Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) turned heads this week by saying he thinks Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D-Tex.) could actually flip a U.S. Senate seat in Texas. I don’t buy it for a minute. I think he’s just trying to make sure Republicans don’t take the seat for granted. That said, in a bizarre twist, Talarico's campaign seems determined to prove Cruz wrong, one bizarre mistake at a time. Between drag queen voter outreach, campaign advice from a two-time statewide loser, and pretty much everything else about him, you have to wonder: Is Talarico actually trying to win, or just trying to lose spectacularly?
Here’s the thing about what Cruz said: Texas has looked competitive for Democrats plenty of times before, and every time, their candidate has gone on to lose badly. Heck, polls were showing Kamala Harris running rather tight with Trump in Texas, and what happened? Trump won the state by 14 points.
So, yeah, I’m all for them spending their money to find out. They wasted plenty of it on Beto O'Rourke's failed campaigns, too.
Those were good times.
What really gets me is that Talarico doesn't seem to understand how to win in Texas at all. He's tried to rebrand himself as a moderate this year, but it hasn’t gone well. His Senate campaign keeps undercutting itself by chasing fringe left-wing priorities, drag queen voter outreach among them, instead of running toward the political center in a race Democrats really want to win.
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Despite Talarico's efforts to sand down his image into something Texans can stomach voting for, he keeps making silly mistakes. For one, Talarico is reportedly taking campaign advice from O'Rourke, and part of the new strategy apparently involves voter outreach through drag queens.
Someone should remind him that Texas isn't California.
Talarico's campaign also plans to lean heavily on illegal immigration messaging and voter suppression claims, even though Texas recorded a higher turnout in 2024 than ever before. Talarico made that suppression argument himself in a recent sit-down with Jamie Kern Lima. Asked whether he worries about Texas elections being fair, Talarico didn't hesitate.
"Yes, and I will say that we already have a lot of voter suppression in Texas," Talarico told Jamie Kern Lima. "It's baked into our laws."
He went on to call Texas "one of the hardest places to vote in the country," and blamed that for why, in his words, "we see such low voter turnout in our state compared to other states."
Low turnout? Texas just had its highest turnout in history for a primary. Talarico apparently didn't get the memo, or he just didn't like what it said, because he cares more about pushing the Democrat Party message.
He kept going, telling Lima that beating "voter suppression" means Democrats "probably" have to "win by a little more than we would normally have to in a completely free and fair election." Talarico then compared his campaign to the civil rights movement.
It’s almost as if he’s making up preemptive excuses for his inevitable defeat.
"If you look back throughout American history, civil rights marchers, labor organizers, farm workers, they all were up against a rigged system," he said. "They all faced long odds."
James Talarico says he is "worried" about the election being rigged this fall and calls voting a "sacred, God-given right"
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) May 25, 2026
"Texas is one of the hardest places to vote in the country." pic.twitter.com/6I7p5IflUs
Call me crazy, but equating a Democrat losing a Senate race in a state that routinely elects Republicans with the struggles of the civil rights movement is absurd. Civil rights activists confronted state-sanctioned discrimination, violence, and the systematic denial of their constitutional rights. A Democrat failing to win statewide office in deep-red Texas faces voters who disagree with his party. Those situations have nothing in common. Texas is a Republican state. Republicans winning elections there doesn’t prove the system is rigged. It proves that’s how Texans vote.
By the time Talarico finished with Lima, he sounded less like a serious Senate candidate and more like a man auditioning for a leftist conspiracy podcast. Keep sending your money to Talarico, liberals.
