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. From veganism to God’s sex to transgender children, early mudslinging in the competitive race offers a window into how Republican nominee Ken Paxton and the GOP believe cultural issues could weigh down the progressive Talarico more than policy in the socially conservative state.“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.”
