James Talarico loves lecturing Republicans about what Jesus would do, and Democrats treat him like a rock star.
His campaign keeps waving off questions about his online habits as cheap smears.
And Talarico’s lawyers fired back in 35 minutes flat over one find from a dusty old database.
A Hookup Site Hack Coughed Up a Name Every Texan Knows
Townhall reporter Amy Curtis went digging through records from the 2011 hack of Fling.com, an adult hookup website, and came back with an email address that Talarico’s own attorneys admit once belonged to the Democrat US Senate candidate.
Somebody used that address to open a Fling.com account on December 26, 2010. The username read “mohawk787.” The profile’s interests field listed fetish, group sex, sexual relations, online flirting, and a catch-all “other.”
Talarico started teaching sixth graders not long after that.
The records hold a few more wrinkles. The account’s creation time and its last login sit just 54 seconds apart, and the screenshots Townhall published show no later login before the breach. The database also flagged the email as “validated,” with a “Y” in a field where the default setting was an “N,” according to the data structure published by security researcher Troy Hunt.
Then came the IP address. A search tool placed that internet connection in Austin, and the same connection turns up on an account with the virtual pet site Neopets that someone registered using an email associated with Talarico’s sister. The same Talarico email address also appears in breach records from Myspace and Zynga.
Four Pages of Lawyering in 35 Minutes
Townhall sent its findings to the Talarico campaign and asked for comment. Thirty-five minutes later, a four-page letter from the candidate’s legal counsel landed in the reporter’s inbox.
Most campaigns can’t settle a lunch order that fast.
The lawyers confirmed the email address belonged to James Talarico. They argued a hacker opened the Fling.com account with it, a claim Townhall says the letter never backed up with anything. They also pointed out that the birth date and ZIP code on the profile don’t match Talarico’s birthday or the ZIP code where he lived at the time.
But the letter left some things alone. According to Townhall, the attorneys didn’t dispute that the Fling.com account and the Neopets account tied to his sister’s email shared an IP address. And they didn’t challenge the authenticity of the breach data.
None of this proves Talarico ever visited the site, and Townhall says as much. The records don’t show who typed in the email, who controlled the account, or who filled out that profile, and they show no messages, no meetings, and no misconduct of any kind. A hacker theory isn’t impossible. But a hacker who signs up a future schoolteacher for a hookup site from a connection that also shows up next to his sister’s email, then never logs in again, would make for one awfully odd prankster.
His Instagram Feed Already Had Some Explaining to Do
This isn’t the first time Talarico’s name has landed near adult content. In November 2025, Axios reported that he followed 10 Instagram accounts belonging to porn actors, OnlyFans models, and women with pages on escort websites, and that he had “liked” photos posted by an Austin woman with an escort-site profile.
Campaign spokesman JT Ennis insisted, “James has never subscribed to Only Fans or an escort service.” Ennis said the social media team “follows back and engages with supporters who have large followings and does not investigate their backgrounds.”
Then Ennis reached for the stained glass. “While James was unaware of how these women make money, he does not judge them for it and will not play into an effort to smear them for clickbait articles. That’s exactly what his Christian faith calls him to do.”
That’s an awful lot of Scripture to haul out for a follow button.
And back in 2019, Talarico described Instagram to podcast host Trey Blocker as his private little corner of the internet. “I try not to follow celebrities or journalists or politicians on Instagram,” Talarico said. “I try to just keep it as, like, my personal friends.”
Put that quote next to the Axios list and the arithmetic gets uncomfortable in a hurry.
The Press Already Wrote the Fling.com Rulebook
Here’s the part the national media would rather skip.
In October 2025, the Detroit Metro Times tied emails apparently connected to Michigan state Rep Josh Schriver (R-MI), an anti-pornography Republican, to a Fling.com account from the very same breach. The paper pointed to an IP address in East Lansing and said the dates lined up with Schriver’s years at Michigan State University.
Schriver denied all of it and called the records forged. His statement sounds a lot like the Talarico letter: “The Metro Times article relies on unverified data from old internet breaches and attempts to connect me to something I have absolutely nothing to do with.”
Nobody on the Left treated that denial as the final word. The Michigan Advance, part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network, picked up the story, called Schriver one of the most far-right members of the legislature, and tacked on an unrelated item about another Republican lawmaker’s 2024 arrest that never produced a single charge.
Now flip the jersey. When Axios published its Instagram story about Talarico, the Columbia Journalism Review sniffed at “Axios’s scoop, if you can call it that.”
So breach data counts as news when a Republican’s email turns up, and it turns into a clickbait smear when a Democrat Senate candidate’s does. Funny how that works.
A Pulpit Campaign Runs on Trust
Old breach data does deserve caution. When Fling’s operators checked a sample of 101 email addresses from the hacker’s dump in 2016, only 61 matched accounts actually in use on the site. Anyone can type somebody else’s email into a signup form, and nobody should convict a man on a spreadsheet.
But that caution has to cut both ways, and the Left only seems to remember it when one of its own lands in the file.
Talarico never ran as an ordinary Democrat, either. Axios described him as a seminarian who rose to fame arguing that his Christianity drives his politics, and he built his Senate run on telling church folks that Republican policies on immigration and other issues don’t line up with the Bible. A man who quotes Scripture at his opponents invites voters to hold him to the same measure.
Plenty of Texans had already made up their minds anyway. Early voting ran from October 19 through October 30, Townhall published its report on that final day, and Election Day falls on November 3, 2026.
Talarico’s lawyers needed just 35 minutes to find a hacker to blame. For a candidate who never runs short of sermons, the explanation came from the attorneys instead of the pulpit.
Sources:
Townhall, “Talarico Email Appears in Fling.com Data Leak Listing ‘Fetish’ and ‘Group Sex’ on Profile,” Amy Curtis
Axios, “Faith-forward Texas Senate candidate follows porn actors, escorts on Instagram,” Alex Thompson
The Spectator, Cockburn’s Diary
Michigan Advance, “Anti-porn Michigan Republican denies connection to data breach info leaked from hookup, webcam site,” Ben Solis
Columbia Journalism Review
Have I Been Pwned, Fling breach listing
Global Dating Insights, “Fling.com Breached As Hacker Sells 40m User Data On Dark Web”
