Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico now says he supports a national ban on gender surgery for minors and opposes transgender athletes in girls' sports, positions that flatly contradict his own voting record in the Texas Legislature.
Talarico, a former state lawmaker and public school teacher, sat down for an exclusive interview with Fox News at a food drive campaign event in Dallas on September 9, 2026, just miles from the first-ever GOP midterm convention in downtown Dallas. With the November 3 general election approaching and Fox News polling showing a surprisingly close race against Republican Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, Talarico offered a string of reversals on the cultural issues that have defined his legislative career.
"I've missed the mark on some of my past statements. I will be the first to admit it," Talarico told Fox News. The concession came as the candidate attempted to reframe himself as a kitchen-table moderate focused on grocery prices, gas, and healthcare, not the culture-war progressive his record suggests.
Start with gender surgery for minors. Talarico told Fox News he would "absolutely" vote for a national ban. But in 2023, he voted against SB 14, the Texas law that prohibited certain gender surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormone treatments for minors. Democrats proposed 18 amendments to that bill. Talarico voted for all 18. All 18 failed.
His explanation: the Texas bill "was overly broad," and he tried to narrow it through an amendment that would have limited the ban to surgeries alone.
"As a lawmaker, my job is to try to sift through everything the bill does. And sometimes there's stuff in it that's really harmful, and I have no choice but to oppose the bill as a whole."
That framing asks voters to believe Talarico opposed the bill on procedural grounds, not because he disagreed with protecting minors from irreversible medical interventions. His own words from 2023 tell a different story. The Washington Free Beacon reported that Talarico previously called gender transition procedures for minors "life-saving health care." Now he wants to ban them nationally.
On transgender athletes in women's sports, the reversal is just as sharp. In 2021, while serving on the Texas House Public Education Committee, Talarico opposed SB 29, a bill requiring public school athletes to compete based on the biological sex listed on their birth certificate. He called the issue a "manufactured problem." He then voted against HB 25, which enacted similar protections into law.
Now he says the opposite. "I oppose trans athletes playing in girls' sports if it endangers safety or fairness," Talarico told Fox News. "Every sport has to be safe and fair." The Washington Examiner noted the reversal was widely seen as a strategic pivot to appeal to voters in a heavily Republican state.
Perhaps the most memorable Talarico moment came in 2021, when he declared on the Texas House floor, while opposing a bill to keep men out of women's sports, that "God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is non-binary."
At the Dallas food drive, he tried to shrink that statement down to a minor theological observation.
"I was being provocative with that statement. I get that. What I was trying to say is that you can't use human categories to define God, and that's not controversial theologically. In fact, the late Charlie Kirk, the late Pope Benedict all said the same thing."
Talarico then pivoted to his opponent, calling the clips of his past statements a distraction from what he described as Ken Paxton's "career of corruption." He alleged that two of Paxton's "billionaire megadonors gave the lieutenant governor a $3 million check to buy his acquittal" in the Texas state Senate. Fox News Digital reached out to the Paxton campaign for a response; no reply was reported.
Democrats have pursued similar institutional arguments at the federal level. Some in the party have pushed to pack the Supreme Court and abolish the filibuster, framing those moves as anti-corruption measures rather than power grabs.
Talarico also addressed a prior claim, referenced but not fully detailed in available reporting, that there are six sexes. His walkback was blunt: "Obviously didn't say it correctly. There are not six sexes. There are two."
He added that "there's a small percentage of people with genetic abnormalities," then tried to redirect. "I think the reason that politicians in that convention center across the street want to talk about six sexes is because they don't want to talk about $6 diesel."
The affordability message is the thread Talarico wants to stitch through every answer. He told Fox News that "everywhere I go across the state of Texas, people are struggling to survive in this economy" and pledged to focus on groceries, gas, utilities, and healthcare through Election Day. He also said Texas "should not have a state income tax", though in 2019, he voted against a measure to permanently ban one, calling it "redundant" and "government waste at its worst." Texas voters approved the ban that November anyway.
The pattern is consistent: Talarico cast the progressive vote when it counted, and now offers the moderate sound bite when the election demands it. Voters who care about election integrity and legislative follow-through will notice the gap.
The Fox News interview is not the only front where Talarico has reinvented himself. After winning the Democratic primary over Black congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, despite losing the Black vote heavily, Talarico has since endorsed reparations for slavery, a position he pointedly refused to take during the primary. Crockett called the primary race "racist."
Talarico framed his new reparations stance in religious terms: "Repairing past harms is part of my faith tradition. It's part of the values I was raised with." The timing, coming only after he no longer needed to compete against a Black opponent for Democratic votes, raises obvious questions about sincerity.
On the Supreme Court, Talarico went further than most Senate candidates. He described the court as "infected" with corruption and said it "needs to be overhauled." His wish list includes binding codes of conduct for justices, term limits, and an openness to expanding the number of justices, the same court-packing proposal that has alarmed conservatives and prompted strong pushback from the right.
"You're going to expect that I will vote for overhaul to the Supreme Court. That will include binding codes of conduct for our justices. It'll include term limits, and I am open to a discussion about expanding the number of justices."
That position, expanding the Supreme Court, is not a moderate stance in any state, let alone Texas. It sits comfortably in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, alongside the very cultural positions Talarico now claims to have outgrown.
Talarico's challenge is simple: his voting record exists. He voted against banning gender surgery for minors. He voted against requiring athletes to compete based on biological sex. He voted against permanently banning a state income tax. He declared God nonbinary on the House floor. He refused to endorse reparations when a Black woman was his opponent, then endorsed them after she lost.
Now, with a Republican electorate watching and a November election approaching, every one of those positions has flipped. Talarico says he "missed the mark." His critics, and his own legislative record, suggest he hit it exactly where he was aiming at the time.
Democrats who have faced public correction for misleading claims know how quickly the record catches up. Just ask Senator Schiff, who learned that lesson the hard way.
Texas voters deserve a senator who holds the same positions on Tuesday that he held on Monday, not one who reinvents himself every time the map changes color.