The Texas Democratic Party used its state convention Friday to close ranks around U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico, and the defense they mounted said more about the party's priorities than any platform plank could.
Bay City Councilman Ben Flores, the Democratic nominee for Texas Land Commissioner, took the stage and leaned straight into the attacks that have dogged Talarico since he won the March 3 primary. Rather than rebut the criticisms, Flores embraced them, every last one, as a badge of collective honor.
The moment, captured on video and shared by Fox News on X, distilled where the Texas Democratic Party now stands heading into its bid for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican John Cornyn. The party's answer to scrutiny of its nominee's record on child sex-change legislation, theological provocations, and cultural positioning was not to distance itself. It was to double down.
Flores did not equivocate. He addressed the convention crowd directly, turning critics' characterizations of Talarico into a rallying cry:
"They say that James is trans, we're all trans. When they say James is a gay, tofu-eating vegan, we're all gay, tofu-eating vegans!"
He wasn't finished.
"And when they say James is going to hell, we'll say we're all going to hell!"
Set aside the theatrics. What Flores did was tell a convention hall full of Texas Democrats that the proper response to voters' concerns about their nominee is not engagement, not explanation, not even deflection. It is performative solidarity, a group hug dressed up as defiance.
That may play inside a convention hall. Whether it plays across a state where Republicans dominate statewide offices is another question entirely.
The attacks Flores was answering did not materialize from nowhere. They trace back to Talarico's own words and votes in the Texas state legislature.
In 2021, Talarico fiercely opposed legislation to restrict child sex-change operations. He voted against the measure. During floor debate, he delivered remarks that drew national attention, not for their policy substance, but for a theological claim aimed squarely at Republican colleagues who cited scripture in support of the bill.
Talarico told the chamber he had listened to fifteen hours of committee testimony. Then he pivoted to Genesis:
"The first two lines of the Bible, the first two lines of Genesis, use two different Hebrew words to describe God. One is the masculine Hebrew noun for divinity, the second is the feminine Hebrew noun for spirit. God is both masculine and feminine and everything in between. God is nonbinary."
A former public school teacher who is now described as a Presbyterian seminarian, Talarico used the floor of the Texas House to tell colleagues that Christians who supported protecting children from irreversible medical procedures were "hurting children" and using scripture to justify it. He accused a fellow member of trying "to justify a hateful amendment in the name of God's law."
Talarico has since admitted he was being "provocative" with the "God is nonbinary" remarks. The timing and format of that admission are unclear. But the legislative vote stands. And in 2022, he went further, claiming that child sex-change procedures were not child abuse, while arguing that Republican policies were.
Not every line of attack on Talarico carries the same weight. The "tofu-eating vegan" label became a minor sideshow after Talarico visited a taco stand with former President Barack Obama in May 2026. His potato, egg, and cheese taco order drew scrutiny from critics who seized on it as evidence of veganism.
Talarico denied being vegan. A spokesperson posted a photo on X showing the candidate eating a turkey leg, apparently intended as definitive proof. Whether Talarico has addressed the other characterizations Flores embraced on his behalf, transgender, gay, is not clear from available remarks.
The turkey-leg defense is harmless enough. But it sits oddly next to Flores's convention strategy of embracing every label simultaneously, regardless of accuracy. If Talarico isn't vegan, and his allies know it, what does it mean when they declare "we're all gay, tofu-eating vegans" from the podium? It means the labels are not the point. The posture is.
Talarico secured the Democratic nomination by defeating Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the March 3 primary. That result alone signaled something about the direction of the Texas Democratic electorate. Crockett, a sitting congresswoman, lost to a state legislator whose most prominent public moments involved declaring God nonbinary and opposing restrictions on child sex-change operations.
The general election will be a contest for John Cornyn's open seat. Cornyn, a Republican, is vacating the position. The specific reason for the vacancy, retirement, a bid for another office, or something else, has not been detailed. But the stakes are clear. Texas has not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1993.
Talarico's path to victory in a general election would require him to win over voters well beyond the convention hall, voters in suburbs, exurbs, and rural counties who may not share Flores's enthusiasm for declaring collective damnation as a campaign strategy.
Party conventions exist to energize the base. Nobody expects a nominating convention to look like a general-election pitch. But what happened Friday in Texas was not just base-energizing rhetoric. It was a deliberate decision to adopt the most culturally charged criticisms of the nominee and wear them as armor.
That works when the criticism is unfair or trivial. It works less well when the criticism is rooted in a candidate's actual legislative record, votes cast, floor speeches delivered, policy positions taken on social media.
Talarico voted against restricting child sex-change operations. He declared God nonbinary from the floor of the Texas House. He argued that the procedures critics called child abuse were not, in fact, child abuse. These are not opposition-research inventions. They are things Talarico said and did in his capacity as a state legislator, recorded in the Texas House Journal and on his own social media accounts.
Flores's response was to make the entire Texas Democratic Party co-owners of those positions. "We're all going to hell," he told the crowd. The crowd cheered.
For conservative Texans and persuadable moderates, the convention offered a clear signal. The Democratic Party's Senate nominee is not running from his record on child sex-change legislation or his theological provocations. His party is not asking him to. His allies are not softening the edges. They are sharpening them.
Whether that is courage or recklessness depends on your vantage point. From inside the convention, it looked like unity. From the perspective of a general electorate in a state Donald Trump carried comfortably, it looked like a party talking to itself.
The Obama taco-stand visit in May suggests national Democrats see Texas as competitive enough to invest a former president's time. But star power and convention energy are not the same thing as a persuasive case to voters who care about parental rights, religious conviction, and the protection of children from irreversible medical decisions.
Talarico will have months to make that case, or to avoid making it. His party just told him, loudly, that avoidance is off the table.
When your own allies declare from the podium that you're all going to hell, the voters may just take them at their word.
