FAITH BASED

James Talarico’s righteous message won over Democrats. Is Texas next?

- BY TIM MURPHY

IF YOU ASK James Talarico supporters how they first heard about the 37-year-old Democrat, they'll usually describe a video.

It was on TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram. Maybe it was shared by a friend or a family member—even someone out of state.

Fred Spartz, whom I met at a Talarico rally at a shopping center wedding venue in northwest San Antonio, heard about the Texas Senate candidate from his son in Spokane, Washington. (“Get on the internet and look at this guy,” he told his dad.) Cindy Padilla found Talarico through her daughter, Julie, who saw a video of him talking about keeping religion out of schools. Roy Johnson viewed a clip of Talarico chatting with podcaster Joe Rogan, who invited the state representative and aspiring pastor on after catching a video in the green room of his Austin comedy club.

Almost everyone brought up a moment from a Statehouse debate over hanging the Ten Commandments in classrooms. The vote was slated for the session’s final weekend—or, as Talarico reminded a Republican colleague, the Sabbath. “Would you be willing to postpone your bill so that we're not breaking the Ten Commandments?” he asked. After Rebekah Cessna, the daughter of a Baptist minister, saw the exchange, she shared Talarico’s sermons with her family: “I said, ‘That's the man I've been looking for.’”

In a party grasping for attention and ideas, Talarico has broken through, denouncing billionaires and theocrats in the overtly Christian language of a social justice seminarian. He's charmed media figures from Rogan to Ezra Klein and the hosts of The View. When CBS, fearing President Donald Trump’s FCC, kept his interview with Stephen Colbert off the air, the straight-to-YouTube sit-down picked up more than 9 million views. It’s still a long shot, but the race represents one of the party's best opportunities on a difficult Senate map; polls suggest he has as good of a chance of winning statewide as almost any Texas Democrat this century.