Picture the big cattle barn at the Texas State Fair in Dallas. Crowded and hot, industrial cooling fans loudly whirring, it’s where ranchers from far and wide bring their livestock to exhibit every year. Each stall has a prize steer or bull, often being groomed by a Stetson-wearing teenager.
With so many rural folks about, it’s just the place you’d expect to find critics of James Talarico, the 37-year-old Democrat’s Senate candidate everyone’s talking about in the lead-up to next week’s midterm elections. He’s tipped to turn Texas blue and potentially overturn President Donald Trump’s control of the US Congress.
Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton — whom Trump has endorsed — has had a controversial career in the State Legislature and as Texas attorney-general, a role he’s held for over a decade. Scandals have plagued him throughout, with the accusations against him ranging from securities fraud to adultery, illegally firing whistleblowers, stymying progressive policies while advancing the interests of friends, and more.
‘Talafreako’
The first rancher I meet says there’s no way she’d vote for a Liberal like Talarico. She’s from a small town in southern Texas where people are unlikely to vote for someone who supports gender surgery for children. When I point out Talarico only supports such care for adults, she isn’t convinced. “Yeah, but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable,” she says.
In God-fearing Texas, transgender rights are the number one culture war issue, with it dominating Republican Party attack ads in recent weeks. Trump is raising the topic repeatedly, telling a recent rally that “Talafreako”, as the president calls him, stands for the “mutilization” (sic) of children.
But as another farmer I meet demonstrates, there are plenty of other issues in Texas, not least being the character and track record of Paxton. I find Kally Evans sitting in a deckchair in another aisle of the cattle barn, scrolling on her phone while her daughter Baylee is lying on some straw, literally hugging a giant heifer resting beside her.
“Can I talk to you?” I ask. “Sure,” says Kally, who greets me with a big smile. I tell her I’m asking people whether James Talarico can beat Ken Paxton. Kally, instead of denouncing the Democratic candidate, says she plans to vote for him.
As an independent, she isn’t affiliated with either party. She admits she’s not a typical farmer: she lives on a “micro ranch” near Houston and coaches maths and science teachers for a living, while her husband, Robert, works as a school administrator. She says they consider public education the most important issue, along with the character of people standing for office.
“I made a chart,” Kally says, opening her phone to show me a table comparing Talarico’s and Paxton’s policy positions. “I wanted to know the value they added to Texas, their voting record and their key policy platforms.” She says she did her research using “centre-biased” media outlets.
On Paxton’s side of the ledger is evidence of his MAGA credentials, support for tax cuts and reduced regulation, and a virtual rap sheet of alleged wrongdoing spanning from fraud, pardoning paedophiles, extra-marital affairs and misuse of office.
By comparison, Talarico’s four terms in the State House seem boring, just lots of progressive causes, like caps on the cost of medication, reform of campaign finance and support for public education, reflecting his years as a public-school teacher.
The combination of education-friendly policies and moral rectitude makes Kally’s decision easy: “James was the better candidate.” Reflecting on the long list of allegations against Paxton, Kally says, “If we educators are held to a standard, shouldn’t those in office be held to the same?”
It’s a question many Republican voters are grappling with as they cast their ballots. Do they vote on character grounds and punish Paxton, or turn a blind eye and support him because the stakes are too high to risk putting Talarico in office?
‘I voted for Ken Paxton even though I dislike him’
It’s midday on the first day of early voting. A steady stream of office workers are using their lunch hour to cast their ballot. We’re in the Dallas County Records Office, where everyone is greeted by a friendly official who asks to see some ID before handing over a long ballot paper with dozens of candidate names for national, state and county roles.
As the voters emerge from the booths, some are happy to answer questions.
Andy Waters, a CFO with a private equity firm, says, “I voted for Ken Paxton even though I dislike him as a person. I just think he would represent Texas better in terms of what I believe in and stand for.”
Andy says the issues that concern him are secure borders and economic development. The candidates’ faith is a factor too, because America is suffering from “moral decline”, he says. Despite that — or because of it — he’s not buying Talarico’s brand of Christianity. “I don’t like Talarico’s religious ideology,” he says. “I believe that it’s fake.”
He repeats that Paxton is “no upstanding moral citizen” but that he still feels compelled to vote for him. “In fact,” he says, “this is the first time I’ve ever voted for Ken Paxton in any big election.”
That’s precisely what the Democrats don’t want to hear. The party needs Republicans to switch their lifelong allegiances by voting against him.
Just across the street on Dealey Plaza is the old Texas Schoolbook Depository. In November 1963, it’s where Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy. At the time, the Democrats occupied the Governor’s Mansion and controlled the Texas Legislature, as well as most of the important state and county roles. If Lyndon B. Johnson hadn’t resigned two years earlier to become Kennedy’s vice president, the party would have held both Senate seats too.
How things have changed. The last time a Democrat won a Senate seat in the Lone Star State was 1988. Since George W. Bush won the gubernatorial contest in 1994 on his way to the White House, the last three governors have been Republican. The current incumbent, Greg Abbott, has been governor since 2015 and is also on the ballot this year, seeking an unprecedented fourth term.
But poll after poll keeps saying the same thing. In a very tight race, the Democrats are in front. The ReconMR/Siena Research Institute and the Trafalgar Group have Talarico ahead of Paxton by around four points. ActiVote and a YouGov/CBS poll also have Talarico ahead, but with a narrower margin of 51% to 49%.
The Democrats are optimistic. Yes, they concede, the margins are tightening, and the polls generally downplay the Republican vote. And yes, the anti-Talarico attack ads, partly funded by a US$158 million donation from Elon Musk, could make things even narrower. And yes, voting this year is also harder for Talarico’s supporters due to a raft of voter suppression measures.
But even so, this might just be their moment. The logic goes that if Texas falls, then other close states, like North Carolina, Maine and Ohio, could too. The Democrats need to find four more seats to secure a majority. Six months ago that seemed unlikely.
‘We need Texas back for the people.’
It’s Saturday afternoon, two days before early polling begins, and a group of Democrats are block-walking in the northern Texas town of Ennis. Just like the Republicans, they know the result will ultimately depend on voter turnout.
They’re in an estate called Christian Meadows, a tidy new neighbourhood where every house has a big garage, and many have new SUVs parked in the driveway. The team knocks on the first door, and a woman called Georgina greets them. She says she can’t wait to vote.
“Yes”, she says, she’ll be voting Democrat. “We need Texas back for the people.”
This isn’t a surprise to the volunteers; they already know Georgina’s voting intentions. Every house in the estate has been pre-screened, based on the party the residents registered with for the primaries back in March. As volunteer Lou Luckhardt tells me, there’s not much point visiting committed Republicans, so their job is to encourage Democrats to get out to vote.
The volunteers ask residents whether they want to put a sign in their front yard. One or two do, but most decline, either because their lease doesn’t let them or they don’t want to alert their neighbours about who they vote for. Volunteer Diane Jasso reassures them they’re not alone and that others in their neighbourhood vote like they do.
The estate is in a Republican district, so the volunteers skip many of the houses. Occasionally though, they meet residents in their front yards, like Seth and Thania and their young son Liam who’s dressed up in a Spiderman suit. Diane introduces herself and offers them some literature.
“I’m not going to lie, I was for Trump at the beginning”, explains Seth, who admits that although he’s never voted, he didn’t mind Joe Biden until he saw the mishandling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Now his views are shaped by another consideration: “In his first term, Trump placed his hand on the bible when he was sworn in. The second time, if you go back and watch the footage, not once did he look at the bible or lay a finger on it, and a lot of people are saying he’s trying to ruin the United States.”
‘God is non-binary’
There it is again: religion, this time dressed up in a conspiracy theory.
In a state with so many evangelical churches, faith is ever-present and intensely political. Talarico often reminds his followers that controversial “billionaire pastors” Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks have been long-term supporters of Paxton and have used their pulpits to attack Paxton’s critics.
In recent days, a group of evangelicals have united under the banner Pastors for Paxton and called for “supernatural strength” to guide him to victory. In response, Talarico wraps himself in his faith. He’s made it central to his personality and his campaign, often quoting scripture to answer tough questions.
Talarico delivers speeches with the cadence of a preacher, unsurprisingly, given he trained for the Presbyterian ministry. He tells his flock that the bible shows him how to be a “leader of service” — unlike Paxton, whom Talarico claims owns 15 homes and has increased his net wealth by US$27 million while working on a government salary.
Talarico openly models his campaign on Jesus, the “barefoot rabbi” who stood up against power by flipping tables in a temple. His supporters say it’s genuine. Detractors say it’s fake, some pointing to his pro-choice stand on abortion as proof.
Page Morgan, another voter I meet at a rally, works for Powered by People, a progressive group that encourages and supports Democrats to vote. She’s handing out information at a small rally in Dallas when she tells me that Christian Nationalists have “taken over” Texas, and that the time has come to show people it’s okay to disagree with them. She says Talarico has helped people understand that they’re not Christians just because a Christian Nationalist says they are.
A Democrat Party official, who asked not to be named, added, “The magic of James [Talarico] is that he appeals to people who think Democrats are hostile to religion. When he lays it on that thick it’s hard to argue that a Presbyterian seminarian is an apostate.”
This hasn’t stopped Trump, who repeatedly calls Talarico “a Christian who hates Christianity.” Fact-checkers have traced this to a six-second clip taken out of context from a 2021 podcast in which Talarico was asked about the nature of questioning faith.
Talarico tells crowds he’s the grandson of a Baptist preacher who taught him his two most valuable lessons: “to love God and love neighbour”. He has accused Republicans of using “scripture to justify hurting children”, and has said that, as Genesis uses several Hebrew words for God — including the feminine noun for spirit and the masculine noun for divinity — God is thus “both masculine and feminine and everything in between”.
In a 2021 State Legislature debate on rights for transgender children, Talarico used a line that he now claim was deliberately provocative: “God is non-binary.” He probably regrets it. Trump has ridiculed him for it, and it’s been quoted repeatedly in attack ads, along with the false claims that Talarico wants to prosecute parents who prevent their kids from having gender-changing surgery. It’s fed a narrative that Talarico is dangerous, not just in the way he practises Christianity but as a radical socialist — as well as a Texan who hates eating meat.
Talarico responds with rehearsed one-liners, replayed on high rotation on social media. In one post, he says he’s pro-capitalism but anti-crony capitalism. “I want to see more millionaires and fewer billionaires,” he says. On claims that he’s a vegan, he gleefully declares, “I was eating Texan BBQ before Paxton’s first indictment.”
‘Lincoln-esque qualities’
If he’s going to flip Texas, though, Talarico also needs support from more than the state’s Christians — he also needs to resonate with independents and a significant proportion of moderate Republicans.
Assisting this cause is former Republican congressman Alan Steelman, along with 25 other former GOP officeholders, who call themselves Republicans for Talarico.
Steelman told a recent Democrat rally that the Republican Party is no longer what it was: that, under Trump, it’s become a cult. Paxton’s controversial record, too, makes him unfit for office, he argues, with Talarico worth backing because he has “Lincoln-esque qualities”.
Other Republicans are following suit. Former Texas House speaker Dade Phelan has announced he can’t vote for Paxton. Fort Worth state representative Charlie Geren has shared pro-Talarico and anti-Paxton posts on X. The city’s popular former mayor Betsy Price said she intends to skip the Senate line on the ballot to avoid voting for Paxton.
The message seems to be getting through. In a recent poll by the Texas Politics Project, 8% of likely Republican voters said they plan to vote — but not for Paxton.
So why is Paxton turning away so many Republicans?
After terms in both the Texas State House and Senate, Paxton has been Texas attorney-general since 2015. That year, he was indicted on two counts of felony securities fraud for misleading investors and one for failing to register a tech company. The charges were finally resolved in 2024 after he paid over US$270,000 in restitution and agreed to attend ethics classes.
In 2020, he was then accused of misusing his office by issuing special grand jury subpoenas to help a real estate donor and by allegedly trading official favours in return for home renovations and jobs for a mistress.
Among several other career lowlights was his 2023 impeachment by the Texas State House on 16 articles, involving abuse of public trust, constitutional dereliction and bribery. Sixty Republicans joined the Democrats to impeach him. However, the case collapsed in the state Senate, where impeachment required a two-thirds majority. He was allowed to go straight back to work.
According to Talarico, “Paxton is the most corrupt politician in Texas.”
But for all his faults, Paxton is loyal — to Trump. After the 2020 election, Paxton filed a lawsuit against four pro-Biden states in a doomed effort to invalidate their election results. Paxton was also a fierce defender of the Republican Party’s controversial redistricting of Congressional seats across Texas, which state Governor Abbott initiated in 2025 after Trump asked him to find him five more seats to help Republicans defend their slim majority in the House of Representatives. The redrawing of boundaries, which Paxton called the big beautiful map, triggered several other states to do likewise. Trump rewarded Paxton’s service with an endorsement in this year’s Republican Senate primary over incumbent Senator John Cornyn, who Trump considers a critic.
Mind you, Trump’s approval is fickle. He told a recent rally that Paxton is a “pain in the ass”.
A week out from the poll, that endorsement looks risky. Pundits agree that if Cornyn were still on the GOP ticket, the Democrats’ task would be much harder. Not that Trump admits he might have miscalculated. Instead, he blamed Cornyn and senior Republican Karl Rove for not getting behind Paxton’s campaign, calling them “political hacks”. He also chided Fox News for allowing Rove to “spew his jealousy” on air.
‘Democrats don’t like flags’
Republicans and Democrats alike know a Talarico win could mean the end of Trump’s imperial presidency.
It’s the message driving Paxton’s final bus tour across the state. He tells crowds America’s political divisions remind him of the Continental Divide, the mountain range that runs across the US from Montana to New Mexico.
“We’re on a knife’s edge,” he tells his MAGA supporters. “But the difference between us is thousands of miles apart.”
According to Paxton, voting Republican rather than Democrat “is the difference between what our founding fathers gave us, and a country they would barely recognise”. It’s also the difference, he says, æbetween a US Supreme Court that follows the Constitution or a court packed with radicals who rubber stamp whatever the far left wants”. Never mind it was Trump who stacked the Supreme Court with three conservative justices in his first term.
It’s a message that resonates with MAGA supporters. As Paxton says, “A vote for Talarico is not just a vote for him, it’s a vote for (Democrat Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer to run the Senate.” The audience boos, knowing it spells the end of a compliant chamber rubber-stamping confirmations for Trump’s controversial appointments. It also means much more oversight of legislation, probable investigations into the president’s family businesses, and the start of serious attempts to roll back at least some of the changes Trump has implemented in his second term.
This worries ordinary Republicans like Alex Vela, who works for a business that manufactures telescopic flagpoles. His stall at the State Fair also sells a wide range of flags, including the iconic Lone Star banner synonymous with Texas. He can’t sell Confederate flags anymore — which he calls historic, rather than racist — because they’re no longer produced in the US.
But flags celebrating the country’s 250th anniversary are big sellers. So, who are his customers? “The only ones that are really buying flags are the Republicans,” he says. “For some reason, the Democrats don’t like flags, but then again a lot of them don’t have common sense.”
“Common sense” is a term you hear a lot on the campaign trail. Republicans claim they possess it, and Democrats don’t. Alex, who describes himself as part Apache, part Hispanic, and a committed Trump supporter, says, “I believe we should use our common sense to make our country better. So far the Democrats haven’t given us any reason to vote for them because their policies just don’t line up with the United States.”
I ask Alex what he means by common sense. “Number one, the Democrats want to eliminate borders. Every country needs a border,” he says. “Number two, they want to support all the illegal immigrants who came in here. Look what Biden did — we got millions upon millions of illegal immigrants, and what were they doing? They were just emptying out their jails and their loony asylums, and they shoved them all into here.”
It’s another red-hot issue in Texas, and a tricky one for Talarico to navigate. As a Christian who says “loving thy neighbour” is a core of his faith, he can’t demonise immigrants in the way Republicans frequently do. But as a pragmatist who actually wants to get elected, he cannot sound weak on border control.
His approach is to publicly condemn Biden’s past handling of the issue while reassuring Texans that he’s a “border security Democrat”. As their senator, he says he will stand up to his own party to ensure the border stays strong.
This hasn’t persuaded Alex: “In Texas I feel we’re still going to stay red because a lot of the changes they want, the regular folk, they don’t want it.”
But on the issue of borders, Talarico is getting some unexpected help from Hispanic voters, especially in the Rio Grande Valley near the Mexico border. The community supported Trump at the last election but reportedly now feels targeted by the aggressive tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Local Republican Mayor Javier Villalobos told CBS the issue is “going to be one of the reasons they cannot vote for the Republican Party”.
It’s another subject for Talarico to navigate carefully. He says he wouldn’t shut ICE down, but wants it to stop behaving like the secret police and start targeting crime gangs and cartels instead of law-abiding families.
Back in Ennis in another neighbourhood, Democrat volunteer Lou Luckhardt has been given the okay to erect a sign for a local candidate in Patrick Collier’s front yard.
Patrick explains that he was once a Republican, but he’s been supporting Democrats for a few years, even though he’s faced danger doing so. In the 2020 election, he supported Biden when some “good ol boys came and shot up my signs, they shot through the windows and drove through the yard”.
Coming out as sympathetic to the Democrats “was kinda nerve-wracking”, he says, “because you knew that if you did there could be ramifications.” However, the intimidation backfired when Patrick realised the people who were harassing him wanted him to be scared.
“So yeah, put up a sign,” he tells Lou. When asked whether he’d consider putting up a sign for the Senate candidate too, he replies, “I would put a Talarico sign up because of what I have heard from him, what I believe about the type of man that he is.”
