When James Talarico won the Democratic nomination for the US Senate back in March, the Republicans immediately sought to portray the schoolteacher turned seminarian as a weirdo who was thoroughly out of touch with Texas values. For weeks, social media was awash with clips of Talarico piously intoning about non-binary God, how much he loves trans kids, “neighbours with uteruses”, and his profound conviction that God’s will is whatever the Democrat Party is selling in 2026.

When the Democrats responded by posting a picture of Talarico cosplaying as a Texas barbecue enjoyer, to counter the scurrilous claim he was vegan, the response was derision. His Republican opponent Ken Paxton released an ad labelling him “Low-T Talarico”, and then an organisation calling itself Citizens for Sanity put out a deepfake video of the Texas Democrat as a member of the von Trapp family singing about transing children.

Politico now reports that the Democrats are not taking these assaults on their candidate’s masculinity lying down. But rather than put a gun in his hands — as they did with the hapless Tim Walz — they are prioritising strategic media placements: an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast here, ads broadcast during the World Cup and NBA finals there. Talarico is said to be focusing on things that men “really care about”, such as “lowering housing costs, stopping corporate landlord rent manipulation and curbing the influence of billionaire mega-donors in politics”.

Certainly, these new ads show an improvement over the clumsy early efforts. On YouTube, he is constantly popping up between videos to talk about Texans “wakin’ up before the sun, workin’ hard, stretching every dollar” as if he is the protagonist of a Merle Haggard song. We see a manly man grappling with a tyre before the video cuts to a firm-jawed Talarico driving a Dodge Ram, as he provides a voiceover about lowering the cost of living and fighting corruption.

Is Talarico’s attempt to regain control of his image working? Perhaps: polls have him pulling slightly ahead of Paxton. However, the near-total lack of counter-messaging from his opponent is probably also helping. For while Talarico floods the zone, Paxton has done little if anything since releasing the half-hearted “Low-T Talarico” ad months ago.

That sense of a candidate gone AWOL is intensified by the fact that Talarico doesn’t bother to mention Paxton in his ads, either. No doubt he feels that he doesn’t have to, after GOP Texas senator John Cornyn and his allies spent around $100 million laying waste to Paxton’s reputation in a spectacular display of intra-Republican violence that dragged on for months.

While attempting to defend his Senate seat during the Republican primary, Cornyn denounced Paxton as a corrupt adulterer and accused him of being an incompetent attorney general who released sex traffickers early. Cornyn lost, of course, but in doing so he conducted a comprehensive character assassination, leaving the field wide open for Talarico to spend all his campaign money on redefining himself.

And yet, barring a few yard signs here and there, it is hard to detect any of the same grassroots enthusiasm for Talarico that there was for Beto O’Rourke when he went up against Ted Cruz in 2018. On the other hand, Talarico has four times as much money as Paxton, and so can keep driving rented trucks in ads for a long time to come. One would think that Elon Musk, having relocated much of his business to Texas, might want to throw a few bucks Paxton’s way. Perhaps he will, eventually. For now, however, Talarico can thank the Holy Mystery known by many names for the Republicans’ lack of discipline and fondness for burning huge piles of money while fighting among themselves.

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Daniel Kalder is an author based in Texas. Previously, he spent ten years living in the former Soviet bloc. His latest book, Dictator Literature, is published by Oneworld. He also writes on Substack: Thus Spake Daniel Kalder.

DanielKalder

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