James Talarico and the Myth of the Moderate Democrat

Following a riveting Republican primary that saw state Attorney General Ken Paxton defeat incumbent John Cornyn for the Texas Senate seat up for grabs this November, all attention now turns to the general election. Democrats are really, truly convinced that they can win the Lone Star State this time – and it all depends on their efforts to sell the shockingly radical and downright weird James Talarico as a normal, red-blooded dude who eats barbecue, was really opposed to the border invasion, and has a girlfriend.

To his credit, Talarico has fully embraced this risible politico-cultural costume – which is at least a sign of basic pragmatism in either the candidate or his handlers. Appealing to a statewide Texas electorate is much different than appealing to his safe Democrat state senate district that includes parts of Austin (unofficial motto: “Keep Austin Weird”).

Voters, however, are right to be skeptical about Talarico’s chances. After all, we are only a few years removed from the seemingly never-ending Beto O’Rourke hype – when Democrats insisted that yet another effeminate-looking white guy could flip the state by cosplaying as a tough, down-to-earth Texan. O’Rourke subsequently lost to Ted Cruz for Texas’s other U.S. Senate seat in 2018, fell flat on his face in a 2020 presidential run, and got walloped by Greg Abbott in the 2022 gubernatorial election.

The reality is that the whole “moderate, normal Democrat” charade just isn’t believable anymore. Talarico’s cringeworthy photo op biting into a turkey leg (holding it with a napkin no less) is no more convincing than Hillary Clinton pretending that she always carried hot sauce around in her purse to appeal to black voters or Kamala Harris bragging about being a gun owner.

Texans should also take Virginia’s recent gubernatorial election as a warning. Democrat Governor Abigail Spanberger put up a far more convincing front as a moderate during her campaign, but has predictably enacted a slew of far-left policies, including an order banning local police from cooperating with ICE, a massive carbon tax, and a shockingly radical gun ban that is very likely unconstitutional, just to name a few.

Talarico is a credentialed Presbyterian seminarian, but his politics and theology will be completely alien to any Christian who has actually picked up a Bible and read it in good faith. He is an opposition researcher’s gold mine, with video evidence of all sorts of insane theological and policy positions.

This evidence includes Talarico claiming that God is “nonbinary,” referencing “the virus of whiteness,” saying that the Bible is pro-abortion because the Virgin Mary “consented” to give birth to the Savior, talking about need to “imagine” an end to prisons, and all manner of depictions of a lunatic woke world without end, amen.

Talarico’s bevy of past statements are so shocking, in fact, that he himself has admitted that many of them are “cringey” and “missed the mark.”

The Ken Paxton campaign has immediately begun putting out ads contrasting images of quintessential Texas people and places with clips of Talarico claiming that there are six biological sexes; that the American Flag is a “complicated” symbol; that the U.S.-Mexico border “should be like our front porch—there should be a giant welcome mat”; and that we must all drastically reduce our meat consumption.

In one clip from his 2023 state senate campaign that is sure to enrage voters in this BBQ-loving state, a masked Talarico proudly announces that, because it is an “existential” necessity to reduce meat consumption, his campaign would now be “a non-meat campaign.”

More recent internet revelations are even worse. In a 2024 interview, Talarico said that “abortion is moral” and referred to women as “neighbors with a uterus.” At that year’s South by Southwest event, he labeled the effort to get private school vouchers in Texas as “Christian nationalism.” In yet another interview, he referred to Texas Republicans as “straight cisgendered men” – as if that were some sort of smear.

In one interview featured in Paxton’s ads, Talarico responds to a question about what he “loves” by saying, “I love trans children.” He was referring to children protesting in Austin and may have thought that he was showing deep compassion, but most normal people find this creepy, especially in conjunction with the kinds of behavior his liberal associates have displayed.

A recent Daily Wire article by Leif LeMahieu reveals that St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Round Rock, Texas, where Talarico has preached that “our trans community needs abortion care too,” stocks the kids section of its church library with “‘banned books’ that promote ideas rejected by most Christians, including books that contain descriptions of anal rape, incest, and oral sex.”

That’s right. Kids at Talarico’s church can check out This Book is Gay, which describes “the ins and outs of gay sex”; Gender Queer, which has illustrations of oral sex and masturbation; and All Boys Aren’t Blue, which discusses anal sex and incest.

If this doesn’t outrage you enough, the St. Andrew’s library includes The Courage to be Queer, in which the author affirms that “God is queer.”

While Talarico has attempted to distance himself from some of his past comments, he has only doubled down on his radical left-wing “reimagining” of religion. Talking to Jake Tapper, who queried him about his past claims that “God is nonbinary,” Talarico said that he was simply echoing the message of “the Apostle Paul,” who declared that “in Christ there is neither male nor female.”

While no Christian (or Jew) thinks God is a physiological male, Talarico is being far too clever for his own good. First, the passage Talarico cites isn’t about the divine nature. Second, though God does indeed include all the perfections of men and women, who are both created in the divine image, the attempt to use this to justify “nonbinary” identities for humans, whose divine image is male or female exclusively, is offensive and bizarre.

In this interview with Tapper, one can see Talarico’s desperate attempts to sound normal in his claim that the context for his “nonbinary” comments was that “extremists in the Republican legislature were pickin’ on kids who were different.” Dropping his final “g” is a cute but patently phony trick – one of a series of attempts at cosmetic change.

To escape from the scorn for his “non-meat” campaign, Talarico has suddenly become the spokesman for ancestral heritage and Texas barbecue, declaring in one speech, “I’m an 8th generation Texan — I’ve been eating BBQ since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment.” How strange that a politician whose party believes that every illegal alien is just as American as anyone else would appeal to his family’s long history in the country!

Democrats also released the now-infamous picture of Talarico in a Texas flag shirt eating barbecue in a ham-fisted effort to offset the backlash for his apparent aversion to meat. Alas for Talarico, the thin arms and big napkins he was using vitiated his attempts to look normal and manly.

Talarico has also recently claimed to have had a girlfriend for three years. The lack of any mention or any pictures of the two until now seems passing strange. The reports are that Brianna Menard, the alleged girlfriend, has an ancestor who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence.

Very nice touch, political ad men! But like the napkin-grip on the BBQ, the description of Menard as a vegan “cat mom” who met Talarico at a gay bar doesn’t inspire confidence that this alleged normal rock-ribbed American romance is more than a political fiction.

No matter what kind of patriotic he-man pantomime Talarico performs, there is no evidence that Talarico will step away from the radicalism. He may now say Biden “completely failed us when it came to border security,” but he voted against every border security bill he faced as a Texas legislator even as he declared it was morally incumbent to accept everyone who showed up on that border. Why would we think his new politically convenient rhetoric is real when it goes against everything he has said or done before?

As Houston radio host Kenny Webster observed in response to a claim that criticisms of Talarico lack substance, “James supports red flag laws (the reason Cornyn just lost), vaccine mandates, state income tax, abortions on demand, discourages meat consumption, and says Christians who defend their country are ‘a cancer.’”

Talarico may moderate his image with some success, but, like the Democrat Party as a whole, voters should not think he has moderated his views or policies.

David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.