Talarico talks fighting mega donors, priorities in Senate bid

State Rep. James Talarico says his campaign for the U.S. Senate is about taking on “billionaire mega donors” and lowering costs for working Texans. The four-term Democrat, a former public school teacher, is positioning himself as a grassroots progressive who can also strike bipartisan deals.

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Before politics, Talarico taught sixth-grade language arts at Rhodes Middle School on San Antonio’s West Side, one of the poorest ZIP codes in Texas. He said watching students struggle against poverty and policy failures convinced him to run for office.

“Every day, my students struggled heroically to overcome poverty and systems designed to hold them back,” he said. “As their teacher, I saw firsthand how decisions made at the state Capitol and in Washington hurt students like mine, families like mine, and neighborhoods like the one where I taught.”

Now in his eighth year in the Texas House, Talarico points to a record of bipartisan achievements. He authored legislation capping insulin copays at $25, pushed to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada, and passed measures lowering child care and housing costs.

“I remember being 28 and paying $684 for my first month of insulin,” he said. “That’s why I wrote the bill to cap insulin at $25. I wanted to make life a little less stressful for my neighbors.”

He added that none of these accomplishments would have been possible without working across party lines.

“I’ve passed more bills with my Republican colleagues than any other Democrat in the state House,” Talarico said. “The only way I’ve been able to fight back and win is by finding common ground — and we need a senator who can do both.”

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Talarico formally announced his candidacy in September 2025, entering as a sitting Texas state representative serving his fourth term in House District 50.

Since his Sept. 9 launch, Talarico has posted a record-breaking fundraising haul, raising more than $6.2 million in just three weeks — the largest first-quarter total of any Senate candidate in Texas history. His campaign said the money came from over 125,000 individual contributors across more than 230 counties in Texas and all 50 states. Of those donations, 98% were $100 or less, and the most common profession among his donors was teaching.

“We’re underdogs in this fight against billionaire mega-donors and their puppet politicians,” Talarico said. “But more than one hundred thousand people have answered the call to build a new kind of politics. We shattered our goal thanks to teachers, nurses, firefighters, farmers, veterans, and other working Texans — and we did it without taking a dime of corporate PAC money.”

Talarico has used the donations to barnstorm the state, visiting 12 cities in his first weeks on the trail — from blue strongholds like Austin, Houston and Dallas to red areas like Longview and Victoria, battleground counties like Fort Bend and Nueces, and Rio Grande Valley cities including Brownsville, McAllen and Raymondville.

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