With Attorney General Ken Paxton clinching the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, the general election has officially begun — and both sides are moving rapidly to establish their pitch to voters.
The moment the Republican runoff was called Tuesday night, state Rep. James Talarico, the Democratic nominee and a Presbyterian seminarian, released his attack in a video titled: “The People vs. Ken Paxton,” tying the scandal-plagued attorney general directly to the Austin Democrat’s broader campaign message against “the billionaire megadonors and their corrupt political system.”
“The most corrupt politician in America just became the Republican nominee for the United States Senate,” Talarico said in a video posted to social media. “For 50 years, megadonors and their puppet politicians like Ken Paxton have stolen from us, with their bribes, bailouts and billionaire tax breaks. Ken Paxton has gotten away with it — they’ve all gotten away with it. But that ends this year, in this state, in this race.”
Talarico launched a five-stop “The People vs. Ken Paxton Tour” of Texas this week, starting with Houston on Wednesday — the first full day of the general election, and the third anniversary of Paxton’s impeachment by the GOP-dominated Texas House on charges of corruption and abuse of office. Paxton was later acquitted by the state Senate.
Talarico’s general election stump speech, auditioned first on Wednesday, was heavy on themes of service — drawing a direct contrast to what he cast as Paxton’s self-dealing and corruption on behalf of his billionaire donors. He opened his remarks with a story about his great-grandfather, whose favorite Bible verse came from the Gospel of Matthew and features Jesus telling his disciples, “The greatest among you will be a servant.”
“I ran for office not to be served, but to serve. And then there’s Ken Paxton.” Talarico said. “I have a legislative record — Ken Paxton has a criminal record.”
Republicans, meanwhile, quickly united against their common enemy, taking aim at Talarico for what they describe as outlandishly progressive positions on issues ranging from gender and race to climate change, veganism and Christianity.
“Texas is Trump country and won’t break a 32-year streak for a woke freak like James Talarico, who thinks there are six genders,” Republican National Committee Chair Joe Gruters said in a statement. “Talarico will regret running for Senate by the time Republicans are done with him.”
Both sides will fuel what is likely to be a staggeringly expensive general election ad war that will bombard Texans for months. The primary and runoff elections already established themselves as the highest-spend on record across the country, according to media tracking firm AdImpact, with over $168 million dropped on airtime across both rounds.
Paxton and his allies are activating around several key moments from Talarico’s archives in an attempt to define him early in the race as an out-of-touch liberal.
Examples include when he said “God is nonbinary,” during a House debate over legislation requiring students to play on K-12 sports teams matching their biological sex; when he said there were six biological sexes, referring to people with chromosomal variations, during a committee debate over a similar bill; and when he said during his 2022 House reelection bid that he was running a “non-meat” campaign because it was “existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption.”
Paxton’s first ad of the general election Wednesday also featured those moments and cast Talarico as antithetical to Texas values.
“This is Texas,” the ad’s narrator says as a photo of Paxton with President Donald Trump flashes on the screen. “This is not,” the ad continues, dubbing Talarico “radical” and “too low-T for Texas.”
Club for Growth, a deep-pocketed and influential conservative group, also launched an ad Tuesday clipping together those moments and labeling him a “crazy person.”
In his victory speech Tuesday, Paxton declared Talarico the “most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated.” After workshopping nicknames for Talarico on the campaign trail over the last week, Paxton rolled them out again in his remarks, referring to his opponent as “Tofu Talarico,” “Six-Gender Jimmy,” “James Tala-freak-o,” and “Low-T Talarico.”
Trump derided Talarico on Truth Social Tuesday as possibly “the worst TEXAS candidate I have ever seen.”
“A strong Open Borders advocate, he is WEAK ON CRIME, believes there are 6 genders, is insulting to Jesus Christ, will never support the Military, was a big Mask Wearer until recently, and is a Vegan who dislikes meat, not exactly a good way to be if you’re wanting to win an Election in Texas,” Trump wrote.
Talarico, who is not vegan and has rebutted the claim by releasing photos of himself on the campaign trail eating a turkey leg and grabbing tacos with former President Barack Obama, pointed to his record in the Legislature of supporting additional funding for law enforcement and emphasized his support for immigration policies that secure the border and, in a biblical reference, also “welcome the stranger.”
On CBS News, Talarico said that some of his previous comments “missed the mark.”
“There are some statements that I’ve made that I certainly regret,” he said. “But Ken Paxton is intentionally clipping my cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption.”
“If all they have is lying about me being a vegan,” Talarico added, “I feel pretty good about our chances this November.”
His first digital ad of the general election, titled “Meet Ken Paxton,” sought to reintroduce voters to Paxton’s long list of since-resolved civil and criminal accusations, including his impeachment and felony fraud charges the Justice Department later declined to prosecute. At one point in the ad, Paxton’s mug shot fills the frame.
“Paxton is a repugnant character,” former U.S. Rep. Denver Riggleman, R-Virginia, is shown saying during a CNN interview in the ad. “Ken Paxton is an extremely flawed candidate and I sense the worst is yet to come about his background,” Fox News presenter Brian Kilmeade adds in the next clip.
The subject line attached to pro-Talarico Lone Star Rising PAC’s election night statement captured how the group plans to prosecute the case: “Faith vs. Fraud.”
“The matchup is now locked in: James Talarico, a leader grounded in faith and service, against Ken Paxton, an immoral politician shadowed by fraud, corruption, theft and years of infidelity,” the group said in a statement just minutes after the race was called, adding that it “will make sure Texans know exactly what’s at stake.”
Garry Jones, Lone Star Rising’s director, added in a memo distributed Wednesday that “Paxton’s vulnerabilities from the primary will continue to haunt him in the general election, notably that he is corrupt and can’t be trusted to do the job or hold public office.”
Jones pointed to Paxton’s personal enrichment while in office, his impeachment and the sum his scandals have cost taxpayers: $6.6 million to his former senior staff who reported his conduct to the FBI and later argued he improperly fired them in violation of state whistleblower law, and $5.1 million for the trial itself.
The Democratic attacks on Paxton echoed those that U.S. Sen. John Cornyn buried the attorney general under during the runoff with a roughly $100 million ad campaign. Despite that spend and after nearly two decades in Washington, Cornyn lost the GOP nomination to Paxton by nearly 28 percentage points.
“Ken Paxton is morally unfit for office,” Talarico said on MS NOW on Tuesday. “He’ll lie to you with a straight face. He’s failed the character test. He’s the most corrupt attorney general of our lifetime, and he puts the interests of himself over the laws of Texas. Those aren’t my words. Those are the words of Ken Paxton’s fellow Republicans.”
As Cornyn did before him, Talarico seized on a plea deal Paxton’s office offered to Adam Hoffman, a Waco man charged with repeatedly sexually abusing a young boy, that would have let Hoffman plead guilty to two misdemeanors, serve a total of just one day in jail and avoid registering as a sex offender.
“If Ken Paxton is worried about freaks, he should stop giving Epstein-style sweetheart deals to pedophiles,” Talarico said on CBS. “Ken Paxton is the most corrupt politician in America, and it is costing Texans, it’s endangering our children and it must end. The Epstein class has no place in Texas.”
Talarico told reporters in Houston on Wednesday that he believed Paxton’s scandals would matter more to a general electorate, despite voters electing the attorney general in statewide elections before, even with some of his legal troubles hanging over him.
“Especially in this moment, when people are really fed up with the corruption and the extremism in our government, I think this contrast between a career criminal and a servant leader is going to be particularly stark,” Talarico said.
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, a Houston Democratic kingmaker who supported U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, Talarico’s rival, in the primary, helped introduce the Austin Democrat at Wednesday’s rally, which was held at a nightclub filled to the brim with supporters.
“We are going to end one-party rule in the state of Texas — make no mistake about it,” Ellis said. “I was with Jasmine Crockett in the primary. That was then. This is now. There’s too much at stake to be petty.”
Ellis is among a growing number of Black politicians who backed Crockett and are now urging their base to get on board with Talarico, who has struggled to attract support from Black Texans. Talarico has acknowledged the feebleness of his standing among the critical voting bloc and said he’s “listening to their concerns and engaging with the community so that they know they have a place in this campaign.”
Also hitting the stump for Talarico Wednesday was state Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, who served on the House committee that oversaw the chamber’s impeachment case against Paxton in 2023. In introducing Talarico, she called the attorney general a “con man” who won a “political” acquittal in the Senate — but would not escape the voters in November.
“At a time when politics today often rewards outrage, ego and division, James Talarico represents something increasingly rare: integrity, humility and service,” she said. “We are here tonight because we choose a government of integrity over corruption.”
