{"id":447238,"date":"2026-09-25T10:06:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T10:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/447238\/"},"modified":"2026-09-25T10:06:23","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T10:06:23","slug":"james-talarico-challenges-ken-paxton-to-fox-news-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/447238\/","title":{"rendered":"James Talarico challenges Ken Paxton to Fox News debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With just over three weeks left before early voting, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico on Thursday challenged his GOP opponent Ken Paxton to a debate moderated by Fox News\u2019 Bret Baier.<\/p>\n

\u201cTexans deserve to make an informed choice in this really critical race, so I\u2019m challenging Ken Paxton to a game on his own turf,\u201d Talarico said during an interview at The Texas Tribune Festival. \u201cHe\u2019s been running from accountability his whole life. It\u2019s time to stop running.\u201d<\/p>\n

In July, Paxton\u2019s campaign said<\/a>, \u201cof course we are going to debate James Talarico,\u201d after Talarico announced he had accepted invitations from Texas media groups for three televised debates.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe look forward to engaging with potential debate hosts,\u201d Paxton senior adviser Nick Maddux said at the time. \u201cTalarico is a serial liar who has spent his entire campaign shamelessly deceiving Texas voters about his radical record with[out] answering the hard questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Paxton had not committed to any debates as of Thursday. WFAA, whose debate invitation Talarico accepted, reported Tuesday<\/a> that Paxton\u2019s campaign had not responded to messages since Aug. 24 after communicating with station management \u201cfor weeks to organize a potential debate.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sept. 2, Talarico accepted another debate invitation from CNN. In response, Maddux said<\/a>, \u201cno Texan wants to watch James Talarico and two of his fellow far-left activists posing as moderators spew left-wing talking points in a \u2018debate,\u2019 or what they would try to turn into a CCP-style struggle session.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talarico on Thursday said he wanted to debate and was \u201cwilling to go anywhere to make that a reality,\u201d adding that his campaign had been communicating with TV stations and hosts about the prospect for months.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am proud of my record, and I\u2019m not afraid of hard questions,\u201d he said before referencing a running attempt by Republicans to cast him as unmasculine and lacking in testosterone. \u201cKen Paxton is running from the fight. That sounds like low-T behavior to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paxton\u2019s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. Paxton had been invited to participate in the Tribune festival, but his campaign stopped responding to inquiries and ultimately did not accept.<\/p>\n

Talarico and Paxton are locked in an intensely competitive Senate contest. Polls have found the race within the margin of error, with Talarico leading in the polling average and in every public poll conducted this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

National Republican groups have poured over $160 million into advertising and campaign material on Paxton\u2019s behalf, a staggering sum that has rapidly overtaken Talarico\u2019s previous spending advantage, according to media tracking firm AdImpact.<\/p>\n

Asked about the influx, Talarico argued that the GOP was dropping \u201cunprecedented money\u201d in Texas \u201cbecause the people at the top were terrified of this movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are terrified of people coming together across party and across race and gender and religion and culture to take on the people at the top,\u201d Talarico said. \u201cBig money is powerful. I don\u2019t want to sugarcoat it. But it\u2019s nothing compared to people power.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republican spending is fueling efforts to define Talarico as a \u201cradical liberal,\u201d citing his opposition to various GOP bills in the Texas House, including bans on certain foreign agents purchasing land in the state and restrictions on transgender athletes.<\/p>\n

Talarico defended his record on those bills, saying the legislation was too broad and extreme. He said he supported amendments to ensure that law-abiding, ordinary immigrants \u2014 not foreign agents \u2014 from nations like China would not be prevented from purchasing land, as well as amendments to ensure local communities and officials had power over trans athlete eligibility decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe legislative process is complicated, and there\u2019s ways you can twist it to tell a story on one side,\u201d Talarico said. \u201cThis is just what happens in campaigns. People take a little bit of information and they try to distort it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an election cycle where Republicans have sought to paint all Democrats as Democratic Socialists or communists, Talarico rejected the attack and offered the populist economic message unifying working Texans against billionaire political influence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a capitalist: I believe in free enterprise, I believe in competition, I believe in free markets and growth,\u201d he said. \u201cThis system we have now is actually not capitalism. This system only works for those who can afford to buy politicians like Ken Paxton.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":447239,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2137,2133,2135,1967,27,29,28,2134],"class_list":["post-447238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-2026-elections","tag-democrats","tag-james-talarico","tag-ken-paxton","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-u-s-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447238","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=447238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/447239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}