State Rep. James Talarico kicked off his US Senate campaign in Round Rock on Sept. 9. (Photo by Matt Hennie)
State Rep. James Talarico, a 36-year-old Democrat and former teacher, is running for US Senate in Texas.
During US Senate candidate James Talarico’s recent campaign stop in Dallas, former state Rep. Carl Sherman had a message for attendees: We need more teachers in public service.
Sherman, along with state Rep. Aicha Davis (D-Dallas) and State Board of Education member Tiffany Clark (D-DeSoto), endorsed Talarico. They emphasized his support for public education in Texas throughout the event on Thursday.
“ I have spent the past 15 years serving our students as a teacher, counselor, a school board trustee, and now your representative at the State Board of Education,” Clark said. “Right now, public education is under attack. We need someone who is going to fight for working families and take on the billionaire mega donors who have sold out our kids and their families for their own interest.”
“ James has been on the front line for all of us. He pushed for teacher pay raises and stood firm when others tried to take money out of our public schools to fund vouchers. He has fought to make sure our youngest learners and their mental health are cared for. This is what it looks like when we put our students and our families first,” Clark added.
The Round Rock native is an outspoken advocate for public school funding in the legislature, and fought bills this year that brought more censorship and religion into public school classrooms.
Talarico was also the face of opposition to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s private school voucher program that became law this year.
“ When I think about the public school voucher scam, that scam that they ran for two sessions in Texas, (Talarico) was instrumental in making sure it didn’t pass in 2023 and in 2025, he studied it morning, afternoon, evening,” said Davis, who is also a former educator. “He talked to educators and he figured out a way to gut that bill, and he found enough people to support him because he knew he was put in public education first.”
Davis criticized US Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, along with Attorney General Ken Paxton, who like Talarico is running for Cornyn’s seat, for working more closely with President Donald Trump than with Texans. Trump urged Republican lawmakers to pass private school vouchers.
“They bend to him, Cornyn bends to him, Paxton bends to him, that’s why we need James Talarico,” Davis added.
In an interview after the event, Talarico also addressed the attacks on free speech nationally, and in high schools and college campuses across the state.
“ I’m against cancel culture, whether it comes from the left or the right,” Talarico said. “But this is the worst kind of cancel culture. The kind that comes from the top corporate media executives trying to please corrupt politicians and silencing free speech in the process.
“Those corporate media executives and those corrupt politicians, they want us all fighting over what a late night comedian said, instead of fighting over the fact that they can control what we say at all, and so I think a threat to anyone’s First Amendment rights is a threat to all of our First Amendment rights.”
Attendees also shared their concerns about attacks on public education in Texas, and why they support Talarico as the right candidate to fight it.
“I think we’re on the precipice of something really dangerous, there’s a lot of big words like ‘fascism’ and ‘hostile takeovers’ being thrown around, and I think we are seeing a lot of that, and I think we’re looking at losing our school systems, something that my family desperately depends on,” Katie Ryan said.
“I have a son in special education and we have seen, just in the state of Texas, $1.3 billion cut from the special education budget since 2003. So when they cut things from the Department of Education and that money doesn’t funnel down to the state, I already know that my state is not looking out for my son,” she added. “But I see Talarico going into Congress and taking a stand against all of this and trying to bring funds back into this state to protect our children while they’re in school and to provide them with the education that they deserve.”
Talarico will face Dallas native and former US Rep. Colin Allred and former astronaut Terry Virt in the Democratic primary in March.
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