Earning the Enthusiasm: James Talarico  pushes for Black voters

With just 15 weeks before Election Day, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico is facing perhaps his biggest political challenge: convincing skeptical Black voters that Democrats have learned from years of taking them for granted.

For Talarico, the path to victory in Texas runs through an electorate that has long served as the Democratic Party’s most reliable voting bloc while increasingly questioning whether that loyalty has been reciprocated.

No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994. To defeat Republican nominee Ken Paxton in November, Talarico will need overwhelming support from Black Texans, while energizing voters who have grown frustrated with both parties and disillusioned by a political system they believe too often overlooks their concerns.

Rather than relying on last-minute church visits and campaign stops just before early voting, Talarico has spent months making appearances at historically Black colleges and universities, churches, community organizations, and Black-owned media across Texas. His message is simple: Support should never be assumed. It must be earned.

“I don’t want anyone to vote for me because there’s a ‘D’ by my name,” Talarico said in a Defender interview. “I want folks to vote for me because of my record fighting for working people and fighting for Black Texans.”

The trust gap

The strategy comes after a Democratic primary that exposed lingering divisions within the party.

Polling throughout the primary showed Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett with commanding support among Black voters. She carried the 10 Texas counties with the highest percentages of Black residents by an average of 24%, including Jefferson County, where she defeated Talarico by nearly 60 points. For many Democrats, the race became about more than policy. It reopened long-standing frustrations that the party establishment had once again rallied behind a young white candidate over a rising Black woman with statewide appeal.

Talarico does not shy away from those concerns.

“The Democratic Party has a troubling history of taking Black voters for granted,” he said. “We’ve seen the results of that in recent elections, where Black Texans, young Black Texans in particular, have started to move away from the Democratic Party. 

“The fastest way to lose an election is to take people for granted. We cannot just assume Black voters are going to show up and vote for the Democrat if the Democrat doesn’t actively compete for their votes, earn their trust, earn their respect, and speak to their needs.”

Whether those words resonate enough to unite the party remains one of the defining questions of the general election.

Following the primary, Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis, one of Houston’s most influential Black political leaders and an outspoken Crockett supporter, urged Democrats to move forward.

“That was then, this is now,” Ellis told supporters. “There’s too much at stake to be petty.”

Earning Black voters, not expecting them

Still, unity has not come automatically.

Although Crockett publicly endorsed the Democratic ticket after the primary, she has yet to campaign alongside Talarico. Through spokesperson Karrol Rimal, her campaign signaled that Democrats cannot rely on conventional outreach, noting that the party’s statewide ticket is dominated by Austin-based candidates who must prove they can connect with communities across Texas.

“They’ll have to do a lot of work outside of Central Texas and resonate with constituencies across our state,” the statement said.

Talarico insists that work is already underway.

“As the candidate at the top of the ticket, it’s on me to earn the trust and support of Black voters that have been taken for granted for far too long,” he said.

His campaign points to months of sustained outreach as evidence.

Since last fall, Talarico has visited Black churches, participated in community roundtables, attended leadership brunches, spoken with students at Prairie View A&M University, delivered the commencement address at Paul Quinn College, met with Juneteenth icon Dr. Opal Lee, and worked alongside local organizers in historically underserved communities, including Sand Branch in Dallas County.

Instead of concentrating campaign resources during election season, Talarico says those visits reflect a philosophy of showing up long before votes are cast.

Early polling suggests the strategy may be gaining traction. The Texas Politics Project found Talarico receiving approximately 67% support among Black voters early in the general election campaign, giving Democrats optimism while underscoring that significant work remains to increase enthusiasm and turnout.

Running on his record

Talarico argues that his appeal extends beyond campaign promises to his legislative record.

A former middle school English teacher on San Antonio’s West Side, he frequently points to the issues he has championed in the Texas House as evidence of his commitment to communities of color.

Among those accomplishments is legislation capping insulin copays at $25 per prescription in Texas, a measure informed by his own experience living with Type 1 diabetes.

He also joined fellow Democrats in breaking quorum to oppose Republican-backed voting legislation and became one of the Legislature’s most outspoken critics of private school vouchers, arguing that voucher systems have historical ties to efforts to circumvent school integration following Brown v. Board of Education.

Perhaps the issue he discusses most passionately is Javier Ambler’s Law.

Ambler, an unarmed Black man, died during a Williamson County Sheriff’s Office pursuit while deputies were being filmed for the television show Live PD. Talarico worked alongside Ambler’s family to pass legislation prohibiting law enforcement agencies from participating in reality television productions.

“When an unarmed Black man, Javier Ambler, was killed in my community, I worked with his family, particularly his sister Kimberly, to pass Javier Ambler’s Law,” Talarico said. “Those reality TV policing programs increase the number of violent interactions between law enforcement and their constituents, particularly their Black constituents. We passed that bill, and that will save lives in the years and decades to come.”

Policy priorities for Black Texans

Looking toward Washington, Talarico says one of his highest priorities would be addressing the nation’s maternal health crisis, particularly the disproportionate mortality rates experienced by Black women.

“Harris County is the deadliest place for a Black woman to give birth in the entire country,” he said. “That is shameful. That is unacceptable.”

Working alongside state Rep. Toni Rose, Talarico says he wants to pursue federal investments and protections aimed at reducing maternal deaths and expanding access to reproductive and maternal health care.

Representation within his own campaign, he argues, is also part of that commitment.

Rather than bringing Black advisers into the campaign late in the process, Talarico says Black staff members occupy senior leadership positions with decision-making authority.

“These are the folks who are actually making decisions about where we invest money, where we spend time, what policies and issues we’re talking about,” he said. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do in the U.S. Senate.”

The campaign also says it is preparing for what it believes will be an aggressive legal fight over voting access this fall.

Calling recent voting restrictions “the largest and most aggressive attack on Black political power since Jim Crow,” Talarico says his campaign has assembled a statewide network of volunteer attorneys prepared to respond quickly to reports of voter intimidation, ballot access issues, and election-related litigation.

The road to November

Ultimately, however, Talarico acknowledges that policies and campaign infrastructure alone will not determine the outcome in November.

The greatest obstacle may be convincing voters who have simply stopped believing that politics can improve their lives.

Asked what he would say to someone who has become so disillusioned that they are considering staying home on Election Day, Talarico returned to the importance of participation.

“They wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop you from voting if your vote wasn’t powerful,” he said. “The only way to transform this broken, corrupt political system is for all of us to take that power back from the people at the top who stole it from us. We are extending an open hand to Texans and inviting them to join this movement. If we do that, I feel it in my bones that we can win this race and transform the politics of this state.”

Whether that message is enough to rebuild trust among skeptical Black voters may ultimately determine not only Talarico’s political future, but whether Texas Democrats can finally end a statewide drought that has lasted more than three decades.