James Talarico, a Democratic state representative and seminary student who scored a prized appearance on comedian Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this year, is entering the race for Texas’ U.S. Senate seat held by Republican John Cornyn.
Talarico, widely seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party, will first have to win what is likely to be a competitive and potentially costly Democratic primary against former U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a former NFL player who was the party’s Senate nominee last cycle.
In the general election, that victor will then face the winner of a likely even more costly and nasty GOP primary between Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Democrats have not won a statewide race in Texas in three decades, but the party is hopeful a Paxton victory in the GOP primary could give them a shot in what is shaping up to be a favorable midterm political environment.
Talia Sprague via Associated Press
In his launch video and in an interview with HuffPost, Talarico framed his bid around upsetting a political system he said was controlled by billionaires and rigged against working people.
“The biggest divide in our country is not left versus right. It’s top versus bottom,” he says in his launch video. “Billionaires want us looking left and right at each other so that we’re not looking up at them. The people at the top work so hard to keep us angry and divided because our unity is a threat to their wealth and their power. So their social media algorithms and their cable news networks tear us apart.”
The race between Allred and Talarico is unlikely to be immediately contentious and will likely lack a major ideological element ― both men are generally in the party’s center-left mainstream. Instead, it will likely focus on whose background better prepares them for the task of defeating Cornyn or Paxton.
In an interview, Talarico did not take firm stances on many of the issues dividing Democrats in Washington, D.C., saying one of his “advantages in this race is that I’m very disconnected and unfamiliar with Washington, D.C.”
“I’ve never had a constituent or any Texan ask me about Chuck Schumer,” he said when asked if he would support the party’s leader in the Senate.
When asked about whether Israel’s war in Gaza constituted a genocide, Talarico said he wanted to focus on what could be done to stop the suffering there. “I worry that some of these debates happening within elite political circles tend to be a distraction from the immediate goal, which is stopping the human suffering in Gaza,” he said. “And so getting into discussions about particular legal terms, or, you know, history from, you know, a century ago, to me, feel like more like playing politics than actually trying to get something done.”
Talarico is known for discussing the role his religious beliefs play in his politics ― it was a major focus of his interview with Rogan, and he first went viral for his condemnations of Christian nationalism. He returned to that theme to end his launch video.
“Two thousand years ago, when the powerful few rigged the system, that barefoot rabbi walked into the seat of power and flipped over the tables of injustice. To those who love this state, to those who love this country, to those who love our neighbors: It’s time to start flippin’ tables,” he says.