![\"Father](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a61267.jpg\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cNow you\u2019re supposed to give me a compliment in return.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cartoon by Sophie Lucido Johnson and Sammi Skolmoski<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t even use the word \u2018Democrat.\u2019 I\u2019d just say, \u2018I\u2019m a Texan who can beat Ken Paxton!\u2019\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s great advice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rawlings\u2019s tutorial zeal seemed to derive equally from the existential stakes of the race and the candidate\u2019s evident need of guidance. Talarico, clean-cut, clean-shaven, and wearing one of his three white J. C. Penney dress shirts, looked like he\u2019d just finished his paper route and was eager to shovel the church\u2019s walk. During the ten-o\u2019clock service, he greeted two dozen parishioners who lined up to meet him. Rawlings shook his head at how long Talarico took with each baby proffered for approval. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t learned to maximize his touches,\u201d he said. \u201cBut he\u2019s authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talarico told me later that he didn\u2019t intend to take Rawlings\u2019s advice about positioning: \u201cI\u2019m not a huge fan of being against someone. Ken Paxton is a symptom, not the disease, and so is Donald Trump\u2014they are the products of a broken system. A campaign based on love is more durable than one based on fear.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the trail, Talarico invokes his mother, Tamara, as love incarnate. When he was seven weeks old, Tamara left his father, an abusive alcoholic, and moved into an empty room at a residential hotel where she worked as a sales assistant. She was determined to raise her son in a healthier environment; Talarico\u2019s applause line is \u201cMy mom showed me that true love doesn\u2019t tolerate abuse.\u201d Yet even Tamara is mystified by her son\u2019s relentless urge to repair. \u201cI\u2019ll tell Jimmy I\u2019m annoyed at one or both of my sisters, and he\u2019ll always start with \u2018You have much more in common than you have differences,\u2019\u00a0\u201d she told me. \u201cWe\u2019re regular people\u2014we\u2019re judgy and icky. And he\u2019s so reasonable. He won\u2019t trash-talk. And that\u2019s very annoying, because some people need trash-talking.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a rally in Wichita Falls\u2014hard-right terrain\u2014Talarico and four members of his campaign staff were driving south, workshopping themes for a talk the following night. Talarico fills the Notes app on his phone with quotations from such theologians as Richard Rohr, Dorothy Day, and Gustavo Guti\u00e9rrez, along with his own ideas, and he and his aides sift it for usable nuggets. \u201cIs there a \u2018Love is strong\u2019 riff?\u201d Talarico wondered. \u201c\u00a0\u2018Hate doesn\u2019t lower anyone\u2019s electricity bill\u2019?\u201d He has a knack for love-and-hate antitheses: \u201cChristian nationalists walk around with a mouth full of Scripture and a heart full of hate.\u201d It\u2019s this rhetorical gift which made Obama call him a \u201creally talented young man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve never done \u2018What if Jesus went to the U.S. Senate?\u2019\u00a0\u201d Antonio Esparza, who runs Talarico\u2019s social media, said.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u00a0\u2018For I was hungry and you cut my food stamps,\u2019\u00a0\u201d Talarico said, recalling a line from a draft.<\/p>\n
Esparza was having second thoughts. \u201cThe whole thing is about weeping, though,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talarico laughed and said, \u201cThe whole campaign is about weeping!\u201d His blood-sugar alarm went off; in his first campaign, in 2018, he canvassed the length of his district on foot, felt so woozy that he went to the hospital, and discovered that he has diabetes. A staffer noted that it was time to take insulin, but he said, \u201cIt\u2019s fine,\u201d and went on thinking. He tends to ignore urgent beeps\u2014from his glucose monitor, his gas gauge, his alarm clock\u2014because he dislikes being rushed. His staff often has to yank him out of his ranch house in Austin to get on the road.<\/p>\n
Talarico is remarkably consistent onstage, but in private his affect fluctuates. When he bolts Kraft Mac & Cheese without chewing because he enjoys the \u201cliquid tubes\u201d feeling of childhood, or when he gets defeated by airline luggage tags\u2014\u201cThe sticky thing is complicated!\u201d\u2014he resembles Dennis the Menace. More often, though, he calls to mind Robert Caro, as when he passed by Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, and gave staffers a disquisition on the aftermath of J.F.K.\u2019s assassination. (\u201cIt\u2019s why the Dallas Cowboys becoming \u2018America\u2019s team\u2019 and the show \u2018Dallas\u2019 were so important\u2014Dallas had to shake the cloud that had hung over it.\u201d)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cYes\u2014\u201d Talarico said, nodding. \u201cWe\u2019ve been trying that for fifty years!\u201d Rawlings said. \u201cSure, yep\u2014\u201d \u201cI just care…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61240,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-226737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-midterm-elections-2026","9":"tag-texas","10":"tag-texas-headlines","11":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}