OPINION:
Democrats seem thrilled that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated longtime incumbent John Cornyn in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate seat in Texas last week.
Because Mr. Paxton carries multiple scandals, including a messy divorce, Democrats assume he will be an easy mark in a state known for its traditional values.
Not so fast.
Mr. Paxton has three things going for him. Despite his checkered reputation, he is a confirmed fighter, not a go-along-to-get-along kind of Republican. People seem to have had their fill of the latter.
A fierce and effective defender of constitutional liberties, he has the full support of President Trump, which could be a negative somewhere else, but not in the Lone Star State.
Finally, Mr. Paxton’s opponent is state Rep. James Talarico, a far-leftist who is telling voters that his many zany statements, especially about faith, are being taken out of context. The 37-year-old Mr. Talarico is a seminarian from the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), a shrinking, fully woke denomination whose version of Jesus is Sen. Bernard Sanders in a rainbow-colored robe and tiara.
Mr. Talarico has given sermons at a church in Austin that offers a cache of explicit “banned books,” including pornographic LGBTQ propaganda for children, such as “This Book Is Gay.”
He called Ten Commandments displays in schools “unconstitutional, un-American and deeply un-Christian.” He said this in 2023, speaking against a state bill requiring the posting of the decalogue in classrooms. He also said the proposed law was “idolatrous … exclusionary, and it is arrogant.”
How about this one? “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary.” He said this on the Texas House floor in 2021 while opposing a bill to keep boys out of girls’ sports.
Responding to some mass shootings, Mr. Talarico wrote a social media post in 2021 echoing President Biden: “Radicalized White men are the greatest domestic terrorist threat in our country.”
In a sermon he gave in 2023 at a Methodist church in Austin, Mr. Talarico said, “Jesus saves. Christian nationalism kills. Jesus started a universal movement based on mutual love. Christian nationalism is a sectarian movement based on mutual hate.”
Translation: If you are a patriotic American Christian, then you are a hater.
Perhaps the most offensive of all was his invoking the Virgin Mary to suggest that God is OK with abortions. On a Joe Rogan podcast in July 2025, Mr. Talarico said of Mary’s submission to God to have the Holy Spirit conceive Jesus Christ through her: “I say all this in the context of abortion because before God comes over Mary and we have the incarnation, God asks for Mary’s consent, which is remarkable. 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. You cannot force someone to create.”
The devil himself could not have come up with a more deceptive interpretation.
Mr. Talarico is trying to justify taking life, not creating it. In his version, Mary calls the shots, not God. However, in Luke 1:26-38, the angel Gabriel tells Mary what will happen. He does not give her a choice. Her response is beautiful.
In addition to misrepresenting the incarnation, Mr. Talarico often slanders the church, saying it ignores social welfare and instead takes on cultural issues, a false dichotomy. The church does both, contributing vastly to charities while serving as the conscience of society.
As for economics, Mr. Talarico unabashedly embraces collectivism, the atheistic ideology that spawned Nazism, fascism and communism and has caused more human misery and mass murder than any other in history. He rejects America’s free market system, which has brought unprecedented prosperity, freedom and scientific advancement.
“We don’t need to reform capitalism. We need to replace it with an economic system rooted in justice and dignity,” he said. Translation: I want to seize your income and property and redistribute it to people other than your family. It is only fair.
Mr. Talarico has a “free-stuff army” plan. It consists of “Medicare for All” (socialist healthcare), a wealth tax on billionaires, universal basic income (paid by taxpayers), free (taxpayer-funded) college, free (taxpayer-funded) childcare, student debt shifted to taxpayers, more power for labor unions, collective ownership of the means of production, and Green New Deal-style climate extremism that would wipe out America’s vital fossil fuels, including Texas’ oil and gas industries.
Mr. Talarico will pretend to be a moderate, the way Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger fooled voters in November. Yet it is doubtful he can explain his way out of this 2022 statement in barbecue-crazy Texas: “It is now existential that we try to reduce our meat consumption and that we try to respect animals in all aspects of society. So I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a nonmeat campaign. We are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses.”
Mr. Talarico has been singing a different song lately: “I deny all accusations of veganism. … Our campaign basically runs on barbecue these days.”
Somehow, I do not think Texans will swallow the sauce he is dishing out.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
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