“Don’t California my Texas” is a popular saying that captures the wariness that many in the Lone Star State feel toward the coastal liberal bastion — and in its mudslinging Senate race both candidates are using “Californian” as a pejorative.
“[Republican Texas Attorney General] Ken Paxton clearly misses his old home in California,” an account linked to Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico’s campaign claimed in a Friday post to Facebook. However, the GOP upper chamber candidate is responding by casting his opponent’s attack on his childhood residence as an insult to his father’s military service.
The post features a clip of Paxton saying “I like places in California, even though I don’t like to admit that I go to California.”
The Austin Democrat also labeled Paxton a “California transplant” in his Texas Democratic National Convention speech on Saturday.
Paxton’s father, Warren Kenneth Paxton Sr., served in the United States Air Force as a B-52 pilot, Paxton shared in a Facebook post on Monday. The Paxtons, like many military families, moved often.
Their journey took them from an Air Force base in Minot, North Dakota, where Warren Kenneth “Ken” Paxton, Jr. was born, to Florida, to New York, to North Carolina, to California and to Oklahoma, according to a 2016 profile in the Houston Chronicle. The family’s temporary home and mode of transportation was a white and gold trailer that lacked air conditioning.
Talarico’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Talarico also staunchly opposes President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans’ sweeping 2025 tax and spending bill, which in part contained quality of life upgrades for military families, Paxton’s campaign pointed out.
“It is outrageous that Talarico is attacking the Attorney General for growing up in a military family, claiming that if you weren’t born in Texas you aren’t a Texan,” Paxton campaign spokesperson Madison Cercy told the DCNF.
“I would like Talarico to tell the 1.7 million military families and veterans that Texas is home to that statement or better yet, tell them about the $9 billion in funding for troop/military family quality of life and the $2.9 billion to boost the basic housing allowance that he wanted to deny them,” Cercy added.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which Trump signed last July 4 — included $9 billion for troop and military family quality-of-life initiatives like improvements to public schools serving large numbers of military children, more spending on child care, and upgrades to barracks, according to the National Military Family Association. The legislation also included $2.9 billion more for the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) that helps service members with rent or mortgage payments.
“The Attorney General’s father served this country with honor, and it’s outrageous that anyone seeking public office in the United States could use a father’s military service as a political attack,” Cercy told the DCNF.
Talarico’s campaign website describes the Democrat as an “eighth-generation Texan,” and he has frequently used this term throughout his Senate run.
Meanwhile, Paxton has portrayed Talarico as out of touch with Texas values, pointing to a series of fundraisers in San Francisco. POLITICO reported earlier in June that Talarico attended at least four Bay Area fundraisers with prominent Democratic Party donors in the technology industry in mid-April.
Talarico has sought to shed his past enthusiastic embrace of identity politics — including his statement that “God is nonbinary” and admitting to love “trans children” — and adopt a more moderate image. Paxton told the DCNF that he is not buying his opponent’s rebrand.
“He went to San Francisco to raise money. In my opinion, those are his people. They’re not in Texas,” Paxton told the DCNF in a Saturday interview in Washington D.C.
(DCNF)