Momma, We Made It: James Talarico Wins Texas Senate Race

The 37-year-old Democrat, who shares a checking account with his mother, spent much of his campaign distancing himself from past progressive positions

Texas Democrat James Talarico, the 37-year-old state lawmaker who shares his only disclosed checking account with his mother, defeated Republican attorney general Ken Paxton, breaking his party’s long losing streak in the Lone Star State.

Talarico led Paxton by a 20-point margin when the race was called at 11:15 p.m., flipping the seat held by Paxton’s primary opponent, Republican incumbent John Cornyn, and marking the first time Texas elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988.

The victory came eight years after a similarly high-profile Democratic Senate run in Texas fell short. In that race, Beto O’Rourke raised more than $80 million and became a national media darling while running against Ted Cruz. O’Rourke, however, embraced left-wing positions like an assault weapons ban in a bid to turn out Democratic voters rather than appeal to independents.

Talarico matched O’Rourke’s fundraising prowess—his campaign raised at least $160 million—but took a different approach to strategy.

He presented himself as a man of the cloth willing to moderate on issues, particularly those central to Texas’s economy. Early on in his campaign, Talarico scrubbed his website of statements supporting “trans kids” and “bold, progressive ideas,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. He went on to present himself as a supporter of Texas’s oil and gas industry and an opponent of sex-change surgeries for minors, though as a state lawmaker, Talarico introduced “Green New Deal”-style legislation calling for sweeping greenhouse gas reductions and voted against a bill banning those surgeries.

Talarico also backed away from some of his craziest statements, declaring that “God is non-binary” and that there are six genders. He told CBS News that the “cringey” statements “missed the mark” and suggested he had moderated in recent years.

“Well, you know, I think I was being intentionally provocative with that statement, but what it means is that God can’t be defined by human categories,” Talarico said about his “God is non-binary” remark. “What I meant is that there are two sexes, and then there’s a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities,” he said of his six genders claim.

Talarico is unmarried, but he may still need extra space when picking out a place to live in Washington, D.C. The minister of his Presbyterian church, Babs Miller, said in an undercover video that Talarico’s mother could move with her son to the nation’s capital should he win.

“She’ll be right there,” Miller said. “She’ll move to D.C. if she has to.”