Anyone who’s been following Texas Rep. James Talarico’s U.S. Senate run knows he’s got Republicans shitting bricks.
As the Austin Democrat’s campaign has picked up money and momentum, the GOP has targeted him with what political observers say sound like increasingly desperate attacks. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, for example, called the former San Antonio middle-school teacher the “most radical, woke Democrat Texas voters have ever seen.”
So far, not much of the mud has stuck, though. Even an earlier comment Talarico made that God is nonbinary — a statement he explained as his way of making the point that “God is beyond gender” — doesn’t appear to have blunted his crossover appeal.
Now, a new federal filing shows just how deep those Republican fears run.
A political action committee dubbed the Stop Talarico PAC formed this week in the Texas capital, a Federal Election Commission document shows. Although the fundraising group doesn’t yet list any cash, its treasurer is identified as D.C. attorney Lisa Lisker, whose law firm bio describes her as a “nationally recognized campaign finance expert” focused on the “financial operations of Republican federal and state political committees.”
Adding to the apparent urgency, Stop Talarico PAC filed its federal paperwork this Wednesday, the same day Talarico’s campaign announced that it raised more than $27 million in the first quarter — the largest-ever haul by a U.S. Senate candidate in the first quarter of an election year.
Meanwhile, Talarico’s two potential opponents in the November general election, incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, are still locked in a punch-to-the-throat Republican primary.
What’s more, neither came close to Talarico in their first-quarter fundraising. Cornyn’s camp raked in just $9 million for the period and Paxton pulled an even more paltry $2.2 million, according to a Texas Tribune analysis of federal filings.
UT-San Antonio political scientist Jon Taylor said he understands why GOP operatives are seeking a novel way to slow Talarico’s momentum. But he questioned how successful the PAC will be given the GOP’s inability so far to deal damage to the Democratic rising star.
“I think it’s fascinating to see a PAC spring up for the express purpose of stopping James Talarico,” Taylor said. “But please tell me — no matter how much money they raise — how they’re going to get that message across to people who are exhausted by Trump, exhausted by this war, exhausted by high gas prices and the high prices on everything else. Those are the things people are concerned about right now, and Talarico is speaking to those issues.”
Despite the buzz, Talarico is far from a shoo-in for the Senate seat. Texas is still far from becoming a purple state, and Dems still painfully recall the 2018 election cycle, when the similarly charismatic Beto O’Rourke ran a near-miss campaign against U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
Even so, Taylor said Talarico faces a different set of circumstances than O’Rourke. For one, the state rep is running in an election cycle that’s a referendum on Trump’s second term, when he has reached a historically low popularity. Data so far suggests Dems are primed to turn up big, while GOP voters are less excited about this cycle.
Another key factor is that Cruz, while loathed by Democrats and many middle-of-the-road voters, still had solid support from own party in 2018. The same can’t be said for either Cornyn or Paxton, Taylor said, since each represents a different side of the Republican Party fractured along chamber-of-commerce and MAGA fault lines.
“You have a runoff between a senator who’s openly despised by a large portion of his own party for being a ‘Republican in name only’ and an attorney general who’s openly despised by a completely different faction for his own baggage,” the professor said. “Both of these candidates are toxic to a certain percentage of people in their own party. It’s almost like the stars are aligning for Talarico.”
Sign Up for SA Current newsletters.
Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed
