Texas Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in more than 30 years.
James Talarico wants to end that streak. He’s raking in cash and leaning hard on a carefully polished message about faith and fairness.
But one Dallas Cowboys legend just poked a hole in that message, and Talarico’s campaign still won’t answer the one question that matters most.
A Statement That Answered Everything Except the Question
Texas State Representative James Talarico (D-TX) is the Democrat nominee for US Senate. He faces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a race that has drawn national attention.
OutKick asked the Talarico campaign a simple question. Would he vote for the federal Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act? That bill would keep biological males out of female sports at federally funded schools. It failed to advance in the Senate when every Democrat senator voted against it, according to OutKick.
Campaign spokesman JT Ennis sent back a statement. He said that “throughout his career he has opposed trans athletes playing girls’ sports when it jeopardizes safety or fairness.”
Then came the pivot.
“At the same time, he’ll always stand against discrimination, especially when the most powerful politicians in the country bully students to score political points, because his faith teaches him that every child is made in the image of God,” Ennis said.
Read that twice. No yes. No no. And OutKick noted the campaign never said whether Talarico would vote for the bill, never offered a federal alternative, and never answered follow-up questions about how he’d actually measure “safety” or “fairness.”
There’s something worth noticing in the faith line, too. Scripture does say every person bears the image of God. It also says God made them male and female. Talarico likes to quote the first half of that idea and skip the second.
The Votes Tell the Real Story
Talarico’s campaign wants voters to believe he’s held one steady, sensible position all along. His record in Austin paints a different picture.
In 2021, he voted against House Bill 25, which required public school athletes to compete according to the sex on their birth certificates recorded at or near birth. Earlier that same year, he voted against a similar measure, Senate Bill 29.
He didn’t stop at voting no. Talarico authored an amendment, which failed, that would have stripped out HB 25’s requirement that the birth certificate reflect sex at or near birth. Before HB 25 became law, the University Interscholastic League accepted legally modified birth certificates. So his amendment would have kept that door wide open.
He also backed amendments letting a coach, a principal, or a school board sign off on otherwise prohibited participation. None of those amendments spelled out any safety or fairness test, OutKick reported.
And in 2023, Talarico voted against Senate Bill 15, the measure keeping biological males off women’s college teams in Texas. He supported an amendment that would have deferred to NCAA and NAIA eligibility rules instead.
Here’s the kicker. Both of those organizations have since changed course. The NCAA now bars male athletes from women’s competition, and the NAIA reserves its female category for athletes born female.
So the very bodies Talarico wanted Texas to follow eventually decided biology matters. Talarico apparently hasn’t caught up.
At the Texas Tribune Festival in September, he insisted nothing had shifted. “No, my position is exactly the same,” he said, arguing local officials should decide eligibility athlete by athlete and sport by sport.
He also had to explain a 2021 comment that “some things are more important than perfectly fair competition in sports.” Talarico said critics yanked that line out of context and that he meant elementary recreation and T-ball.
Maybe so. But T-ball kids grow up. They hit puberty. And a case-by-case system run by local officials is exactly how a 17-year-old male ends up on a girls’ varsity roster.
There’s No Halfway House Here
The “it depends” approach sounds reasonable on a campaign stage. It falls apart on a field.
Any league or state faces two choices. It can keep biological males out of girls’ sports, which amounts to admitting that identity doesn’t change biology. Or it can let them in, and then watch women’s sports slowly stop meaning anything, because every coach chasing a trophy will have a reason to recruit boys who identify as girls.
Talarico wants a third door where school boards decide on a hunch. That door leads right back to the second option, only with more paperwork.
Randy White saw through it. The Super Bowl MVP and Cowboys Hall of Famer endorsed Paxton in an interview OutKick published October 4, 2026, and he didn’t sugarcoat his read on Talarico’s shifting answers.
“I think that’s a sign that we can’t trust him,” White said. “He’s going to go with the way the wind flows, whatever he feels like is the best thing for him and what his goals are.”
That’s a lineman’s way of saying what a lot of Texans are already thinking.
Where Was the Republican Cavalry?
Talarico has a lot of money to spread that message around. The Texas Tribune reported he raised $30 million in the second quarter of 2026 compared to Paxton’s $9 million, and had outspent Paxton on direct advertising by a factor of nearly 200 to 1. Summer polling showed a tight race, with several surveys putting Talarico narrowly ahead within the margin of error, according to the Tribune.
Part of the reason lies inside the GOP itself.
Paxton beat incumbent US Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) in a May 26 runoff after President Trump endorsed him. Cornyn is the same senator who helped write the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the gun bill Joe Biden signed into law and thanked him for.
Cornyn has made it plain he won’t lift a finger for Paxton. “Paxton’s a poor campaigner,” Cornyn told the Texas Tribune. “He’s lazy and doesn’t raise money.” Axios reported Cornyn told Semafor he wouldn’t send Paxton any money and that Trump “can spend his money.”
The national party hasn’t exactly rushed in either. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-SC) endorsed Paxton only after he beat Cornyn, according to Axios. Thune did show up as a special guest at a Paxton fundraiser in July 2026. But Axios also reported that Texas didn’t make the NRSC’s list of eight priority battlegrounds, and missed the cut for the first round of ad reservations from the super PAC tied to Thune.
It’s hard not to see some lingering bitterness over Trump’s endorsement in all that foot-dragging.
Compare it with how Democrats handled their own messy primary in Michigan. US Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recruited US Representative Haley Stevens (D-MI) for that race, CBS News reported. Abdul El-Sayed beat her anyway. Within a day, Schumer and the Democrat Senate campaign arm issued a joint statement backing El-Sayed and pledging to help him win in November, according to Just the News.
Democrats closed ranks around a nominee who had openly campaigned against their own leader. Some establishment Republicans in Washington, DC are still nursing grudges against a nominee their own President picked.
Talarico’s campaign is betting that a soft-spoken faith pitch can paper over a voting record. Whether Texans buy it is up to them. But on girls’ sports, the record is right there in black and white, and his campaign still hasn’t answered the question.
Sources:
“Talarico camp says he opposes trans athletes if unsafe or unfair but accuses politicians of bullying students,” OutKick
“John Cornyn won’t raise money for Ken Paxton in Texas Senate race,” The Texas Tribune
“Scoop: Thune to attend Paxton fundraiser,” Axios
“Trump Endorses Ken Paxton as Gun Owners Remember Cornyn’s Record,” Ammoland
“Biden signs bipartisan gun measure negotiated by Sen. John Cornyn after Uvalde shooting,” KSAT
“Abdul El-Sayed projected to win Michigan Democratic Senate primary, defeating Haley Stevens,” CBS News
“Schumer backs El-Sayed after progressive wins Dem nomination in Michigan Senate primary,” Just the News
