Freshman Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) was reminded of Texas Democrat James Talarico’s “very beautiful” vegan girlfriend after he needled the Senate hopeful as a “barely straight version of Pete Buttigieg.”
Gill, who spoke from the Texas GOP convention, tore into Talarico for not being representative of the Lone Star State’s values.
“I wouldn’t even say that this is Beto O’Rourke 2.0 because this is a much more effeminate version of Beto O’Rourke,” Gill told Fox News over the weekend. “I think of James Talarico as a barely straight version of Pete Buttigieg.
“People in Washington love him, but he doesn’t work with the rest of the country.”
Just as the interview wrapped up, host Kayleigh McEnany noted that Talarico has a “longtime girlfriend and she’s very beautiful.”
Last month, The Post reported on Talarico’s girlfriend, a political lobbyist who previously served as his chief of staff.
Despite his family’s committed vegan diet, Talarico has worked to prove to the Lone Star State public that he’s a barbecue-eating Texan as he battles against state Attorney General Ken Paxton for Senate.
Like O’Rourke and former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), Talarico has garnered a lot of hype from beltway Democrats who think he may be able to fulfill their longtime dream of winning statewide in Texas as a Democrat.
Democrats have pointed to Paxton’s scandal-scarred past and the tight polling between the two as evidence that he could pull it off.
Republicans have worked to cast Talarico as excessively woke and out of touch with everyday Texans.
“This is somebody who has had the most weird, absolutely far-left views that he’s now trying to run away from,” Gill argued.
“But you can’t go around talking about transing kids or making blasphemous comments about how God is nonbinary or that there are six sexes and expect Texas voters to forget.”
Talarico has a 0.6 percentage point polling edge over Paxton in the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate.
