‘we Touched A Nerve’: Talarico Gets Candid About His Stunning Win

James Talarico launched his Senate campaign in September 2025 just one day before the killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk — a coincidence that he now believes set the tone for his whole campaign.

Talarico weighed cancelling the campaign event he had scheduled for that evening; local officials suggested that holding it could pose a security risk. But Talarico went ahead, speaking for just five minutes and using that time not to promote his own candidacy but to eulogize Kirk, calling him “our sibling, our brother,” and “a human being endowed with infinite worth and entitled to unconditional love.”

“I think his murder, his assassination, really shaped the entire campaign,” Talarico told me in a phone interview on Wednesday, the morning after he became the first Texas Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in 38 years.

Nowhere was MAGA's smash-mouth politics of name calling and personal cruelty on fuller display this election cycle than in Texas. And no state or candidate delivered a firmer rejection of that kind of politics than Talarico. He ran a positive campaign in the face of smears from Republicans including Vice President JD Vance, who falsely suggested he was gay and had a questionable web browser history, and a conspiratorial stew of posts on X that imagined him at a mental institution in Ohio in October. He even faced death threats.

But through it all, Talarico, a seminarian state lawmaker and former middle school teacher, fretted over whether his fundraising texts were honest and reminded people that his GOP opponent Ken Paxton was a “child of God.” He’s hoping other Democrats will take a similar approach to politics in the campaigns to come.

“The people of Texas, the people of this country, from what I can tell, demanded an end to that politics of division practiced by people in both parties,” Talarico told me. “I really do think the new kind of politics that we forged here in Texas, politics that's rooted in love, is a model for the Democratic Party, a model for our country moving forward.”

Texans, he said, voted for change and an end to hyper-partisanship. And looking ahead to 2028, Democrats who campaign with that in mind have a good chance of winning the state, Talarico said.

“I would urge every 2028 candidate to vigorously compete in our state,” he said.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity. 

In what ways was your campaign both a response to and critique of the way that Charlie Kirk practiced politics?

You're right; it happened the very next day, and it was such a horrific and painful example of the very thing we were running against, which is the brokenness in our politics, the brokenness in our country.

Tell me more about that. 

I appreciated the way he would always engage with people who disagreed with him, and I do think we need more of that willingness to talk to each other, to listen to each other, to have a conversation. It was such a defining moment for the rest of the campaign, and for me personally, as a leader, for that to happen on the second day.

You have said you are "not interested in turning Texas blue." It's blue now. What is the psychological and practical impact, for both parties, of Texas flipping?

Texans voted for change last night — not necessarily for one party over the other. I would caution all of us in assuming that Texans all of a sudden became partisan Democrats.

Because I traveled the whole state over the past year and talked to a lot of Texans, and there were a lot of conservatives — I mean small-c conservatives, people who consider themselves Republicans — who are desperate for an end to this extremism and this corruption, whether it's the war in Iran, whether it's the tariffs, whether it's New World screwworm, data centers. There was just a real sense across the state, across the political spectrum, that this government at all levels was not working for people, and they were looking for change, and they saw that in the Democratic candidates who were running. I think it would be a mistake to interpret this election result in Texas as a shift in the partisanship of the state, if that makes sense.

Is Texas on the 2028 presidential map now?

Absolutely. I think this shows that if candidates run in Texas who connect with Texans, who speak to their needs, who build a big tent, they can absolutely be successful in our state. And I would urge every 2028 candidate to vigorously compete in our state.

You ran not just as the opposite of Donald Trump and Ken Paxton, but your campaign was almost a critique of the 2015 to 2025 era of politics as professional wrestling. Is that era over now? And what should your party learn from this?

It should be over, and the people of Texas, the people of this country, from what I can tell, demanded an end to that politics of division practiced by people in both parties. I really do think the new kind of politics that we forged here in Texas, a politics that's rooted in love, is a model for the Democratic Party, a model for our country moving forward. And I know that you and I have talked about this. The word love is the most important word in the English language. It's the most important word in all of our lives, and yet we rarely hear it spoken in our politics. And obviously, you know me and my background, and the role my faith plays in my life and in my service. I mean, that's it. Love is the why, the how, and the what of my life and of my politics, and I really think at its best — it wasn't a perfect campaign, but at its best — I think our campaign embodied that kind of love, and I really think it's why we won.

We won Texas by double digits from what it looks like; it was the biggest win in the hardest state against the most money, and shocked the nation, shocked the world, and had ramifications all the way down the ballot in the biggest red state in the country. I really do think we built something special. We touched a nerve and spoke to something deeper in this country.

Does your victory in Texas and the victory of Adam Hamilton in Kansas suggest that the alliance between Christians and Republican conservatives is fraying?

Politically, yeah. I think I've told you before that the Democratic Party made a huge mistake 50 years ago in ceding religion to the other side because no party has a monopoly on Christianity. I don't think Jesus would be a Democrat or a Republican. He would challenge both political parties, and would challenge all of us. So I'm glad that we're moving into an era when no party has a monopoly on faith, and when people from different political backgrounds can speak authentically about how religion informs their worldview, informs their values, informs their service. I'm proud that our campaign was very vocal about that and didn't shy away from sharing that because every candidate has to show up as who they are, and my faith is a big part of my life, and I wanted to share that with the voters.

They deserve to know my why, instead of just my policy positions or my legislative record. They deserve to know what motivates me, and I spoke unapologetically about that. I hope this is the beginning of a new chapter for the Democratic Party.

Elon Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars against you. Congress has said they're going to investigate him. Do you think they should? 

I think what would be more helpful is getting big money out of our politics, banning corporate PACs, banning super PACs, so billionaires and trillionaires can't buy our elections. I mean, obviously there needs to be accountability for any wrongdoing if that occurred.

But I think what people are hungry for is systemic reform that prevents this from ever happening again. Whether it's Elon Musk or Tim Dunn, or Farris Wilks, or any of the other mega donors who tried to install Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate.

Your campaign embraced social media in novel ways, incorporated prominent Texans as validators and saw significant gains among Hispanic voters. Talk me through how you thought about strategy. 

I was lucky to work with the most talented team in American politics. I think this campaign was innovative and imaginative, and groundbreaking. The way we were able to capture the attention and earn the trust of Texans across the state, the way we connected with people. The campaign was culture first.

If President Trump ran a Twitter campaign back in 2016, if President Obama ran a Facebook campaign back in 2008, I think you can look at our Instagram and TikTok as the place to see how we won this thing. It's about values. It's about shared history. It's about shared culture. It's about what makes us Texans, and politics is only a part of that, right? It's also the music and the food. It's the land. It's the shared stories and shared values, and our campaign, we built it on a much sturdier foundation than partisanship or even public policy.

I think that's something that the Republican Party has always excelled at, and it's something the Democratic Party has struggled with, and I think our campaign can be a model for the country moving forward.