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James Talarico on the Rage Economy, Billionaires and Flipping Texas

Our interview with James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas.
Duration
38m
Broadcast on
20 Oct 2026
Audio Format
other

James Talarico is asking Texas to do something it hasn’t done in nearly 40 years: Elect a Democrat to the U.S. Senate. It won’t be easy. It will take a vast coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans in a bright red state that President Trump won by about 14 percentage points in 2024 — and where Republicans have plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into beating Mr. Talarico. And yet, poll after poll shows that Mr. Talarico could pull it off and defeat his Republican rival, Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and a Trump ally. 

On Monday, nearly two weeks before Election Day, Michael Barbaro spoke with Mr. Talarico about the kind of race he’s running, why it has succeeded so far in appealing to Republicans and what he wants Democrats to do if they flip control of the Senate on Nov. 3.

Guest: James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas.

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From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro. This is The Daily. In bright red Texas, James Tallarico is trying to become the first Democrat to be elected to the United States Senate in nearly 40 years, in what's become, by far, the most expensive and ferocious campaign of this year's midterm elections. Today, we speak with Tallarico about the kind of race he's running, the highly personal campaign against him, and what he wants Democrats to do if they take back control of Congress. It's Tuesday, October 20th. Hey there. Hey, how are you? Good. Can you hear me? I can. Can you hear me? I can. Thank you for joining us, Representative James Tallarico. Welcome to The Daily. Oh, thank you for having me. My pleasure. I know you just emerged from a really nasty flu, arguably the most famous flu in modern campaign history. A flu gate, yeah. So I know you have a lot of campaigning to make up for, so it means a lot that you found the time for us. I just want to get out of the way. We asked your opponent, Ken Paxton, the Republican Attorney General in Texas, for an interview as well, and so far we haven't locked anything down, so stay tuned. I want to explain, Representative, why we're talking to you at this specific moment in this midterm campaign, about two weeks out from election day. And that's because what's become clear in our coverage on the show and really across times coverage is that a good number of disillusioned Republican voters are upset enough with President Trump that they are unusually open to voting for Democrats in this election, even in very red states. And nowhere is that dynamic we've been talking about on more vivid display than your race in Texas. This is a state that President Trump won in 2024 by 14 points and where you have nevertheless been leading in the polls now for weeks, which is why I think it's safe to say you've become the Democrat that Republicans fear the most in these midterms. They are throwing an extraordinarily expensive and ferocious campaign against you. So between those two polls of being the rare Democrat who might flip Texas for the first time in decades and this really aggressive campaign by Republicans to make sure that never happens, how does it feel to be the guy in the middle of all of that right now? Well, we are still very much the underdogs. We're going up against the most corrupt politician in Texas who is backed by the most powerful man in the world and the richest man in the world. Both the President and Elon Musk are backing our opponent Ken Paxton. And so we are the underdogs until the last vote is counted. And you're exactly right. They have already poured 200 million dollars into this race. They spent it on attack ads against me and making me look as scary as possible. And it's because Elon Musk is trying to buy his own personal US senator. But I really do believe that on November 3rd, our state is going to send the world's first trillionaire a very clear message that Texas is not for sale. Hmm. I want to talk about what has unfolded over the past couple of days and weeks as all this money and muscle has been thrown at you because it's quite singular. I mean, just over the past week, Republicans have claimed back to the famous flu, were checked into an Ohio mental institution, basically that you went crazy. And no less than the vice president of the United States, JD Vance has doubled down on a claim, if I can distill his remarks, that you are a pervert with a problematic online search history. I mean, campaigns have always been full of personal attacks. They've always been negative. But how do you interpret this quite extreme version of that? Yeah, I mean, I think this is an example of what I call the rage economy. Conspiracy theorists can post anything they want online. Politicians can say anything they want online. The poster gets clicks. We all get angry on both sides and no one's life gets any better. And so it's tragic because I think so many of us go to these platforms because we are searching for connection. And instead we fall into this broken business model that leaves us lonelier, at least is more disconnected than when we hopped on the platform in the first place. So I know I'm kind of the latest example of this, but it's really a systemic problem that's hurting all of us, not just me and my campaign. Well, I want to describe very briefly, because I think it will help get us to the story of who you really are, what this money must behind a tremendous amount of it is being used to say about you. James Tallarico is weird, very weird. Descending transtext is something we have to do every day that you are woke, that you are overly

Transcription truncated.

Our interview with James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Texas.