WASHINGTON — Texas Senate hopeful James Talarico’s leftwing rhetoric on social media, which made him a darling of Lone Star state progressives, is coming back to haunt his campaign as he tries to win over Texans in the general election.
Republicans have been unearthing clips and X posts from Talarico within just the past few years, showing him claiming “poverty is violence,” suggesting the Bible approves of abortion, insisting that there are six biological sexes, and other lefty ideas.
“I learned that violence is a problem that cages will never solve,” Talarico declared in April 2022, recounting his family’s struggles with his estranged father’s alcoholism.
“We don’t always recognize the ways in which our systems hurt people every day. Poverty is violence. Pollution is violence. And yes, prison is violence,” he later added.
Talarico declared in that speech that “people don’t belong in cages” and even seemingly likened prisons to “domestic abuse.”
Groups like the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) have seized on statements like that, optimistic that they won’t play well in historically red Texas.
Recently, for example, the NRSC rolled out a deepfake attack ad against Talarico to portray him as reading his past “extreme statements praising transgenderism, twisting Christian beliefs, and advocating for open borders.”
One theme that the GOP has particularly latched onto is Talarico’s use of religion to advance his liberal agenda.
Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, has long contended that conservatives twist Christianity.
“In my faith, God is non-binary,” Talarico said in a 2021 speech in which he railed against a GOP bill requiring K-12 athletes to play sports that align with their biological sex.
Talarico pointed to Hebrew words used to describe God in scripture that entailed both masculine and feminine descriptions.
Earlier that year, Talarico suggested that there are more than two biological sexes. Typically, the academic left has distinguished between sex and gender and claimed that there are limitless genders. But Talarico pointed to rare chromosomal abnormalities to make the case that there are six sexes.
“The one thing I want us to all be aware of is that modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes,” Talarico claimed at the time.
“In fact, there are six, which honestly, Rep. [Cole] Hefner, surprised me, too.”
His argument was that in nature, there are not just XX (female) and XY (male) chromosomes, but also single X, XXY, XYY, and XXXY, claiming that “scientifically speaking, sex is a spectrum, and oftentimes can be very ambiguous.”
Talaricos’ comments on transgender issues have given Republicans a field day.
“I want to acknowledge that our trans community needs abortion care too,” Talarico said at one point.
Recently, the RNC’s research arm spotlighted a clip of Talarico on a podcast saying that he loved the transgender children who came to Texas’s Capitol to “advocate for their humanity.”
Old clips of Talarico espousing hardcore lefty sentiments in the past have flooded social media in recent days following his victory over firebrand Rep. Jasmine Crockett (R-Texas) for the Democratic nod for Senate.
Many of them have been unearthed as an aggressive opposition research campaign against him kicks into gear and is spread by conservative influencers.
“It has been a blessing for parents across the Lone Star State to learn they need to be on the lookout for a creepy single man in his 30s looking to talk with kids about sex changes and which of the six genders they identify as,” RNC spokesman Zach Kraft told The Post.
“Unfortunately for Democrats, that man is their nominee for Senate.”
Talarico’s team has argued that the opposition research against him proves that Republicans are nervous about him.
Sen. John Cornyn and ex state attorney general Ken Paxton face a run-off election for the GOP nomination.
“John Cornyn, Ken Paxton, and the billionaires who prop them up are scared of James Talarico for good reason: our campaign is building a movement poised to change the politics of this state and take power back for working people,” Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis told The Post.
“While they spend their time lobbing stale attacks to mislead Texans, we are uniting the people of Texas to win in November.”
Polls show Talarico locked in a tight race against both of his two possible GOP foes.
Democrats had nearly 150,000 more voters turnout in the March 3 primary than Republicans did, per the latest tally.
But Talarico is still the underdog in Texas, where Dems haven’t won a state-wide race since 1994.
