Background and career
James Dell Talarico ( TAL-ə-REE-koh, born May 17, 1989) is an American politician, Presbyterian seminary student, and educator serving since 2018 as a member of the Texas House of Representatives. He is the Democratic nominee in the 2026 U.S. Senate election in Texas. Before entering politics, Talarico was a middle school English teacher and an executive director for an education nonprofit. He is serving his fourth term in the Texas House of Representatives, having first been elected in 2018. While serving in the Texas House, Talarico started to pursue a Master of Divinity at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Talarico is described as a populist influenced by progressive Christianity. In 2025, he announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate election in 2026. He defeated U.S. representative Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary and faces the Republican nominee, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, in the general election.
James Talarico was born in Round Rock, Texas, on May 17, 1989, to Tamara Causey, who separated from his biological father when he was seven weeks old. A few months later Tamara married Mark Talarico, who adopted James and gave him his surname. Talarico attended Round Rock Independent School District schools and graduated from McNeil High School in Williamson County, Texas, where he competed in speech and debate. He also acted in the school's drama productions, including playing Danny Zuko in Grease. Talarico's maternal grandfather, Jimmy Causey, was a Baptist preacher at several churches in South Texas. Before earning his Bachelor of Arts degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin in 2011, he organized students for tuition relief. Talarico later earned a Master of Education degree in education policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2016 and went on to receive a Master of Arts in theological studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary from 2025. He is currently studying for a Master of Divinity there as well.
In 2011, Talarico joined Teach For America and taught sixth-grade English language arts at Rhodes Middle School on the west side of San Antonio. Talarico has said his experience teaching at-risk and low-income students shaped his understanding of Texas's socioeconomic disparities and his advocacy for increased school funding and student well-being. He described his class sizes as crowded, with one having 45 students, though records from the Texas Education Agency showed his largest class size being 30, with most between 22 and 27. After two years of teaching, he became Central Texas executive director for Reasoning Mind, a nonprofit that implements computer-based math lessons in classrooms.
Talarico was first elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 2018 at age 29, becoming the legislature's youngest member during the 2019 session. During his four terms in the Republican-majority legislature, Talarico served as lead author of nearly 200 bills, 16 of which became law. Eight of the enacted bills addressed education, childcare, or youth workforce development.
Talarico launched his campaign for the Texas House shortly after incumbent state legislator Larry Gonzales chose not to run for reelection. He won the concurrent special and general elections against Republican nominee Cynthia Flores, garnering media attention for walking the full length of the district. He was sworn into the Texas House of Representatives on November 20, 2018, and appointed to the Public Education and Juvenile Justice Committees. In the 86th Texas Legislature, Talarico filed the Whole Student Agenda, a 24-bill public education policy legislative package. The legislature passed two bills from this list. The first, HB 3012, required that students suspended from school have an alternative means to receive coursework. HB 455, also sponsored by Talarico, was written to provide a standardized school recess policy. Governor Greg Abbott vetoed the bill. Talarico was a coauthor of House Bill 3, the school-finance legislation enacted in 2019. The law increased pre-student funding, provided funding for teacher pay increases, and funded full-day prekindergarten for eligible four-year-olds.
Talarico defeated former Hutto city council member Lucio Valdez with 51.5% of the vote. In the 87th Texas Legislature, he was reappointed to the Public Education and Juvenile Justice Committees and appointed to the Calendars Committee. During the 87th legislative session, Talarico filed HB 54, also known as Javier Ambler's Law, and the legislature passed it. It prohibits state law enforcement agencies, except game wardens, from entering into contracts with reality TV shows that film them in the line of duty. This was in response to the role Live PD is alleged to have played in the killing of Javier Ambler by Williamson County, Texas, police. Talarico had previously criticized Sheriff Robert Chody's handling of the incident, calling for his resignation. Talarico was the primary author of HB 30, which provides a path for minors in the criminal justice system who have been adjudicated as adults or who are eligible under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to earn a high school diploma instead of pursuing a high school equivalency. Talarico introduced House Bill 41 to establish class-size limits for public school prekindergarten programs. Similar legislation, Senate Bill 2081, became law in 2021, establishing a maximum of 22 students in covered prekindergarten classes, subject to exceptions and waivers. In 2018, Talarico was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes during a five-day stint in the ICU after a campaign event where he walked 25 miles (40 km) across his district. After his diagnosis, he paid $684 for his first 30-day supply of insulin. Talarico was the House joint sponsor helping to pass House Bill 82, capping insulin costs at $25 per month. In 2021, Talarico was a joint author of House Bill 82 and one of the House sponsors of its Senate companion, Senate Bill 827. SB 827 became law, capping out-of-pocket copays for a 30-day supply of insulin at $25 for people covered by state-regulated health plans. In the summer of 2021, Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives, including Talarico, organized a quorum break in an attempt to stop the passage of the Election Integrity Protection Act of 2021. They flew to Washington, D.C., to lobby the Senate to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act, which would have superseded parts of the state legislation. Talarico was one of the first Democrats to return to Texas as the quorum break progressed, arguing that the effort had achieved its goals, that Democrats needed to reduce the harm of Republican legislation, and that an indefinite quorum break was unsustainable. Some representatives who remained in D.C. strongly criticized him for this. Quorum was eventually reestablished and the legislation passed. At the end of the legislative session, Texas Monthly magazine named Talarico one of the Top 10 Best Legislators.
