Talarico’s girlfriend? | Opinion
The Republican runoff is in the books, and if you thought that would slow down the news and national interest in Texas’ U.S. Senate race, you were as wrong as some people think James Talarico is about breakfast tacos.
Campaigns and journalists are scrambling to understand what the general election fight between Talarico, the Democrat, and Ken Paxton, the Republican, will look like. Here’s a survey of some recent headlines and my analysis of each storyline.
John Cornyn signals lukewarm support for Ken Paxton …
Sen. John Cornyn said immediately upon losing his primary runoff election that he would support the Republican ticket in Texas. That’s as far as he’s willing to go, at least for now.
Asked by Washington reporters about his criticisms of Ken Paxton in their yearlong battle, including that his opponent was unfit to be a senator, Cornyn walked back nothing. “I stand by everything I said during the whole campaign,” he said, according to The Dallas Morning News.
Cornyn said that he would concentrate his campaign efforts this fall on keeping the Senate in Republican hands, pitching in for vulnerable incumbents in places such as Alaska and Maine. He did allow that he would rather hand off his own seat to a GOP successor “than somebody like James Talarico.”
My take: Well.
After more than four decades in public life, Cornyn knows he is keeping the story of a GOP fracture alive with such comments. Perhaps he’s holding out for some concession or outreach from Paxton. But speculation about the impact of Cornyn voters refusing to back Paxton will be with us for a while.
On that note, be sure to read my Star-Telegram colleague Eleanor Dearman’s thorough report on Republicans who aren’t ready to follow their party’s full embrace of MAGA politics.
… While a top former GOP leader offers none at all
Former Vice President Mike Pence wouldn’t say whether he backs Paxton in the Texas race. He was careful not to specifically criticize the attorney general, and he said he could never support Talarico.
My take: Pence has been trying to carve out a role in returning the Republican Party to its pre-Trump, traditional roots. He was prominent in the conservative Christian segment of the party, so his hesitance based on Paxton’s character makes sense.
He represents a small slice of Republicans who remain uncertain about where Trump has taken their party. Here’s the problem: Neither MAGA voters nor Democrats care what Mike Pence thinks, even if he’s right. For one thing, he ran cover for Trump for years. There’s a price to be paid, and like so many others Trump has used up and discarded, the cost to Pence is irrelevancy in his own party.
James Talarico’s girlfriend emerges in race vs. Ken Paxton
Nothing big going on in this race or in the country, right? So, we’re talking about James Talarico’s girlfriend.
Talarico, who is 37 and has never married, first volunteered on a podcast that he had a girlfriend but declined to identify her. He and his aides should have known that would never last. Before long, Texas reporter Tony Ortiz of Current Revolt, a right-leaning news site, had identified her, and the New York Post took the story national.
There were plenty of good jokes and memes, but ugliness soon settled in. Now, some conservative outlets are even questioning if Talarico might have crossed an ethical line by dating someone who was in his employ in the Texas House.
My Take: The Internet often makes things like this fun — but for only a short amount of time, especially if politics is involved.
The Senate race right now is about two things: raising money (because it’s always about raising money) and identifying the opponent. The moment Paxton claimed victory on the night of the May 26 runoff, he signaled that he wanted to tag Talarico as ultra-progressive, unmasculine and soft on gender and God. Other Republicans and conservative commentators have taken it further, basically questioning whether Talarico is gay.
Axios reports that all this makes Texas ground zero for testing whether the “anti-woke” messages that many Republicans credit for their 2024 victories still work. Maybe, but the headwinds of a stalled war in Iran, persistent inflation, the president’s unpopularity and Paxton’s significant baggage don’t make for a very clean experiment.
The bottom line is that if Talarico’s sexuality or relationship status truly matter to a voter, that person is probably already in Paxton’s camp. The larger goal, as with poking fun of Talarico for once saying he was running a “meat free” campaign, is to make him seem unfit to represent Texas so right-leaning voters on the fence may tip Paxton’s way.
A sharp observation on Talarico’s language vs. his positions
At USA Today, columnist Nicole Russell (a Star-Telegram alumnae) points out that while Talarico is walking back some of the goofier progressive language he has used, he isn’t changing his positions on abortion, gender or the economy.
“Like [Beto] O’Rourke, he’s betting Texans will overlook the comments and positions that could alienate swing voters and focus instead on his biography and personal appeal,” Russell writes.
My take: Nicole is right. It’s part of why we hired her in 2022.
