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Must Readdown to the wire
Texas has voted Republican for decades. This 37-year-old may be about to change that - but it's close
At a Halloween rally in Houston, Democratic candidate James Talarico makes a final appeal to Republican voters: “Do right, and risk the consequences”.
ON SATURDAY, LARGE numbers of Texans came in cowboy hats, Halloween costumes and floral Day of the Dead headdresses to support US Democrat senate hopeful James Talarico in one of his last rallies in Houston before the midterm elections on Tuesday.
Wearing cat ears and some whiskers, Katy came to the rally at the Bayou Music Theatre in downtown Houston with her parents Patricia and Bob. “There’s a term in Texas: ‘a yellow dog Democrat’,” says Patricia, an 86-year-old sixth generation Texan and long-time loyal voter. “I will vote for a Democrat even if he’s a yellow dog – and that means down the line.”
For ‘yellow dog Democrats’, the last three decades of state-wide elections in Texas have been filled with loss and disappointment in the generally conservative red state. But this election feels different, says Katy.
Talarico, a clean-cut 37-year-old state representative, Presbyterian pastor and former school teacher, is facing off against the current attorney-general for Texas, Ken Paxton.
The polls are tight: Talarico is ahead of Paxton in recent polls by three or four percentage points, which is a positive sign for him but not far enough ahead to be comfortable.
Paxton, who is 63, has a chequered history including a past indictment for securities fraud, and was the subject of impeachment proceedings for abuse of office three years ago. The impeachment proceedings were brought by the Republican-dominated Texas house of representatives.
Katy sees Talarico and Gina Hinajosa, the Democratic candidate for governor, as “good folks trying to make Texas better for everybody”. Other attendees at the rally also commented on how coordinated Hinojosa and Talaricos’ campaigns have been.“I think they both got synergy,” remarks one woman.
“We’re seeing a real energy, not just in Houston but all over,” she says. “We just drove all the way up to Sherman, Texas, which is in deep northeast Texas, and we saw plenty of Talarico signs in the rural counties.”
Wearing a birthday girl tiara, Emmy Cruz who has just turned 20 says she thinks the Latino community, which represents some 40% of Texans, is going to vote for Talarico.
In the elections in 2024, around 55% of Latinos in Texas voted for Trump, many motivated by issues like abortion, marriage equality and border security.
But with their communities shaken by violent raids by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and mass deportations over the last two years, their support has ebbed, with many saying Trump has gone too far on immigration. “I think they’re ready for change, especially what we’re seeing with ICE and the mortality that we’re experiencing as a community,” says Cruz.
Standing beside her parents, Katy says she has a Texan friend who always voted Republican but the riot on the Capitol in Washington DC on 6 January 2021 led by Trump supporters made her reconsider her vote. “I think that was a tipping point for a lot of people,” she says. “Like so many people have said ‘this is [about] good versus corrupt’”.
Inside the Bayou Music Theatre, Talarico is keen to appeal to disaffected Republican voters like Katy’s friend in one of his final speeches before election day on Tuesday.
Without winning over some Republican voters, Talarico cannot win in Texas – and he played on their loyalty to the famously proud state over their loyalty to the party.
“This isn’t a partisan thing. Republicans know just as well as Democrats that there is no place for guys like Ken Paxton in Texas,” says Talarico. “That’s why these two parties that don’t seem to agree on anything these days came together to impeach the most corrupt politician in our state. I was there. Those brave Republican lawmakers who put Texas before their party were my colleagues.”
In his speech, Talarico referenced Houston’s history and its namesake, Sam Houston, an American military general and statesman who once belonged to the historical Democratic-Republican Party which existed in the early 1800s in the US.
Houston spearheaded the Texas Revolution in 1835-36 against Mexico which led to the establishment of the Republic of Texas before it joined the United States in 1845. As tensions surged between northern and southern states, Houston later refused to take an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, the string of southern states which relied heavily on slavery and seceded from the United States, triggering the civil war in 1861.
“As our state seceded from the Union on the eve of the civil war, the Texas legislature removed Sam Houston from office because he refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy,” Talarico told the crowd. “Upon his removal, legend says that Sam Houston rested under Austin’s treaty oak, a 500-year-old live oak tree and sacred meeting spot for Comanche and Tonkawa peace parties.”
“And as he rested, Sam Houston wrote the words to a speech he would never deliver. It included these words: ‘Do right, and risk the consequences’,” says Talarico.
“Like my brave Republican colleagues, Sam Houston is a Texas hero because he did right and suffered the consequences. He didn’t do it for himself. He did it for Texas.”
Talarico’s appeal to the centre ground and moderates, as well as the scandals associated with Paxton, has convinced several senior members of the Texan Republican party to endorse him, including retired Texas Supreme Court chief justice Tom Phillips; Neil Bush, the son and brother of the respective Bush presidents; and Bennett Ratliff, a former Republican state house representative in Texas.
Bush was critical of Paxton’s decision to challenge Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, while Phillips criticised Paxton’s negative campaign which has been largely focused on attack ads of Talarico.
Ratliff told a Texan TV outlet: “My father and grandfather both believed that integrity is what you did when nobody was watching, and there’s a very clear choice in the election for US senator. We’ve got a candidate in James Talarico that, without question, has the integrity that I look for in public officials, and Ken Paxton absolutely does not have the integrity I look for in public officials.”
Often referred to as ‘God’s Country’, Texas is one of the most religious states in the US, and Talarico makes frequent references to the scriptures in his speeches. In Houston, he told the crowd: “My granddad was a Baptist preacher; not the billionaire kind, just the regular kind. And when I was little, he told me that we follow a barefoot rabbi who gave us two commandments: love God and love [your] neighbour. Because there is no love of God without love of neighbour.“
The Texas senate race is set to be the most expensive in the county for this midterm election, with a competitive governor race between Republican incumbent Greg Abbott and Austin representative Hinojosa also attracting significant levels of funding in the final run of the election.
According to the Texas Association of Broadcasters, over $1 billion (almost €900 million) worth of political ads have been placed in Texas for this election cycle. While organisations, known as PACs, supporting Paxton’s bid for Senate have received at least $158 million (around €141 million) from South African-American businessman Elon Musk, according to US federal filings.
In Houston, Talarico accused Musk, who has significant business interests in the state, of trying to buy a Senate seat in Texas. “This Senate seat doesn’t belong to Elon Musk. This Senate seat belongs to you. It belongs to the people of Texas. This Senate seat has been held by some of the finest Texans. Ken Paxton should be nowhere near Lyndon B Johnson’s senate seat.”
In one of his final remarks to voters before the elections on Tuesday, Talarico said: “Houston, this is the moment we leave it all on the field. This is the last play of the last drive. We are the underdogs. It’s David versus Goliath. It’s the powers that be versus the powers that ought to be.”
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