No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas in over three decades. State Representative James Talarico wants to be the man to change that.
While Sen. Ted Cruz has successfully fended off challenges from perpetual loser Beto O’Rourke and Congressman Colin Allred in 2018 and 2024 respectively, he had the benefit of running as the incumbent. With Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton besting incumbent senior Sen. John Cornyn in Tuesday’s GOP runoff, Dems think they might finally have their chance.
But is Talarico the guy to do it? The former middle school teacher and Presbyterian minister in training is going to have to answer for his past far-left statements about there being six genders, God being non-binary, and Jesus helping him reckon with his whiteness, among others. And then there is the bizarre controversy that has erupted over whether the 37 year old is vegan.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Tom Bevan, president and co-founder of RealClearPolitics, to break down what Talarico has actually said about his eating habits.
The Claims
According to the RealClearPolitics average, Talarico currently enjoys a narrow but notable 1.5-point lead over Paxton. Based on his victory speech Tuesday night, Paxton seems poised to seize on Talarico’s strange comments on everything from God to radical gender ideology to, yes, eating meat.
“My opponent is the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever nominated. He’s even running a vegan campaign, whatever that is,” he said. “He goes by a few names that you may all have heard of. Some people know him as Tofu Talarico. Some people call him Six Gender Jimmy. I’ve even heard some people call him James Talafreako, and others refer to him simply as Low-T Talarico. No matter what you call him, let me tell you this: James Talarico is a threat to everything we hold dear in this state and in this country.”
As Megyn noted, the “vegan campaign” slight “is not a made-up thing.” Talarico has served as a member of the Texas House of Representatives since 2018, and, while running for reelection in 2022, he made the following comments about his “non-meat campaign”:
TALARICO: We have, I think, heard more and more issues of animal welfare. I think not just because it’s the right thing to do and the moral thing to do, but also it’s, as all of you know, necessary to fight climate change. It is now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption, and that we try to respect animals in all aspects of society. And so I, I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign. So we really have, we are, we are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses. Some of you may know Big Nonna’s. They were Li’l Nonna’s, and then they opened up brick and mortar, so now they’re Big Nonna’s. But we just got our pizza from there today. And so the point is I think all of us, not just policymakers, but everyone, has to take personal responsibility in this effort.
The Denials
Talarico waxing poetic about his meatless campaign is on video clear as day, but that apparently was never supposed to imply that he himself abstains from animal products. Back in March, his campaign spokesperson posted an “Official statement from @JamesTalarico on vegan accusations” on X, which consisted of a picture of the candidate wearing a Texas flag shirt while eating barbecue:
But after President Donald Trump reignited the rumors last week after endorsing Paxton and calling Talarico unelectable because “he’s a vegan in Texas,” Talarico once again tried to deny the claims in an interview on Tuesday with MeidasTouch.
“You know, I’m an eighth-generation Texan. I’ve been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton’s first indictment,” he blustered. “If all they have on me is lying about me being a vegan, I feel pretty good about our chances this November.”
Megyn wasn’t buying it. “He is so busted,” she said. “It’s right there on tape. He is not going to be able to get away with this shit.”
Bevan agreed and said the problem for Talarico goes beyond the vegan issue. “That is the problem with all these comments. This is just Republicans playing his own words to the public, so he is not going to be able to get away with saying, ‘They’re lying about me,’ ‘They’re taking stuff out of context,” he explained. “It’s all right there.”
The Fallout
In Bevan’s view, Talarico is already falling into the trap that stymied Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign. “Do you remember ‘White Dudes for Kamala,'” Bevan asked. “The idea was that they were trying to win over, you know, male voters.”
As evidenced by Harris’ dismal showing among men, it didn’t work. And Bevan doesn’t think this will either. “He gets accused of being vegan, and what does he do? He goes and gets this giant… turkey leg thing and tries to pretend,” he noted. “He clearly does not know how to act like a manly man. I don’t know how else to put it. So, that’s going to be a real problem for the campaign, and, obviously, the Paxton folks are going to get as much mileage out of that as they can.”
Megyn had but one takeaway. “You don’t go to Texas and say ‘I’m a vegan’ in the same way you don’t go to Iowa, as a politician, and say ‘I don’t eat corn,'” she concluded. “Certain things are not done, but he did it because he is an idiot. He is a woke leftist dope.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Bevan by tuning in to episode 1,326 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.