Profiles in Heterodoxy is a new column from our team at Searchlight identifying candidates who make clear choices to appeal to voters who, otherwise, might not vote for a Democrat.
Importantly, we’re interested in highlighting figures from all across the Big Tent — moderate, establishment, or Left. The only criterion is whether that candidate is attempting to match the heterodox set of opinions that define the sort of voters that swing elections.
Today’s profile is James Talarico in Texas.
James Talarico had yet to turn 30 years old when he decided to lace up a beaten pair of New Balance sneakers and walk 25 miles from Round Rock to Taylor, Texas. Along the way, he rounded the corners and crossed the familiar streets of his hometown — waving at passersby, stopping curbside to answer questions from voters, and campaigning for a seat in the Texas State Legislature.
The last time voters in the district had gone to the polls to vote for their state representative, there wasn’t a Democrat on the ballot; the choice was between a Republican and a Libertarian.
But Talarico did the unthinkable. He won that race. He flipped that seat. Years passed, and Talarico’s profile grew as he fought against Christian nationalism and rampant political corruption from his perch in Austin — sparring with the ultra-conservatives who sought to defund public schools. He had yet to step foot onto national television until Pete Hegseth, then a Fox News host, invited him on to debate voter ID.
Today, for the first time in a generation, all signs point to Democrats having a real shot at flipping Texas statewide. The Lone Star state just might be sending this former school teacher and Presbyterian seminarian to the U.S. Senate.
James Talarico’s tightrope path to victory has not been — nor will it be — easy. He must win a lion’s share of independents, a slice of conservative men, swing voters who most recently chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, and turnout disengaged voters who have tuned out the midterms altogether. He’s also had to disavow past leftist views that are, at a very fundamental level, unpopular among many of the voters he’s trying to win. In 2020, he talked about dismantling capitalism, linking it to white supremacy. He said Texas’ oil and gas industry wouldn’t last.
But Talarico did something that is unfortunately quite rare in politics; he directly disavowed those comments, pledging that he’s a capitalist who supports oil and gas.
That’s in-line with the sort of ideologically diverse positions Talarico is embracing in this Senate race. And it helps explain why he’s competitive in a state that voted for Trump by fourteen points just two years prior.
Here are three reasons why Talarico is this week’s profile in Heterodoxy:
Rallying with sheriffs and border communities on his Frontera Tour
Democrats used to believe in the ‘demographics is destiny’ thesis, and assumed that Trump’s extreme immigration politics would turn states like Texas blue because of its growing number of reliable Hispanic Democratic voters.
But in 2024, Texas border-state Hispanics shifted sharply towards Trump, in part, because of the migrant crisis that occurred under the Biden administration. That means to win Texas, Democrats need to take immigration seriously. And more than any previous Texas Democratic Senate candidate, that’s what Talarico is doing.
Recently, Talarico journeyed from El Paso all the way to the Rio Grande Valley during his Frontera Tour. He rallied with law enforcement near Big Bend, where he announced his own immigration and border security agenda that includes deploying smart systems and technology to counter illegal immigration. He held town halls in deeply conservative border towns and communities — focused not only on immigration, but funding for schools and lowering the cost of living. And, in a surprise to local media, Talarico’s immigration plan was endorsed by Thaddeus Cleveland, the conservative Terrell County Sheriff who spent most of his career as a Border Patrol agent.
A mix-and-match approach to his economic and health care agenda
The consultants would tell you it’s safer to stick to a sort-of-monotonous economic center; James Talarico doesn’t seem to think so. He’s not reflexively moderating on all issues. He’s embracing big-tent economic populism.
His opponent, Ken Paxton, makes the contrast easy because of his own rampant personal corruption. That gives Talarico extra room to campaign on an anti-corruption economic agenda that explicitly targets what he calls “crony capitalism.” At his rallies, he has decried an economic system that is failing working families: “The American dream is broken,” meanwhile, “Ken Paxton has 15 homes.”
The actual economic policy agenda doesn’t fall neatly into a progressive or moderate camp. He wants to tackle inequality and break up health care monopolies. But he doesn’t want to abolish private health insurance. He wants to nearly double the minimum wage and guarantee universal paid child care — but he isn’t calling for sweeping reforms to capitalism or attacking popular consumer facing corporations.
Embracing the oil and gas industry
James Talarico is leaning harder into oil and gas than his predecessors — making real and affirmative commitments to an all-of-the-above approach to American energy.
The politics here should be, and yet haven’t always been, obvious for a Democrat attempting to flip Texas. The entire state relies on the industry. Texas is a thriving economy, on par with many advanced nations, in part, because of oil and gas.
This doesn’t mean that Talarico is any less interested in fighting pollution, protecting Texas public lands and open spaces, or making sure that public health is a top priority. He’s also campaigning to plug abandoned oil wells and stop the Trump Administration from bulldozing the natural barrier at Big Bend National Park. But this is bread and butter environmentalism, and it’s distinct from the last Democrat who ran for this Senate seat. MJ Hegar told the League of Conservation Voters that climate change, notoriously a very low-salience issue to Texas swing voters, was “one of the top reasons she decided to run for the US Senate.”
If Talarico had adopted those policies or run on incremental economic policies, then he might’ve sunk his chances of winning at the very start. Instead he has attempted to offer many Independents, conservatives, and non-voters a place in his campaign.
Only time will tell if Talarico’s heterodox approach to politics can break three decades of Republican statewide rule. It’s a mighty fight and a massive task before him.
The good news is he’s trying to make his political coalition much bigger. And he’s no longer walking alone.
There is a lesson here for Dems. Talarico is obviously gifted in all of the qualities a good politician needs regarding communication, appearance, and likability. But beyond that, his campaign is doing so well because (1) he is obviously honest, upright and unassailable, and (2) his opponent is the opposite. One of the common rebub strategies has been to uncover dirt on an opponent, regardless of how meager, and hold it up as false equivalence with their candidate's own faults. That is apparently not possible with Talarico. So, voters are forced to look past the "well they're all crooked anyway" trope, which nudges them ever so slightly into a deeper analysis. That is a formula that Dems would be wise to emulate, especially in historically red or purple areas.