Texas voters keep meeting a brand-new James Talarico every time a camera turns on.
He looked a Fox News reporter in the eye and swore he stands against transgender surgeries for kids.
Then a flyer surfaced from a Greenwich Village party, and three names printed on it tell a very different story.
Three Hosts and a $13,500 Ticket
Texas state Representative James Talarico (D) is running for US Senate against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, and the New York Post describes the contest as a dead heat.
In a September sit-down with Fox News, Talarico said he would vote for a national ban on gender surgery for minors if he reaches Washington, DC.
He didn’t stop there. Talarico claimed he has “been consistent on this issue,” and he said he only opposed a Texas bill banning those surgeries because the measure “was overly broad.”
Weeks later he flew to New York City to collect checks.
Texas Scorecard got hold of the event flyer. Three hosts of the Greenwich Village reception sit on the boards of the Human Rights Campaign or its foundation, the largest LGBTQ political lobbying group in the country.
Morgan Cox serves on the HRC board of directors. Author Andrew Solomon serves on the HRC Foundation board. And former US Ambassador to Spain James Costos holds a seat on both.
Tickets started at $1,000 and climbed to $13,500 for what the listing called “Champion” level entry.
And what does HRC want for children? A guide from its foundation says doctors can give puberty-blocking drugs to adolescents, and that “some trans youth may benefit from gender-affirming surgery, which is rarely an option under the age of 17.”
Rarely. That one word carries a lot of freight.
The same guide includes a chart titled “Common Steps in Gender Transition.” It lists puberty blockers for “early- to mid-adolescents,” along with testosterone for biological females and estrogen with an androgen inhibitor for biological males.
The relationship didn’t start at that party, either. HRC’s political action committee endorsed Talarico for Senate back in June. aolhrc
The Record Talarico Left Behind in Austin
Talarico spent years in the Texas House, and the votes are all still there.
In 2023, he voted against the bill that became Texas law and stopped gender surgery, puberty blockers, and hormone treatments for minors. His defense is that he backed an amendment to narrow it. Democrats offered 18 amendments to that bill, Talarico voted for every one, and all of them failed. yahooabcstlouis
So when the final vote came, he voted no on protecting kids from all of it.
He also voted again and again against bills requiring athletes to compete according to biological sex.
And in 2021 he stood on the Texas House floor and declared that “God is non-binary” and “both masculine and feminine and everything in between.” He once claimed “modern science” shows six biological sexes, too.
Fox News asked him about the first one. “I was being provocative with that statement. I get that,” Talarico said. “What I was trying to say is that you can’t use human categories to define God, and that’s not controversial theologically.”
Paxton campaign spokeswoman Madison Cercy didn’t buy the makeover. “James Talarico will say anything to get elected; he will change his positions depending on who’s in the room,” she said.
“Most Texans believe protecting kids isn’t up for negotiation, and it certainly isn’t for sale at a Manhattan fundraiser,” Cercy added.
Republican National Committee spokesman Zach Kraft pointed to the same legislative record, charging that Talarico “voted for taxpayer-funded sex changes for kids of any age and to allow men in women’s sports.”
Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis called any suggestion of a changed position “inaccurate.” “As James has said, he opposes gender reassignment surgery for minors,” Ennis said.
What a Manhattan Guest List Says About a Self-Described Moderate
Notice what Talarico’s promise leaves out.
He says he opposes surgery. But the 2023 Texas law he voted against also covered puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and those drugs sit right there on the HRC Foundation’s chart of “Common Steps.” A surgery-only ban leaves the rest of the pipeline wide open, and the people writing $13,500 checks know it.
That’s how the moderate act works in the Democrat Party. A candidate in a red state borrows conservative-sounding language for the cameras, keeps the voting record the Left paid for, and trusts that nobody reads the invitation list.
Donors who sit on the boards of the country’s biggest LGBTQ lobby don’t throw parties for politicians they expect to vote against them. Maybe that’s unfair to the three hosts, who may simply like the man. But nobody at HRC has publicly complained about his Fox News answer, and that silence is its own tell.
And the Greenwich Village reception wasn’t even his only stop.
One night earlier, the Post reports, Talarico attended another New York fundraiser with a host committee full of donors and allies of far-left Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Actor Robert De Niro headlined it. The event also raised money for Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown.
That committee included jeweler Alexis Bittar, a Mamdani fundraiser who co-hosted an event last month for Michigan Democrat Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
So a Texas candidate who tells Texans he’s a different kind of Democrat spent two straight nights with Hollywood, Mamdani’s money men, and the transgender lobby. Out-of-touch coastal elites don’t usually bankroll people who plan to cross them.
Transgender surgeries for kids are a losing issue in Texas, and Talarico’s Fox News answer shows he understands that perfectly well. The trouble for him is that his own votes, his own words on the House floor, and now his own donor list all point the other direction.
But the pattern runs bigger than one candidate. Democrats who backed cultural leftism for years keep discovering common sense a few weeks before an election, and the conversion never seems to survive the swearing-in.
Cercy predicted as much, warning that “the moment he’s sworn in, he’ll begin pushing his radical trans agenda once again.”
The record in Austin says she has reason to think so.
Sources:
New York Post, “Texas Dem James Talarico takes LGBTQ group’s cash after vowing to ban trans surgeries for kids”
Texas Scorecard, “Talarico’s NYC Fundraising Swing Continues With Transgender Activists”
Fox News, “Talarico says he ‘missed the mark’ as he backtracks on controversial woke statements”
Human Rights Campaign, “Human Rights Campaign PAC Endorses James Talarico for U.S. Senate”