Texas Talarico freakout

0:00The people of the great nation of Texas have not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1988. But this year, that might change. James Tallarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, schoolteacher, self-confessed, cringe progressive. Yes, I was doing it maybe in an annoying way. Is leading in most polls. His opponent, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, is facing two headwinds. The price of gas and everything. Also, Paxton has done some very, very bad stuff. So Republicans have been trying some messaging, questioning whether Tallarico is man enough for Texas. Low-T Tallarico, too weak for Texas. Tofu Tallarico? They're questioning some other things, too. I love you too, sir, in a totally platonic way.

0:45To be clear, I'm the vice president, not James Tallarico. Meemaw would be appalled. But what do Texans think? Are they buying it? On Today Explained from Vox, we pay a visit. Born to be a cowboy. Support for the show today comes from Bill. When it comes to managing money, forget the hype and look at results. Bill boasts a trillion dollars of secure payment transactions. One trillion dollars. And that powers their BillPay tools. Instead of just moving money, Bill is powering the financial operations of nearly a half million customers. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit Bill.com slash proven to get started and grab a $150 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details.

1:33Support for the show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance. If you have a dog or cat, here's something you need to know. According to Forbes, one in three pets will need emergency treatment this year. And every six seconds, a pet parent gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Vet bills don't have to hit that hard. Fetch is pet insurance that covers accidents, illnesses, and emergency visits, and pays back up to 90% of eligible vet bills. No wonder pet parents give Fetch an excellent rating on Trustpilot. Get a free quote in minutes at Fetch an excellent rating on Trustpilot. Get a free quote in minutes at FetchPet.com slash save. That's FetchPet.com slash save. This is Today Explained. Last week, producer Peter Balanon-Rosen and I went to a rally for Ken Paxton in Fort Worth.

2:28Paxton supporters lined up in their 10s TBH, although we were pretty early. This was an older crowd, but energetic, and it quickly descended into boomer-on-boomer violence. I know the guy you're walking in on has cheated on his wife. And you're a sinner, too. We're all sinners. Older fella in a yellow shirt stalking back and forth along the line of supporters with a little dog, shouting about the things A.G. Paxton would prefer everyone forget. He cheated on his wife, according to his now estranged wife. Everybody's a sinner. You're a sinner, too. He's been investigated for financial corruption and securities fraud, and he was impeached by fellow Republicans for abuse of office, though not convicted.

3:16Paxton's campaign has to do something with all of this, and so they've gone on the offensive. Their message is that his opponent, James Tallarico, while personally rather squeaky clean, holds beliefs that are un-Texan. Tallarico has said this about God. God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary. And this about the sexes. Modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six. He voted against restrictions that would have barred some trans students from sports teams. So at the Paxton rally, anyway, the Paxton argument appears to be working. Telerico does not have Texas values. We believe in God, country.

4:06We don't believe in the whole gender takeover of the children. Texas doesn't like that. My shirt says, no, tell a freaking way. Because he is kind of a freak. Like, what? You talking about God? Like, he's non-binary and there's six sexes? No. It's not okay. One of the things that I've noticed in the ads is Tarico's manliness. Do you think he's manly enough to be the senator from Texas? No. Oh, no. That was quick. Why'd he say that? Well, if you really had to look deep, he's probably got some lace on his panties, but that's just my opinion. There's nothing masculine about him. He looks like a little boy. He's not tough enough. We need masculinity back in Texas. Talafrico. Talafrico. Talafrico. Nobody who is a Bible-based Christian says God is

4:51non-binary. He's kind of a left loony tick. At least for they, them, and not for you. So. He's more like, you know, pro-trans. Pushing transgender surgeries on children. He's in wolf in sheep's clothing. Wolf in sheep's clothing. So the base has got the message, but this year, the base is not going to be enough. Some of the base is going to sit this one out due to President Trump's unpopularity. Ken Paxton is going to need independents. Independents who pay very little attention to politics, but generally like the way things are going. You've got to convince those voters, I think, that Tallarico is unacceptable. Texas political journalist Ryan Rusak until recently led the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's

5:34opinion section. We're not a state that likes to vote much at all. We're a state where the vast majority of people, if things are running okay, and they can pay their mortgage, and the economy's growing, and they have jobs, and and their neighbors have jobs and the price of gas is reasonable, they'll stay home or they will vote for the guys that are keeping the machinery humming. But the machinery ain't humming this year. President Trump's approval rating is hovering around 32 percent. That is quite low. 36 percent of likely voters told the Texas Political Project that either the economy or the cost of living is their top issue this year. And anecdotally, people here would tell you those are the same thing.

6:20The next biggest issue for those Texas voters polled is a bit of a shocker. Corruption. Corruption more than abortion, more than socialism, more even than stopping the Democrats. So what do you do with that if you're the candidate who is dogged by corruption allegations? You seize on any perceived weakness that you can find. James Tallarico, a seminarian, is the rare Democrat who will not stop talking about his faith. Rather than dodge it, he has leaned all the way in. So what if you say he's the wrong kind of Christian man? He is what a lot of Texas Southern Baptists or independent Christian conservatives would call, you know, Christian light. His church is almost a caricature of a progressive church.

7:02They use a Bible that uses inclusive language, and everybody can go to heaven, not just followers of Jesus. And Tallarico, that's a soft spot for him. Okay, so there are fights happening behind the scenes that you don't necessarily see unless you're in Texas and understand this landscape. Let me ask for, let me ask you for a similar sort of comparison when it comes to the question of James Tallarico being a real man or not a real man. When we hear James Tallarico is not a real man, what would we be picking up on if we understood what we should be picking up on? For a while, I thought it was sort of a general sort of, you know, against the feminization of masculinity, against sort of if a Trump Republican is a sort of a manly man, you know, brash and bold and

7:54gets things done and eats a lot of meat or in Trump's case, a lot of fast food, that there was some, you know, other definition for Tallarico. It's soft-spoken. It's, you know, caring about the environment. It's, you know, not eating too much meat. You know, that's not the guy who's going to wear his cowboy boots with his suit on the Senate floor like Senator Cruz does. Ryan points out that the narratives conflict here. On the one hand, Tallarico and his policies are too soft, too weak, too low-T for Texas voters, no tallafreakin' way. But on the other hand, Tallarico is a monster who's going to trans your kids. He's a wolf in sheep's clothing. One consequence of this is if you're trying to

8:36scare your voters that, you know, if James Tallarico is elected, we're going to have abortion on demand and all kids will be forcibly transed. It's hard to then make fun of him as like a vegan simp, right? It's one or the other. He's either threatening or he's not. So James Tallarico might be a bad man or bad at being a man. But as we talked to people in Texas, we learned a big problem for Ken Paxton is that a lot of women see him as a bad guy. So I've been involved in Texas politics over 30 years, and this is the first time I've truly been concerned we could lose a statewide since the Republicans took over in the 90s. That is Jill Tate. Jill leads the Texas Federation of Republican Women, and her job is to get Republicans a W on Election Day.

9:31Ken Paxton's biggest sin, from the point of view of the Texas Federation of Republican Women, has to do with his estranged wife. In July of last year, Angela Paxton announced she was seeking a divorce on, quote, biblical grounds. It has been a rumor around taxes for years. Oh, okay. So I don't think that it was a shocking thing to hear. Our board has about 100 ladies on it from all over the state of Texas, and many of them we feel very the sisterhood of Angela because she is one of our members. And so there is that, you know, you hurt our sister. We don't want to, we're not going to do anything for you. But it was. Angela Paxton is an accomplished member of the Texas State Senate. These women are her friends.

10:21And the thing about women is that we tend not to vote for our friends' dirtbag exes. But, you know, Angela actually has been very clear on the fact that it is still very important to vote for Ken. She came to our board meeting almost a month ago and gave a speech called The Elephant in the Room. And she talked about the fact that while our candidates may fall down and they may do things that are disappointing and morally wrong, it is extremely important to remember that is the human side and we have to vote for the team. In that moment, you could hear a pin drop. Everyone was listening and it was, I saw heads nodding and I saw minds changing. The timing of Angela Paxton's speech was not at all random.

11:25Her ex has been trailing or neck and neck in the polls for months now. And this is where the Paxton playbook comes in. Remember, Ken Paxton may be the bad ex, but James Tallarico is scary. He is a radical. He is not a Democrat. He is not the conservative Democrat of days of old here in Texas. He is for radical policies. He is also a heretic. He is absolutely—he talks about God being non-binary and six genders, and those are things that are not Christian. He's just not the good old boy that he is portraying himself on TV. We've seen some advertising that takes aim at Tallarico's masculinity, right? So the vice president has said two things that I think were somewhat shocking to some people. The first was,

12:17he sort of came out and said, like, Tallarico's gay. I didn't hear that, but it's possible. He said, I don't know. He did that one. He did that one. And the second one was he made this sort of allusion to Tallarico's search history. I wouldn't want to see what's in there. Yeah. So these are sort of like, this is a specific type of allegation that seeks to cast Tallarico as gay, maybe, I don't know, pervert or pedophile. Yeah. Do you approve of that as a Christian? No, because, well, you know, as the Bible says, we're not supposed to gossip about things. I hear you saying Ken Paxton is the right candidate for Texas. James Tallarico is the wrong candidate for Texas. Why are you worried then? Because of the organization and the fact that they are working so hard.

13:12This is something I have not seen the Democrat Party do in a long time. They're organized, they've got a plan, and they're knocking doors. The Democrats are organized. So Republicans want voters to focus on Tallarico's comments about God and the sexes. And some voters do care about those things most. But it's possible, maybe even likely, that this year many more voters are focused on the rising cost of gas, of groceries, of life. I don't care what you do in your closet, under your sheets or whatever. Let's stop that. Every single commercial that I see right now from Republicans is about kids going to school and coming home the opposite sex, right? And so the Republicans are doing anything and everything

14:00to distract from actual policy and actual issues. I mean, everything's gone up. We need to get better representation and just the economy needs to get better for folks. The smart money says this election is going to be really close and it's going to come down to what motivates people to go out and vote. Fear, as we've seen in the U.S. over the past decade or so, is a great motivator. Fear about immigrants, fear about trans people, fear that we're in a period of moral decay. Ken Paxton is campaigning on fear and counting on fear. James Tallarico, the gentle seminarian and alleged vegan, might ironically be helped by the other great motivator. Rage. Rage at the status quo. Rage at the unaffordability. Rage at the corrupt elites.

14:53What might have been a weakness in 2026 is an advantage. A wolf in sheep's clothing might turn out to be exactly what the people of Texas want. Coming up next, we were a little surprised in Texas at how many voters say they'll be voting for the person who is the best Christian. We're going to talk to a young conservative Christian voter about how she's dealing with the candidate's biblical baggage. Support for this show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Most good ideas start half-baked, a hunch, a rough sketch, a question you can't quite put into words. You don't need to know where to start. You can just bring Claude what you have, and it works to help you shape it, question it, and find that first step. You can try it at claude.ai slash today explained.

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17:54That's hymns.com slash explain. Prescription products require online consultation with a licensed healthcare provider who will determine if prescription is appropriate. Restrictions apply. Individual results may vary. See hy HIMSS.com for full details. There was a Republican leader who said, Richard Nixon might be a crook, but he's our crook. Ken Paxton is our guy. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned today explained. Morgan Prudhomme is 23 years old. She's the president of Turning Point USA. That's the Charlie Kirk founded conservative campus advocacy group at Southern Methodist University. I'm an undergrad student here studying political science. I'm also a wife, a mom, and most importantly, a Christian.

18:39Can I start by asking just who's your candidate? Who are you going to vote for? I would say definitely Ken Paxton, but we can't pretend that he's a perfect biblical, you know, Christian man and role model. I'm a Christian first and a conservative second. So voting for Ken Paxton is purely because he is the choice that is going to best slow societal decay, in my opinion. As far as Tallarico, you know, he's warm. He's on Rogan. That is the key step. Right. So you need to run for president. We need someone who's actually a good person. He's on TikTok. I've been eating barbecue since before Kim Paxton's first indictment. No one should have to crowdfund their cancer treatment. Texans are sick of these AI ads trying to deceive voters, putting words in my mouth. Voters rate him

19:36authentic, but authenticity is not the same thing as truth. He said that when Mary, when the angel came upon Mary and told her that she was going to bear Jesus, was going to bear a son, that the angel asked for consent. The angel comes down and asks Mary if this is something she wants to do. And she says, if it is God's will, let it be done. Let it be. Let it happen. So to me, that is an affirmation in one of our most central stories that creation has to be done with consent. That's not true. But people don't check. The angel directed her that she was going to bear a child. And I can even read you the verse. Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. And then she said, let it be to me according to your word.

20:21He didn't ask her for permission. Rogan doesn't know his scripture either. So he believed him right off the bat. A lot of people listen to that for their information. It's 2026. Yes. It seems to me like maybe one of the things that James Tallarico is trying to do is to say, I'm bringing a message from the Bible and trying to sort of make it and put it in like 2026 language and therefore I'll talk about consent or I'll talk about God being non-binary. What do you think about the argument that he's just trying to sort of relate to people, to use the Bible to relate to people on like modern day terms versus quoting scripture? I would say that Jesus said, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing,

21:09but inwardly are ravenous wolves. I don't agree with politicians twisting the Bible to support their positions in any way, but this is especially heretical, like the definition of heresy. Heresy? Yes, this is heresy. This is absolutely heresy. This is the definition of a heresy. So, this is heresy. This is absolutely heresy. This is the definition of a heresy. So you can't use, we believe that the Bible is God's living and active word. It is his breath on a page. So you can't use God's word to twist and support whatever it is that you believe. But especially when you twist it to support things that God specifically speaks against, you just, you can't do that. God will not be mocked. We need to talk about Ken Paxton because Ken Paxton has engaged in some behaviors that

21:56are certainly outside of what the Bible expects of us, commands us to do, asks us to do. Ken Paxton's wife, when she announced that she was leaving him, I was sort of stunned by this. She said, I'm divorcing him on biblical grounds. Yes. That's a pretty strong statement. Yes. Was it a struggle for you to decide I'm going to vote for this man whose own wife said, I am going to divorce him on biblical grounds instead of just saying he cheated on me. For me personally, I always have trouble with voting when I'm voting for someone who claims to represent Christian values who I feel like doesn't. I don't need to fall in love with this candidate. It doesn't need to be pure and holy and everything they've ever said needs to be perfect.

22:44I'm not voting for a savior because I already have one. By sitting out and not voting in the election, you are making a choice. You are voting for James Tallarico, which one of my fears is that it could influence Christians that are in Congress already to vote in a different way based on his arguments. And so I would say it was difficult at first figuring out who I was going to vote for. And it might honestly disqualify him, some of the things that he's done. But he will best slow societal decay, as Jesus directed. So that's why he's my choice. It might even disqualify him, some of the things that he's done. Yes. That's an enormous statement to make about a man that you plan to vote for. Yes. But he does the job much better. I would say that, I mean, for example, you look at Trump.

23:38A lot of people don't like Trump. He has a personal life. It's really colored, you know. And yes, sometimes there are things in a candidate's past that, you know, that in my view might disqualify them from doing the job because I don't think that they're the best example for Christians, for society. However, we're not given many choices in America. And so at the end of the day, I'm always going to vote Republican as long as they are the party that continues to align with biblical values. When that changes, I'll become a Democrat. But currently, that's not the landscape. How old is your son? He's three, almost four months. Your son is too young to sort of comprehend who Ken Paxton is or who James Tallarico is. But

24:21is Ken Paxton the type of man you want your son looking at and saying, that's a Christian? I mean, no, I would hope that he looks at my husband first and our pastor. You know, we can find someone else to replace him, hopefully next time, you know, someone who does represent Christian values better. Except one of the things that I think President Trump may have illustrated to us is that if you elect someone with a lot of personal baggage, with a lot of allegations about their personal life and their allegations of corruption, it does seem more likely that you do it again the next time. Okay, that guy with all that dark history, with all that unchristian behavior, he can win and he can win Christians. So what is the motivation for the next guy to be a good

25:12Christian if the previous guy wasn't and still won Christians? I mean, I would say that this is the responsibility of the church. You have to raise up good men. We need men to stand up and say, I'm going to support you and I'm going to support the kids. And we're going to go to church every week and we're going to be Christian members of society. Those are some of the things that Ken Paxton said he was. There's a verse about separating the wheat from the chaff. That's not a verse about just like people in general. It's a verse about separating the wheat from the chaff. That's not a verse about just like people in general. It's a verse about Christians. There are people who claim to be Christian who

25:49are not Christian, whose lives do not represent that. Jesus knows your heart. You're going to answer for that someday. The problem is when you asked about my son and an example for him to follow, I don't want him following James Tallarico's example either. And so both choices aren't exactly great. But with Ken Paxton, I have more of a hope that he's not going to grow up in a school where he comes home one day and he tells me that he thinks he's a girl and that, you know, he wants to go by this name instead and whatever else. I don't love this choice. I don't love that I'm making it. I don't want this person as a model for my children, as a model for our state or for the country. But ultimately, this will best slow societal decay.

26:44Morgan Prudhomme at Southern Methodist University. Today's team, Peter Balanon-Rosen, Jolie Myers, Bridger Dunnigan, Gabriel Donatov, and me, Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Today Explained. The End for pumpkin spice? That's your signal to start thinking about the holidays, the decor, the gifts, the shopping lists, but more importantly, the holiday treats. Cheesecakes, cookies, is there anything better? And when the recipe calls for cream cheese, there's only one option. Philadelphia, the original cream cheese, made with fresh milk and real cream. This holiday season, whether you're going all out or keeping it simple, make it really Philly good. Find your favorite holiday recipe at creamcheese.com. Support for today's episode comes from Delta, official airline of the National Women's Soccer League.

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