Photo: Harmon Dobson/ZUMA Press Wire/Reuters

When Donald Trump ordered Texas Republicans to conduct a rare mid-decade gerrymander of U.S. House seats to help protect the GOP’s fragile trifecta in the 2026 midterms, there may have been some private grumbling about the possibility the gambit would backfire by exposing some incumbents to a bit more competition. But more than likely, Trump was pushing on an open door. Texas Republicans share the president’s willingness to perpetually push his luck. They’ve been on a serious ideological bender during the last few years, and after an unusually successful 2024 election cycle in which a Trump-led ticket cut deeply into the usually Democratic Hispanic vote, they probably feel bulletproof. But it’s possible the Texas GOP has finally overplayed its hand, and retribution could come in the form of a statewide Democratic candidacy that would not have happened without Trump’s power grab.

James Talarico began the summer as a youngish (36-year-old) four-term state legislator from the Austin area who was little known outside Central Texas. The redistricting push and the temporary quorum-defying Democratic exodus it spawned made the media-savvy Talarico a symbol of anti-Trump defiance. It helped that he did not come across as an old-school Democratic Party warhorse. He is a former public-school teacher who is currently attending a Presbyterian seminary. And while there is a fiery populist strain to much of his rhetoric, he’s renowned for his ability to utilize new media and for engaging Republicans and others outside the party fold (most famously, he appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and made the manosphere icon something of a fan).

While some observers thought Talarico might be a good 2026 gubernatorial prospect against the very powerful Republican incumbent Greg Abbott, he took a close look at the far more vulnerable U.S. Senate seat of John Cornyn, who is in a vicious primary battle with scandal-plagued Trump protégé and Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, and saw an opening. Talarico announced his Senate candidacy with a video that mixed religious and populist rhetoric in a way that has long been natural in the southern and western cultures that blend in Texas:

I’m running for the U.S. Senate.Billionaires have taken over Texas and taken over America — but together, we can take power back for working people.Join this movement: https://t.co/Cam7Y742fM pic.twitter.com/jPIrIJeX0A

— James Talarico (@jamestalarico) September 9, 2025

It’s important to note that Talarico’s reference to “billionaires” controlling his state is not some sort of abstract allusion to oligarchs. There are two very specific oil billionaires named Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks who have personally financed a hard-right-wing purge of anyone even vaguely representing moderation in the Texas GOP along with specific policy initiatives, most notably an aggressive school-voucher system backed by Abbott that threatens the very existence of public education, particularly in rural areas. Dunn and Wilks, who are often described as Christian nationalists or even “dominionists,” are very tight with Ken Paxton. These are men who act like liberals of any sort should be cast into a fiery pit, and their self-serving free-market views and their religious zealotry are very much part of a package.

Talarico may be better positioned to call out these fanatics than your average kitchen-table-issues-talking Democratic politican, as The Atlantic’s Elaine Godfrey suggests:

Talarico stands out for his relative youth but also for his particular brand of long-winded eloquence. He can sound, in some ways, like a southern-style Barack Obama or a Texas Pete Buttigieg. Two years ago, a video made the rounds of Talarico arguing against legislation that would require public-school teachers to hang the Ten Commandments in their classroom. “This bill to me is not only unconstitutional; it’s not only un-American; I think it is also deeply un-Christian,” he told his Republican colleagues in a committee hearing. “And I say that because I believe this bill is idolatrous. I believe it is exclusionary. And I believe that it is arrogant — and those three things, in my reading of the Gospel, are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Jesus.”

Before Talarico’s emergence, Texas Democrats were mostly mulling two retreads for the Senate race: 2024 Senate loser Colin Allred and three-time loser (in 2018, 2020, and 2022) Beto O’Rourke. They’re both living reminders of the long string of promising but eternally frustrated candidacies that have left Democrats without a single statewide victory since 1994. Allred is already in the race, along with former astronaut Terry Virts.

Perhaps Talarico will flame out like his predecessors. But he does offer Democrats a fresh face who can personally testify to the incredible hubris of the GOP in Washington and in Texas and can do so in the language of righteous indignation that should appeal to an angry small-donor base without embracing the national party Establishment (which he regularly disdains as part of a “broken political system”). If Cornyn and Paxton tear each other limb from limb and Texas Hispanics bridle at Stephen Miller’s armed nativist crusade, Talarico could even win, giving his party a decent shot at flipping the Senate. If so, it would serve Trump right for messing with Texas.

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