{"id":332516,"date":"2026-06-11T18:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-11T18:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/332516\/"},"modified":"2026-06-11T18:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-11T18:38:09","slug":"talarico-taps-world-cup-fever-in-bid-for-latino-voters-in-senate-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/332516\/","title":{"rendered":"Talarico taps World Cup fever in bid for Latino voters in Senate race"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 Democratic Senate nominee\u00a0James\u00a0Talarico<\/a> has a new campaign strategy: f\u00fatbol.<\/p>\n

Talarico, a state lawmaker from Austin, released a new Spanish language ad Thursday that blends soccer themes with images from the campaign trail.<\/p>\n

The ad\u2019s narrator says Talarico is working to defend Social Security and Medicare, improve education and make billionaires pay their \u201cfair share\u201d of taxes, according to a script in English.<\/p>\n

\u201cTalarico\u2019s shown he has the grit and determination\u2026but he\u2019s still depending on your vote,\u201d the narrator says in Spanish. \u201cAnd just like that, we\u2019ll all be yelling: \u00a1Talaricooooooooo!\u201d<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Talarico campaign said the \u201csix-figure statewide TV buy\u201d will air on Telemundo starting Thursday during Mexico\u2019s opening World Cup<\/a> game against South Africa.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The ad will run during every group stage game played by the U.S. and Mexico national teams.<\/p>\n

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz<\/a> credited the shift, particularly among voters who live in areas near the U.S.-Mexico border, with helping him win reelection by a significantly larger margin than he did in 2018.<\/p>\n

The last time Democrats won a Senate seat in Texas was 1988. Key to reversing that trend is winning back Latino voters who flipped to Republicans in the last election.<\/p>\n

Democrats say Republicans are taking the shift for granted and ignoring economic concerns of Latino voters such as struggles with rising prices.<\/p>\n

Paxton adviser Nick Maddux said the attorney general has a record of standing up for Latinos. \u201cWe look forward to sharing his message and communicating the important work he’s done,\u201d\u00a0Maddux said.<\/p>\n

He added the campaign will continue to highlight\u00a0Talarico\u2019s \u201cextreme and out-of-touch record\u201d on taxes, religion and transgender issues.<\/p>\n

Paxton allies have stepped up their attacks Talarico as well, portraying him as too liberal for the state.<\/p>\n

The Daily Caller reported this week<\/a> that a Trump-aligned group, Citizens for Sanity, launched a \u201csix-figure ad campaign\u201d against Talarico featuring an AI-generated version of the Democrat as Maria from The Sound of Music.<\/p>\n

The deepfake version of Talarico sings altered lyrics, including references to transgender issues.<\/p>\n

Talarico has said some of his previous statements were intentionally provocative and at times cringeworthy, but accused Republicans of focusing on them to distract from Paxton\u2019s legal and ethical troubles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2013 Democratic Senate nominee\u00a0James\u00a0Talarico has a new campaign strategy: f\u00fatbol. Talarico, a state lawmaker from Austin, released…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161,101234,91241,118836,87906],"class_list":["post-332516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news","tag-tp-congress","tag-tp-ken-paxton","tag-tp-ted-cruz","tag-tp-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332516","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=332516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}