State Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate from Texas, with his grandfather, former Tarrant County auditor Jimmy C. Causey, in a campaign ad.
Talarico campaign via YouTube
FORT WORTH
James Talarico’s new U.S. Senate ad features his granddad, and here’s the backstory.
Jimmy C. Causey, 86, was a young Southern Baptist pastor in Corpus Christi back in the 1960s. That’s what he talks about in a new campaign ad.
It shows “PawPaw” and “Jimmy” rocking on a porch, drinking iced tea from Mason jar mugs and talking about the “two great Commandments: ‘Love God,’ and ‘Love your neighbor.’ ”
But much later, Causey was the hired Tarrant County auditor for eight years. As county government’s chief financial officer, he stood up to good-ol’-boy sheriffs running side schemes and to the then-new Republican power clique at the courthouse.
Until 1987, sheriffs also ran a private jailhouse store on the side selling inmates shaving cream, cigarettes, candy and snacks for up to $20,000 a year in personal profit. The Star-Telegram and Fort Worth Press both denounced the private jailhouse business as the sheriffs’ “banana wagon.”
It was blatant exploitation of what was literally a captive market.
Tarrant County auditor Jimmy C. Causey decided to let a panel of district judges decide whether he should keep his job. He later resigned after the meeting June 22, 1995, at the Tarrant County Courthouse in Fort Worth, Texas. Allen Rose Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection/UT Arlington Special Collections
Causey took the not-so-radical position that any money collected in the county jail should rightfully belong to the people of Tarrant County, not to then-Sheriff Don Carpenter, an Azle Republican. Eventually, courts agreed and the jailhouse concession was changed to fund deputies’ equipment and emergency assistance.
Causey, a former chief financial officer for a Laredo junior college and for a Fort Worth-based county mental health agency, was county auditor for eight years from 1987 to 1995. He often tangled with District Clerk Tom Wilder, a Bedford Republican still in office.
“Jimmy” Talarico was a toddler at the time, a frequent visitor to Causey and his wife, schoolteacher Betty Causey.
Talarico often mentions that his maternal grandfather was a Southern Baptist pastor in South Texas but has only said in passing that they later lived in Fort Worth.
In a June 1 story in The New York Times, Causey said he was a moderate in the Southern Baptist Church in the early days of conservative fundamentalists’ church takeover.
“The conservatives believed that the Bible was dictated by God to the writers of the Bible and that every word of it was to be taken as the literal word of God,” Causey was quoted as saying. “I just never could swallow that line.”
Causey said he was a pastor at three churches. Based on newspaper archives, his longest stint was at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Corpus Christi.
In the commercial, titled “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” he is first seen in closeup of his folded hands as he rocked in the chair.
Tarrant County auditor Jimmy C. Causey leaves a meeting with district judges before they asked for his resignation Jan. 22, 1995, at the Tarrant County Courthouse in Fort Worth, Texas. Allen Rose Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection/UT Arlington Special Collections
“This is my pawpaw,” Talarico said.
“And Jimmy is my grandson,” Causey said.
Talarico describes how he’s tried to live the “two great Commandments” as a schoolteacher and then as a lawmaker helping those who struggle to afford housing, healthcare and groceries.
“And that’s loving your neighbor,” Causey said.
When Talarico read the required “I approve this message” line, Causey added, “Amen!”
As auditor, Causey pushed for more funding for a larger staff and stricter oversight.
But he also was a lightning rod throughout his career.
At Laredo Junior College, he sided with now-state Sen. Judith Zaffirini in a sexual discrimination lawsuit against the school. In Tarrant County, he faced resistance when he called for substantial tax increases and then when he tried to take over more than 30 bank accounts managed outside the auditor’s oversight. Later, he was targeted by officials’ complaints when he was city comptroller in El Paso.
In 1995, when Causey turned in his resignation to County Judge Tom Vandergriff under pressure from district judges, Star-Telegram columnist Bob Ray Sanders wrote that Causey was the target of “self-centered, fiefdom-protecting county officials.”
The criticism was “an orchestrated attempt to politically assassinate the county auditor,” Sanders wrote.
“Auditors have always been a whipping boy of county administrators who don’t like being told how and when they can spend money,” Sanders wrote.
“But there is a different dynamic at work here, because Wilder is the man who would be king of the county. He wants to control others and he’s used to getting his way.“
Causey had called Wilder a “neophyte officeholder” and said then-Sheriff David Williams, a Haltom City Republican, led a “smear campaign.”
“I’m going up here to resign,” he said. “I don’t need this.”
As he stormed out of the courthouse, a reporter asked his plans.
“I’m not a public figure anymore,” Causey snapped back. “It’s none of your damn business.”
Jimmy Talarico was 6 years old.
And they’re still fighting at the courthouse.
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This story was originally published August 13, 2026 at 9:21 AM.
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Bud Kennedy is a Fort Worth Star-Telegram opinion columnist. In a 54-year Texas newspaper career, he has covered two Super Bowls, a presidential inauguration, seven national political conventions and 19 Texas Legislature sessions..
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