Texas State Rep. James Talarico, Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat, did not walk back his past woke statements that God is “nonbinary” and that there are “six” sexes, but said he expressed regret for phrasing his comments the way he did.
“I think what I’ve regretted is kind of how I phrased certain things because it obscured the point I was trying to make,” Talarico told The New York Times. “I’ve said a lot of things in the State Legislature over the course of four terms. I’ve been in marathon hearings that lasted 24 hours. So there’s a lot that’s said, and I certainly regret not articulating my position more clearly, in a more straightforward way, to say what I actually mean. I’m not a perfect person.”
Talarico addressed the prior comments in an interview with the outlet on Tuesday, saying he initially took those positions because he “had to fight back” against Republican culture war talking points in the state Legislature. He pinned his past comments as a response to Republican “extremism,” saying he would have rather been talking about “public education” and “healthcare.”
“It’s kind of ironic that they’re clipping these things to make it sound like I’m the one who was talking about this when in reality it was the Republican extremists at the Capitol who were obsessed with talking about trans issues, obsessed with talking about people’s private parts,” Talarico said. “That wasn’t me — that was them that changed.”
Talarico’s Republican opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, has grilled Talarico over his past comments in the state Legislature. Paxton’s campaign has clipped Talarico’s words into advertisements, hammering the Democrat as “too low-T for Texas.”
“I love – I’m just saying this because it’s on my mind – the trans children,” Talarico said in a clipped video included in one of Paxton’s ads. In the full video, not included in the advertisement, Talarico had said, “the trans children who showed up yesterday at the state Capitol to advocate for their humanity.”
Paxton has called Talarico’s comments “antithetical to historical Christian views” and “adopted from liberal theology,” per The Texas Tribune.
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Paxton and Talarico are locked in a toss-up race to replace Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who fell to Paxton in the primary.
Talarico currently leads in the polls by an average margin of 2.2 percentage points, according to RealClearPolitics’s average.