Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico is openly campaigning on raising taxes — even as polls show his support stalling and fellow Democrats doubt he can energize minority voters.
Talarico made the pitch explicit in a recent appearance, directly telling wealthy supporters what his agenda means for their wallets.
“I’ve told every wealthy person I’ve come across in this race: If you are ok with getting taxed more, if you’re ok with me limiting your influence in politics, you are welcome to join this movement that we are building.”
He thanked billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban for backing the effort.
Talarico’s campaign platform promises to create a “fairer” tax system by making “giant corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes.” His website claims he wants to cut taxes for working families and small businesses — a promise leftists routinely make but rarely deliver.
The plan includes imposing higher taxes on billionaires’ income and capital gains and closing what he calls the “buy, borrow, die” loopholes used to grow untaxed wealth.
Talarico also wants to raise the corporate tax rate and opposes what he describes as “attacks against SNAP and WIC” — programs the Trump administration is working to clean up by rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse.
But here’s the catch.
While Talarico claims he’s only targeting the wealthy, he actively opposed the “big, beautiful” bill that kept tax cuts in place for middle-class Americans and added benefits like no tax on tips or overtime. If that legislation hadn’t passed, tax brackets would have returned to pre-2018 levels — hitting working families hard.
Talarico dismissed the legislation, claiming, “In that big ugly bill, they gutted our health care, they defunded schools, and they did all that to cut taxes for their donors. So, when you’re doing the people’s business instead of your donors’ business, you fight for things like I’ve fought for at the state capitol.”
Talarico has been positioning his Senate run as a spiritual calling. He recently said he chose to run for the U.S. Senate instead of completing his ordination, describing his campaign as another form of ministry.
“And when we’re out here and we’re giving hope to people who have been starved of hope, when we bring people together who normally wouldn’t be together, it does feel like we’re doing some kind of ministry,” Talarico said.
His spiritual rhetoric comes with controversy. Talarico has referred to God as nonbinary without offering context or acknowledging that God uses masculine pronouns to reveal Himself. When he delivered the invocation on the floor of the Texas House of Representatives, he closed the prayer not in the name of Jesus but in “all your many names” — not referencing Biblical names for God like Yahweh Nissi (The Lord is My Banner) or Yahweh Shalom (The Lord is peace) but pagan entities or names observed in religions such as Hinduism and Islam.
WATCH:
Talarico faces an uphill climb. Polls indicate his support has topped out, and some Democrats openly question whether he has the appeal to excite minority communities — a critical voting bloc in a state Democrats have long dreamed of flipping.
His tax-hike platform may play well with billionaire donors like Mark Cuban, but it’s a tougher sell for the working Texans he claims to champion.
Texas Democrat James Talarico promises to raise taxes on hardworking Americans:
“If you are okay with getting taxed more, if you’re okay with me limiting your influence in politics, you are welcome to join this movement…” pic.twitter.com/Xj1PzgtcCh
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 29, 2026
