Texas

Voters Pick James Talarico To Mess with Texas—and the U.S. Senate

The Lone Star State’s Senate delegation turns half blue.

J.D. Tuccille | 11.3.2026 11:48 PM

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The outcome of the Texas U.S. Senate race was always going to be disturbing given the low quality of the two leading candidates. It's not that there was no good option in the race; Ted Brown is a staunch supporter of free markets, civil liberties, small government, and a humane immigration policy. But Brown ran as a Libertarian in a country that treats a decrepit two-party system as an immutable natural feature. Even if given a choice between Hitler and Mao as major-party candidates and saints running on third-party or independent tickets, voters will almost always confine their votes to one or the other incarnation of evil. That electoral history pretty much guaranteed that the winner would be either Republican Ken Paxton or Democrat James Talarico.

Sure enough, Talarico walked away as the winner.

You are reading The Rattler from J.D. Tuccille and Reason. Get more of J.D.'s commentary on government overreach and threats to everyday liberty.

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Bad Candidates With Ideas and Behavior To Match

For sure, Paxton and Talarico aren't Hitler and Mao. They're garden variety terrible politicians who believe in bad things and behave even more questionably.

In 2020, as a state lawmaker, Talarico described the free-market capitalism that made the world prosperous as an "oppressive........

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