JAMES RUSSELL | Contributing Writer
JamesJourno@gmail.com
The field is set in Texas for the November elections, and the various campaigns bring with them a lot of money and more never-ending debate about the dignity and existence of transgender and nonbinary people.
At the top of the ticket, in the most expensive Senate race in history, Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated Sen. John Cornyn, setting up a match between Paxton and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico of Austin.
Democrats were eager to take on either candidate in the fall, but Paxton was their preferred candidate given his legal and moral flaws. Talarico has proven to be a fundraising juggernaut who easily goes viral for speaking about his faith as a Christian and a Democrat, as well as his easy quotable speeches and aw shucks look.
Republicans have pounced on his past statements, including “God is non-binary,” referencing Talarico’s 2021 statement during a House committee meeting on transgender student athletes — in which he said, “God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary.”
It was something Cornyn and Paxton alike hammered Talarico about, with mixed results (so far). They’ve suggested grooming, too, for unearthed text messages to former students (Talarico was a sixth grade teacher before running for office, which he won in 2018) and his own unethical moves, such as dating his chief of staff.
Talarico’s dialed back some statements and dismissed others.
In an interview with ABC News Live, Talarico said “Ken Paxton is clipping my past cringey comments to distract from his career of corruption that, he later said, were ‘meant to be deliberately provocative,’ and that he believes ‘you can’t use human categories to define God.’
Trans-bashing was a sport during the Republican primary and runoff, with grants to the Legacy Center, an LGBTQ center in Houston, for outreach tied to services accommodating transgender people and quips about drag queens.
Democrats also chose Rep. Vikki Goodwin of Austin and Sen. Nathan Johnson of Dallas as their respective nominees for lieutenant governor and attorney general.
Republicans chose two culture warriors, Sen. Mayes Middleton and Bo French, to be their nominees for Attorney General and Railroad Commissioner.
Middleton seized the gauntlet of anti-transgender legislation during his time in the Senate, authoring bills banning transgender athletes from participating in sports and from using public facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender.
French, a trust fund kid from Westover Hills who narrowly defeated incumbent Commissioner Jim Wright, is zealous in his disdain for LGBTQ people — and Muslims, and diversity and equity and inclusion initiatives and undocumented immigrants and Jewish people and almost anyone else.
French won his primary despite a last-minute push by Republican operatives as well as Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who blasted him as a danger to the oil and gas industry. They now back him in the general election when French faces Rep. Jon Rosenthal, a progressive Houston-area Democrat and oil and gas engineer. Rosenthal’s long been an LGBTQ+ ally. French, in his first hit piece following his election, slammed Rosenthal for supporting the transgender community with a photograph of himself from the 2021 legislative session wearing a mask declaring “SUPPORT TRANS KIDS” and for donating $1,000 to Katy Pride.
Overall the Democratic and Republican tickets couldn’t be more different. Democrats chose a slate of representatives from the bluest county in Texas, with Talarico and Goodwin running with Rep. Gina Hinojosa for governor against Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Sarah Eckhardt for comptroller, who faces former Sen. Don Huffines of Dallas.
Rounding out the slate are Agriculture Commissioner nominee Clayton Tucker of Lampasas against Frisco businessman Nate Sheets, who defeated incumbent Sid Miller, and Bay City Councilman Benjamin Flores, who is running for land commissioner against incumbent Dr. Dawn Buckingham.
All the Democrats are LGBTQ+ allies; the Republicans are not.
Democrats are bullish on their prospects for a few reasons:
One, the party in charge of the White House typically gets their ass kicked in the midterms.
President Trump is currently polling at around 35 percent.
Two, Republicans are losing ground from their 2024 victories in suburbs and along the border.
And three, the inevitable attacks for supporting LGBTQ+ people have backfired since Republicans took control of the White House, according to an analysis by the Human Rights Campaign.
In Virginia last year, where Democrats swept the state’s top offices and took back the House of Delegates, Republican gubernatorial candidate and then-lieutenant governor Winsome Earle-Sears’ campaign and allied groups spent millions of dollars combined on anti-trans TV ads in Virginia. While anti-transgender rhetoric was central to her campaign, Democrat and then-Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger beat her by 15 points.
Texas Democrats haven’t touched on the issue, though attack ads by Republicans and political action committees will hit mailboxes and the airwaves soon. But they think having a politician like Paxton on the ballot will depress Republican turnout so much they announced they are targeting 12 seats in the statehouse.
Should they win them all, Democrats would be just shy of two seats to taking control of the lower chamber. Democrats will have a majority in the Texas House if they succeed in flipping its targeted GOP districts. And the key is through Paxton.
“As the Texas GOP rallies around Ken Paxton and an extreme slate of MAGA candidates up and down the ballot, we are ready to make big gains for Democrats in the Texas Legislature,” Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee President Heather Williams said in a statement to the Texas Tribune. “The DLCC is proud to partner with these target race candidates who are laser-focused on bringing down costs for Texans and gradually changing the face of power in Texas.”
City, school elections
One sign to look at: Democrats backed and campaigned for candidates in suburban school districts and won big in the May municipal elections.
Arlington Mayor Jim Ross, a staunch LGBTQ+ ally, narrowly avoided a runoff in his highly contested race, netting just over 50 percent to avoid a costly runoff with Steve Cavendar, who had the backing of former mayors Jeff Williams and Richard Greene, as well as other big names among the Arlington establishment.
Pearland elected a Democratic-backed candidate for mayor with Quentin Wiltz defeating Republican-backed Councilman Tony Carbone. And former Capitol staffer Jordan Villareal, previously chief of staff to Reps. Mihaela Plesa and Salman Bhojani, was elected to Denton City Council and is its first out gay member.
Some of the school board race elections were so contentious they received national coverage. Grapevine Colleyville ISD has gotten so much coverage it could have its own trade journal.
And once again, board elections made a splash, with challengers Matthew White, Lindsey Sheguit and Darrell Brown, all of whom were backed by Democrats, disaffected independents and Republicans, narrowly defeated A.J. Pontillo, Dianna Sager and Mary Humphrey, who were backed by groups like True Texas Project and Patriot Mobile PAC.
In a Mansfield ISD race, Michele Gooch narrowly defeated longtime school board member Courtney Lackey Wilson, who was aligned with its more conservative faction, by 115 votes.
In Lake Travis in Central Texas, Tiffany Bennett and Natalie Nugent defeated conservative incumbents conservative Robert Aird and Keely Cano.
In North East ISD in Bexar County, two Democrat-backed candidates prevailed. Trustee Diane Sciba Villarreal was defeated by Michael Adam Wulczyn. For an open seat, Democratic Congressional staffer Caprice Garcia trounced Cheryl “Cheri” Ann Ettinger in a landslide. Ettinger was recruited for the race by conservative state Rep. Marc LaHood.
In Harris County’s Spring Branch ISD incumbent Courtney Anderson defeated Moms for Liberty-backed J Steven Smelley and for an open seat, Republican Ted Tredennick, a trial lawyer well known in Republican circles, defeated Moms for Liberty-backed Sally Cone.
Those are the same districts where similar slates ran on campaign platforms with the mantra “Make school boards boring again.”