{"id":331866,"date":"2026-06-11T07:59:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T07:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/331866\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T07:59:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T07:59:20","slug":"trumps-chosen-texas-candidate-is-locked-in-dead-heat-with-democrat-derided-as-tofu-talarico-poll-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/331866\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s chosen Texas candidate is locked in dead heat with Democrat derided as \u2018Tofu Talarico,\u2019 poll shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Texas Senate candidate whom President Donald Trump boosted to a primary victory over a four-term incumbent Republican is now locked in a dead heat with his Democratic challenger, a stunning new poll shows.<\/p>\n

The Texas Pulse Poll conducted by Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government & Public Service and ReconMR found that Ken Paxton, the state\u2019s scandal-ridden attorney general, trails Democratic state lawmaker James Talarico. Each candidate has 46 percent with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent.<\/p>\n

Trump endorsed Paxton over sitting Republican Sen. John Cornyn <\/a>shortly before the primary runoff election last week, which greatly contributed to Cornyn\u2019s bruising primary loss.<\/p>\n

That boosted Democrats\u2019 slim hopes of flipping the seat in a Republican stronghold state that Trump won by double digits. Before the primary, Cornyn warned that Paxton\u2019s numerous scandals could hurt him<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Dan Cogdell, Paxton\u2019s impeachment attorney endorsed Talarico.<\/p>\n

Paxton had been impeached by the state House of Representatives, though the Texas state Senate acquitted him; is in the process of a messy divorce because of alleged infidelity; and filed a lawsuit to try and overturn the 2020 election results in swing states that voted for Joe Biden. He had previously been under federal indictment as well.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A new poll shows that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is locked in a neck-and-neck race with Democratic state legislator James Talarico. (Reuters)<\/p>\n

But Republicans have sought to paint Talarico as out of step and too liberal for the state. Specifically, Republicans have pointed to a video in which Talarico spoke to the Texas Humane Legislation Network, where he said, \u201cit is now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption\u201d and that his 2022 re-election campaign was a \u201cnon-meat campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n

That paved the way for Paxton to label him \u201cTofu Talarico\u201d and falsely paint him as vegan. In response, Talarico said, \u201cI\u2019ve been eating barbecue since Ken Paxton\u2019s first indictment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republicans have also criticized Talarico for having said, \u201cGod is non-binary\u201d when defending transgender people in the legislature and that there are at least six sexes.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported that the Trump-aligned Citizens for Sanity released an AI video depicting Talarico as Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music talking about administering gender-affirming care to transgender youth sung to \u201cMy Favorite Things.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, on Monday, during a podcast interview with Codgell, Talarico said he opposed \u201cgender reassignment surgeries for minors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Led by Trump, Republicans have hit Democrats for supporting transgender youth in women\u2019s sports on the college and high school level and for offering gender-affirming care for transgender people younger than the age of 18.<\/p>\n

But the poll showed that many people still do not like Paxton after his numerous scandals. The survey showed that 54 percent of Texans have an unfavorable opinion of Paxton and only 34 percent have a favorable opinion of him. In addition, 24 percent of Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of him.<\/p>\n

\"Democratic<\/p>\n

Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has sought to convince Republican voters to cross over and vote for him. (Reuters)<\/p>\n

By contrast, 45 percent of Texans have a favorable opinion of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, with 84 percent of Republicans having a favorable opinion of him.<\/p>\n

The poll also showed that 41 percent of Texans have a favorable opinion of Talarico, 34 percent have an unfavorable opinion of him and 25 percent do not know or have no opinion of him.<\/p>\n

The poll was conducted between June 1-4, surveying 804 likely Texas voters, with a margin of error of four percent.<\/p>\n

A host of Democratic senators have already opened their leadership political action committees to support Talarico. The leadership PACs of Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) all sent $5,000 contributions to Talarico\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n

Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that James Talarico led Ken Paxton 47 percent to 44 percent in the Texas A&M poll. The polling data from Texas A&M did show that but was later revised to show they are tied at 46 percent each and The Independent\u2019s reporting has been updated to reflect that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Texas Senate candidate whom President Donald Trump boosted to a primary victory over a four-term incumbent Republican…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[118654,106301,145,2135,3309,1967,8234,118655,27,297,29,28,1863],"class_list":["post-331866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-democratic-challenger","tag-democratic-state","tag-donald-trump","tag-james-talarico","tag-john-cornyn","tag-ken-paxton","tag-republican","tag-republican-stronghold","tag-texas","tag-texas-am-university","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331866","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=331866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}