WASHINGTON — Republican Texas Senate nominee Ken Paxton said he hopes to raise awareness about Democratic opponent James Talarico’s “weird” statements in an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation on Saturday.
The Republican attorney general is seeking to cut through Talarico’s well-funded rebrand as a moderate by highlighting his embrace of left-wing identity politics, including his past remarks about there being six genders and his “love” for trans children.
“We have a saying in Austin. We call it weird. Well this guy’s weird. His positions are weird,” Paxton told the DCNF during the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference in Washington D.C. “He went to San Francisco to raise money. In my opinion, those are his people. They’re not in Texas.”
Paxton weighed in on Talarico’s statement that “God is nonbinary,” which he made during an October 2021 speech in the Texas House opposing a bill to reserve girls’ school sports for biological females. Talarico had described the legislation as “hateful” at the time.
“I think if you look at the scripture it’s pretty clear God is not ‘nonbinary.’ He is expressed in three forms in the trinity, and not as James Talarico is suggesting,” said Paxton.
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Talarico has recently come out in opposition to child sex changes and now describes himself as a “border security Democrat,” portraying himself as moderate in high-profile appearances on the Joe Rogan podcast and the Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
Paxton argued that Talarico probably sounds like his prior, more progressive self in behind-closed-doors fundraisers in Chicago and the Bay Area in California.
“There is no genuineness to it,” Paxton told the DCNF. “None of his past statements, none of his voting record matches up to what he’s now saying.”
Talarico is a former middle school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian. He now admits the “God is nonbinary” comment was “cringey” but insists it is a distraction from Paxton’s record, emphasizing the Attorney General’s 2023 impeachment. Paxton was acquitted on all of his charges.
Paxton conceded that his GOP primary battle against longtime incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn — who he trounced by 28 percentage points in a May runoff — had been bruising. The prolonged nomination contest also shortened his runway to fundraise. By Election Day, Paxton will have had just five months to raise money as his party’s nominee compared to Talarico’s eight months of fundraising.
But Paxton has made headlines for years by launching lawsuits on behalf of Texans against Big Pharma, against Big Tech and against blue cities for evasions of immigration law — among many other issues.
Talarico raised $11 million through the controversial Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue in one month, Paxton said.
Paxton said his team is “suspicious” of the sourcing of all of that money in light of revelations about the collapse of the company’s legal and compliance team and illicit foreign donations flowing through the platform.
But being outspent is a familiar predicament for Paxton.
Paxton defeated Cornyn in a May runoff despite being outspent by roughly 15 to 1 in the $120 million race, including an onslaught of outside money from the senator’s Washington network.
Paxton received an endorsement from President Donald Trump one week before the runoff. Trump broke with the typical Washington protocol to endorse the challenger, with whom he has a close relationship. Paxton spoke about his relationship with Trump in his remarks to the conference Saturday, sharing that the president was his first call after his 2023 acquittal.
Asked how he plans on replicating his success in the general election if he finds himself massively outspent, Paxton insisted that as long as he successfully defines what he and Talarico stand for, he will clinch the election in November.
“As long as we have enough resources and money to define him … who he really is, with his own words, not me saying anything, just him, we will win this race,” he said.
Paxton’s advantage over Cornyn in part stemmed from Cornyn’s position on gun rights. Cornyn supported a bill signedinto law by President Joe Biden in 2022 to fund state red flag laws and tighten background checks on gun buyers under 21, leading to consternation within the Texas Republican Party.
Talarico said in a podcast interview earlier in June that he supports the Second Amendment “with limits,” likening it to the First Amendment.
“You have the right to protest, but you need a permit before you go start a rally on a street corner somewhere,” he said.
In 2020, Talarico said that Trump allows “weapons of war on our streets,” according to a clip unearthed by the National Rifle Association (NRA).
Paxton emphasized the importance of the Second Amendment to the DCNF.
“The Second Amendment was designed to protect citizens not just from bad people but also from their own government,” he said. “It was designed to have a backstop when the government gets out of control and becomes authoritarian. That’s something that’s happened historically in countries around the world. The Founders envisioned that, so it’s extremely important.”
(DCNF)