There is a particular kind of political theater in which a man is introduced to voters a second time, scrubbed of everything inconvenient and repackaged for the audience that finally matters. Democrats just posted a photograph of James Talarico eating barbecue in a Texas shirt, and if you want to understand the next six months of this Senate race, study that photograph. It is not a candid moment. It is a product launch.
The launch continued in Houston on May 27, at his first public appearance as the Democratic nominee. Talarico opened with a story about his great-grandfather’s favorite Bible verse, the one from Matthew in which Jesus tells his disciples that the greatest among them shall be a servant. He cast himself as the servant and Ken Paxton, who beat John Cornyn in the runoff a day earlier, as the criminal.
“I have a legislative record,” he said. “Ken Paxton has a criminal record.”
Tidy, rehearsed, and built to make you forget that the man delivering the line spent recent years saying things no statewide Texas candidate could ordinarily survive saying out loud.
That is the tell. Democrats are not nudging Talarico toward the center the way every party does after a primary. They are rebuilding him from the studs, because the genuine article cannot win in Texas and his consultants know it.
Capturing a Senate seat no Democrat has carried since 1988 requires a candidate Texans can mistake for one of their own, so the party is manufacturing one and planning on spending as much as a quarter of a billion dollars on the construction. The barbecue plate is the first coat of paint. Which is why, in this rare instance, refuting his policy positions is not enough. The honest response is to refuse the costume and show voters the man wearing it.
The Vegan Who Discovered Brisket
Start with the easy one, because it sets the pattern. In April 2022, speaking to the Texas Humane Legislation Network, Talarico announced a moral evolution.
I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign. We are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses.
He called reducing meat consumption not merely virtuous but “existential,” a word usually reserved for asteroids and nuclear war. He delivered this verdict on Texas brisket while masked, a detail that tells you everything about the political tribe he was performing for.
Ted Cruz summarized the Texas reaction with characteristic economy, calling him a freak who wants to ban barbecue. Cornyn, before his own political demise, noted that the “steaks” could not be higher.
The campaign’s answer was not to explain or defend. It was to issue a wordless photograph of the candidate tearing into cooked meat by hand, fried food staged in the frame. No argument, no second thoughts, just a new prop.
That is not a man revisiting a conviction. That is a man swapping a costume because the focus groups came back ugly. Remember that instinct, because it repeats on far graver ground.
A Gospel He Made Up
The barbecue is a punchline. The theology is the actual scandal, and it is the reason a Christian publication should care more about this race than the average Texan does.
Talarico advertises himself as a Presbyterian seminarian and dresses nearly every left-wing position in Scripture. From the floor of the Texas House, opposing a bill meant to keep men out of women’s sports, he announced that “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between,” that “God is non-binary,” and that “Trans children are God’s children, made in God’s own image.”
He has declared that “sex is a spectrum” and “can be very ambiguous.” On abortion he insists that “Jesus never talks about abortion” and “the Bible is silent on abortion,” and he has preached that the “trans community” needs “abortion care.” On the Ezra Klein Show in January he flattened the faith into one option among many, describing Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and the religion of the cross as all “circling the same truth.”
This is not Christianity with a progressive accent. It is a different religion borrowing Christian vocabulary, and Scripture warned the church about precisely this maneuver. “Beware of false prophets,” Jesus said, “which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.”
The sheep’s clothing here is a seminary résumé and a great-grandfather’s verse. The wolf is the doctrine underneath, which dissolves the created order, baptizes the killing of the unborn, and reduces the God who declared “I am the LORD, I change not” into a deity conveniently shaped like the Democratic platform.
When critics pushed back in April, Talarico did not retreat. He doubled down, citing Galatians and instructing the offended to take it up with the Apostle Paul. It was a clever line for an audience that does not read its Bible. Paul’s words that there is neither male nor female describe the equal standing of believers in Christ, not the nature of God Himself, and a seminarian knows the difference. Pressing the apostle into service to deny how God made men and women is not exegesis. It is theft, and it should be named as such by every pastor who watches him do it.
The Record the Rebrand Is Hiding
Strip away the brisket and the borrowed Scripture and you are left with votes, and the votes are not those of a moderate. The NRA handed Talarico an “F” and a zero percent rating in 2024. He voted to gut a constitutional carry bill before voting against it outright, opposed making Texas a Second Amendment sanctuary state, and authored or co-authored a stack of gun-control measures, including bills tightening concealed carry recognition and raising the purchase age for certain firearms. He has called for red-flag laws and universal background checks.
The NRA’s John Commerford described him as a far-left gun-grabber masquerading as a moderate centrist, the kind of senator who would hand Chuck Schumer the deciding vote on a national gun ban.
And yet his campaign website now promises to “protect the Second Amendment while protecting our neighbors from gun violence.” Set that sentence beside the voting record and you have the entire candidacy in miniature.
The brand says one thing, the ballots say another, and the gap between them is where the consultants live. The same man who once treated a brisket as a moral emergency now wants you to picture him as a Lone Star everyman. The same man who told the Texas House that God has no sex now wants the pulpit-and-pew vote. Which version is the act? They cannot all be sincere, and a candidate who has this many sincere selves has none.
What the Costume Is Telling You
None of this requires hatred to expose. It requires only that someone hold up his own words next to his new wardrobe and let Texans draw the obvious conclusion. A man willing to reverse-engineer his diet, his theology, and his persona to fit a poll is showing you, in advance, exactly what he will do with six years and a Senate vote. He will be whatever the moment requires and nothing the moment forbids.
That is the case against him, and it is sturdier than any insult, because it is built entirely from things he said proudly before the rebrand made them liabilities. Paul, the apostle Talarico likes to summon when it suits him, had a warning for exactly this performance. “But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.”
Talarico has spent years preaching another gospel, complete with a non-binary God and a Bible conveniently silent wherever the left needs it silent. No amount of barbecue sauce washes that off. Texans should make him answer for the gospel he actually believes, not the one his campaign just printed on a fresh Texas shirt.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
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