The Democrat who calls Trump a child of God

James Talarico wants his party to fight for the Christian vote in Texas

PLANO, A SUBURB of Dallas, is not friendly territory for Democrats. But when James Talarico, a state representative, headlined a “Blue Texas” rally there last month more than 1,000 people showed up. After the two-storey bar rented for the event filled with people, they moved to a second one across the street where he delivered the same speech to a new crowd. The locals who came were not the “little old blue hairs”, as Mr Talarico lovingly calls the Democrats’ most-loyal demographic. “It was a bunch of bros, like guys named Landon,” he recalls. “I was like you are welcome Landon, come join.”

James Talarico (AP)

Many of the Landons said this was the first political event they had been to. Mr Talarico flipped a Republican seat north of Austin seven years ago—becoming Texas’s youngest state lawmaker—by convincing people like them that their bosses, landlords and insurance companies would “continue to use the political system to screw them over” until they decided to care about politics. He is not your ordinary Democrat. Not only does he drive a Chevy Colorado truck and own Lucchese cowboy boots engraved with the Texas state seal, but he invokes so many Bible teachings in conversation that you may get Sunday school flashbacks. The turnout that night was the result of something more idiosyncratic: an endorsement he got four days earlier from Joe Rogan, America’s top podcaster, for a position he isn’t running for.

In the middle of a conversation about how corrupt Washington politics are Mr Rogan told Mr Talarico to run for president. “We need someone who’s actually a good person because the Democrats have very few candidates that are,” he said. The moment catapulted him into parts of the internet where only Republicans go. National Democrats began murmuring what those from Texas have been saying for months. Could a liberal 36-year-old from America’s biggest red state give the party a desperately needed shot of adrenalin?

Mr Talarico is mulling a run for Senate in 2026. Texas Democrats notoriously dupe themselves into believing that winning statewide is just within reach every cycle. Cue the déjà vu, but next year they reckon they stand a better chance. Ken Paxton, Texas’s red-meat attorney general, is challenging incumbent John Cornyn in the Republican primary. He is far ahead in most polls. Mr Paxton’s nomination would give a Democrat who can sway moderates an opening. When asked how he is different from Beto O’Rourke, an El Paso Democrat who lost two big Texas races, Mr Talarico points to his “shared moral vocabulary” with conservatives. Working with Republican politicians became easier when he joined them for regular Bible study at the capitol.

The Democrat, who is in seminary training to be a pastor, wants to be the country’s loudest Christian voice against Christian nationalism. He believes that Jesus scrapped the Jewish legal system in favour of two sweeping values: love God and love your neighbour. That allows for gay people in church, demands health care for the poor and discourages hoarding wealth in a way that morphs into a Bernie-like disdain for political megadonors. It also requires loving the enemy. “Donald Trump is a child of God,” he says. This year he fought bills to put the ten commandments in all Texas classrooms and fund religious private schools with state money. Secularism, he reckons, is hurting America but so is the cult of Republican Evangelicalism. In a sermon to his hometown church he quoted his pastor on why beer is better than religion: “nobody has ever been burned at the stake because of their favourite brand of beer” and “there are laws against forcing beer on minors who can’t think for themselves”.

Could someone like him pull the devout into the Democratic fold? Although Mr Trump ignited new fervour among Evangelicals, their allegiance to Republicans goes back decades. Mr Talarico reckons they are still movable. During the last presidential race he worked with a group called Evangelicals for Harris. The Pennsylvania counties that they targeted, which were the state’s most Evangelical and not swing districts, saw less of a rightward jolt than neighbouring ones. Republicans know this playbook well. “The Republican Party has contested the Latino vote and the African-American vote,” he says. “They don’t win a majority of those people but they win enough to win elections.”

In August Mr Talarico and four dozen Texas Democrats fled the state to protest against a Republican effort to redraw congressional maps to their advantage. Sitting in a coffee shop in the suburbs of Chicago while in exile he relishes being surrounded by Democrats rather than being on a “political island”. Fundamentally, though, he is always in a lover’s quarrel with his own party. The Presbyterian church he was raised in north of Austin was critical of the Iraq war, but also of Barack Obama’s drone strikes and mass deportations. Now his frustration stems from inaction. Democrats in the Trump era, he says, are like the coach in “Air Bud”, a Disney movie, who waves the rule book around saying that dogs can’t play basketball as the dog repeatedly dunks in front of him.

Although they may have different policy ideas, Mr Talarico is inspired by the energy of Zohran Mamdani, the progressive mayoral candidate in New York City. Both millennials walked the length of their district to meet constituents and blew up on TikTok. Working in the Texas legislature has taught Mr Talarico that there is no hope for kumbaya and no point in complaining to the referee. Texas, he says, is America on steroids: the good is better, the bad is worse and the politics are scrappier. He reckons the country’s Democrats “need more cowboy”.